If we are relentlessly focused on the quantitative measurements of education we miss the beauty of learning #mlts #mltsfilm #edchat
— Dr. Chris R McGee (@cmcgee200) March 10, 2017
A few days ago, the above tweet was sent out by Chris McGee, a friend of mine and an assistant principal out of St. Louis, Missouri.
While these words can apply to countless areas of education, I found myself thinking about them this past Friday during a professional development session in which an excellent Heinemann consultant, Sheila, was working with my district’s elementary level on Fountas and Pinnell’s Benchmark Assessment System (BAS)…In short, the BAS is an assessment that’s administered to students, one-on-one, usually two or three times a school year to determine each student’s three reading levels: independent, instructional, and hard. All levels are indicated by a letter on Fountas and Pinnell’s Text Level Gradient, which ranges from A-Z.
Towards the end of the professional development, after Sheila had spent the time focusing on (1) how to find each student’s levels and (2) how to use qualitative data to drive instruction, she made it a point to say something to the effect of, “Despite all the testing, Irene Fountas and Gay Pinnell have always left it up to the teacher to decide at which level to instruct each student.” When she uttered these words, my thoughts shot in two different directions.
Direction #1: Simple, Not Simplistic
First, I thought about Chris’s tweet and the ways in which it’s often tempting to make education simplistic by reducing practices to numbers (e.g., percentage grades), letters and frameworks (e.g., SAMR), and concrete steps (e.g., the writing process). While I do think simplification often provides us with comfortable starting points, sticking with this mentality for too long can be harmful. For example: there are countless problems with percentages; pedagogy (and students publishing for authentic audiences) supersedes redefinition; and the writing process is anything but linear.
I have found that some of the most powerful professional learning takes place when the facilitator know the topic so well, she is able to communicate its core ideas as if they’re entirely simple, when they are anything but. Of course, simple is different from simplistic. While the former is a synonym for “easy to understand,” the latter is used in place of “dumbed down.” When the abstract is made simple, the simplistic can be circumvented.
Direction #2: Quantitative, Qualitative, and the Reader
Second, I thought deeper about how the readings we assign students (or those chosen by students) should be determined by more than just letters (if at all, in some instances). In fact, systematically assigning students to letters/levels is one of many ways to kill a love of reading. (And, if you’re looking for more ways, check out “Let’s Not Kill The Love Of Reading” by Tony Sinanis and “The Reading Rules We Would Never Follow as Adult Readers” by Pernille Ripp.)
While the BAS provides valuable quantitative and qualitative data, it doesn’t entirely account for the other two components that should be taken into consideration when pairing a student with a text: a qualitative evaluation of the text, and consideration for the reader’s unique qualities. And, if the idea of analyzing all three of these factors sounds intimidating, take a look at Kylene Beers’ and Bob Probst’s one-stop-shop tool for determining text complexity; there’s one for fiction and another for nonfiction. These are resources I use when facilitating close reading and guided reading professional development.
In the End
Chris’s tweet says it all. Yes…numbers, letters and frameworks, processes, and quantitative reading scores may be comforting, black and white, and easy to follow.
But…If we don’t step out of our comfort zones and embrace the messiness – which is exactly what we should want our students do be doing – then we are doing them a disservice.
When was the last time you stepped out of your comfort zone?
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I just read basically the same quote in Innovator’s Mindset by George Couros. I’ll add it to the end of my note here. Overall, we as educators need to rethink how we define success.
http://a.co/7OieRHu
“How Will You Measure Success? We often try to use business metrics to measure the success of the school. Rather than counting money like a company does, we often use test scores to measure success. Sure, there are other metrics that help businesses determine future success, such as customer satisfaction, but the bottom line for almost any business is money; profit is a crucial measure. Although schools can learn from the business world, our success is not as quantifiable. In a conversation with Katie Martin, director of professional learning for the University of San Diego’s Mobile Technology Learning Center, she talked with me about the struggle schools face when it comes to determining whether or not they are successful. “Right now, we are at odds in many systems because we say we want kids to be critical thinkers, productive citizens, responsible decisions makers… and then we only measure ‘success’ by how they perform on a test and not celebrate how they have grown and developed the other desired skills and mindsets,” she said. She’s right. For years, we have taken the most human profession in the world and simply tried to reduce it to letters and grades, and it doesn’t work.” from “The Innovator’s Mindset: Empower Learning, Unleash Talent, and Lead a Culture of Creativity” by George Couros
Lance, thanks for the connection to George’s book! I read the book (which is excellent) awhile back, but Katie’s quote didn’t cross my mind while writing this post. Great connection!
Perhaps this post is clickbait.
Perhaps it’s using a straw man.
If not, I think a few essential points have been missed.
1. Education IS quantitative.
We teach quantitative reasoning from kindergarten through college. The idea that the study of education should fail to use an essential aspect of reasoning that we teach students for 12+ years seems wrong-headed at best.
2. We need be focused on “quantitative measurements” because the two words are virtual synonyms.
Measuring may involve a system, but the first definition in most dictionaries points to quantity, not quality.
Measuring IS for the most part quantitative.
3. Of course we should *at the same time* focus on qualitative indicators of learning–including how meaningful the experience is and the beauty and inspiration students find in what they learn.
In this context, there is no reason to see quantity and quality as anything other than complementary and equally necessary.
4. Quantification is not just a process of simplification: quantification allows explanation and interpretation.
We may have standards or criteria to determine if a given student’s performance is where we believe it should be or not. But quantitative processes tell us how a whole class and school and county are faring. Without statistical techniques, all our qualitative data are likely to be grossly misinterpreted.
In short, I am glad to see someone avoid the “let’s not measure” camp. But the view offered here misses entirely the beauty of mathematical thinking itself. The idea that quantitative thinking is reductive and simplistic falls into its own trap.
Measuring and quantification are not antithetical to learning and growth: they are essential. Remove or sideline or diminish them, and our human powers of understanding are hobbled beyond measure.
Edward, thanks for taking the time to read and respond…I do think both the quantitative and the qualitative have a place in education, which I believe was the intention behind Chris’s tweet and also what I tried to communicate in my post (and perhaps I could have been clearer). As far as mathematical thinking is concerned, the post deals with measuring student progress, frameworks, and processes, not so much the content that is taught in classrooms. Of course, our students should explore the beauty of numbers!…Thanks again!
Since I was quoted, I would like to clarify. When I said that Fountas & Pinnell always leave the decision of where to place students on a level in the hands of the teacher, I was referring to the use of qualitative data. We spent much of the seminar going beyond the numbers (or letters) to analyze the sources of information the student used or neglected: meaning, language structure or visual information (letters/words). We also spend a lot of time looking at the comprehension conversation data. The teachers & I chose goals for individual students based on the qualitative data.
I agree that we need both qualitative and quantitative data. The qualitative data makes sure we are placing students at just right levels for optimal learning-not too hard nor too easy. Teachers have to do a deeper analysis of the data for informed decision-making while teaching. Ross made an excellent point in saying that a student is more than a letter. We would agree totally! The F& P levels (A-Z) are for teachers to use in making teaching decisions; we do not recommend using them as a label for students.
Sheila, thanks for providing the additional context, and thanks again for a great experience!