What doomed Stanford’s charter school? Ask anyone in the ed policy world and the chances are pretty good they’ll have a strong opinion. Chances are equally good that opinion will reflect their views on ed policy in general. Writing at the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet blog, Dan Willingham looks at the chatter among edbloggers about the Stanford New Schools story and sees “confirmation bias”—the tendency to see seek out or interpret evidence in a way that confirms your preconceived notions.
“Education conservatives can point to the school’s abysmally low scores on California’s standardized tests, and point out (either with glee or with artificial dolor) that this outcome was all too predictable, given the school’s philosophy of child-centered learning. Education liberals can point to the school’s excellent high school graduation and college matriculation rates and point out (either with self-righteousness or with anger) that the school’s closing is a predictable consequence of the current obsession standardized test scores. I’ve even seen the argument that the low test scores are badge of honor, because they show that the school would not stoop to drilling students, or to cheating on standardized tests.
Stanford and Linda Darling-Hammond are symbols, Willingham notes, and “icons of progressivism in education” and that colors our response to the story. “Most of us already have strong beliefs on these topics, and so when new, ambiguous information is presented, it is hard not to interpret it in light of our beliefs,” he writes.
So what really happened at Stanford? Did the school deserve its fate? Was it undermined by poor leadership? Lousy teachers? Lack of a curriculum? Was there a plan in place to fix what ailed the school. “None of this was reported in the press, so it’s not really possible to analyze what’s going on at the school with any subtlety,” observes Willingham who says while it’s hard to argue that the school was succeeding, he doesn’t know why or whether or not it deserved to be shut down.
The three most underused and unappreciated words in education policy may very well be “I don’t know.” Having a “take” is more important than having the facts. And the absence of the latter is rarely an impediment to the former. Kudos to Willingham for calling it like he sees it. And not calling it when he can’t.
The setting in which I learned the most about confirmation bias–ironically–was graduate school, often from the very researchers who believed they were seeking Empirical Truth, while everyone else was merely blindly following their biases. The social sciences are often called out for soft research– the whole “What Works Clearinghouse” syndrome of trying to get answers to what Guy Noir might call education’s persistent questions.
The harder and more impenetrable the numbers, however, the more embedded and stubborn those biases become. I have seen entire rooms full of people enchanted by hierarchal linear modeling, seminars where the measurement tool becomes the exciting factor, rather than the implications for real kids and actual schools. I have seen teacher observations scorned, case studies ridiculed, and survey data and interviews belittled.
I genuinely appreciated Dan’s approach here: we will never really know exactly what happened in East Palo Alto. We do know something about the kids and what they brought to the table. In a sense, the charter in EPA, the firings in RI, the actions of Charlie Crist in FL are all signs and indicators that we’re in for interesting times, and it would be nice to think that we can do more than simply pick a side.
Comment by Nancy Flanagan — April 26, 2010 @ 1:04 pm
Amen! The Stanford charter is just the last example of this tendency, to which we all (or at least I) can fall prey. It has been upsetting to see how acrimonious the conversation can become.
Comment by Claus — April 26, 2010 @ 3:03 pm
Will there be an autopsy?
Comment by Ben F — April 26, 2010 @ 8:39 pm
Sadly education data can but “cut” anyway one wants to get the answer one wants. The real truth will probably never ever be known.
Comment by tim-10-ber — April 26, 2010 @ 9:09 pm
In What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know? (1987), Diane Ravitch and Chester Finn write:
“Whether questions are posed as multiple-choice or in essay formats, we strongly urge the use of a ‘don’t know’ option. When students do not have any idea what the answer is, they should be allowed to admit it, especially when they know that their confession of ignorance will not be held against them. We see no virtue in encouraging random guessing. We admire the student who honestly says ‘I don’t know’ instead of wildly stabbing at an answer that looks plausible but is totally wrong. There is nothing shameful about admitting that you don’t know something.”
Indeed, there is beauty in “I don’t know.”
Comment by Diana Senechal — April 27, 2010 @ 12:36 am
It’s a shame that we don’t know what happened. Wouldn’t all of us benefit from knowing if it were the lack of curriculum or the lack of training by the teachers (or some other reason)? I thought that the whole point of charter schools was to provide an incubator for new and innovative ideas to improve schooling. If we can’t learn from the successes (and failures) then what benefit are they?
Comment by Erin Johnson — April 27, 2010 @ 2:13 am
Robert, good post. One quibble. There’s a significant fact in the case. Aspire cut its relationship. That’s a pretty big deal, no? Shalvey characterized why. That was reported.
Comment by MG — April 27, 2010 @ 8:14 am
@Erin. I think it’s less a matter of not knowing what went wrong than the tendency of those (per Willingham’s point) to see in the school’s failure what they’re predisposed to see. I certainly think it is possible to learn valuable lessons. I’m not sure that’s happenning right now.
@MG. Here’s a post that refers to the Aspire/Shalvey relationship. http://www.joannejacobs.com/tag/aspire/
Comment by Robert Pondiscio — April 27, 2010 @ 8:44 am
We may not know precisely what happened but we do know what teaching methods they say they were using.
And we do know that those methods have a poor track record of increasing academic skills especially for the type of “at risk” kids attending this school.
And we do know that LDH is in charge of developing the national assessment to be used as part of the Common Core Initiative.
And we do know from LDH’s statements that she wants that assessment to be designed based on the same theories that this school was designed around.
Maybe we do not want to know what went wrong as it would put a damper in where too many of the current federal ed programs are taking us with printed or borrowed dollars.
Comment by Student of History — April 27, 2010 @ 11:24 am
Say it isn’t so. It’s not true that LDH is in charge of national tests, is it?
Comment by Long-time observer — April 27, 2010 @ 1:06 pm
We know the school hired teachers who were well-qualified, at least on paper.
We know Stanford’s Ed School developed the curriculum.
Stanford’s dean of education said there was an improvement plan for the elementary school, but gave no details.
I wish they’d had a chance to try to save the elementary. The fear of execution concentrates the mind wonderfully, as they say. However, I worry that Stanford has no sense of urgency about improving its high school, which was supposed to be college prep, not remedial prep.
Comment by Joanne Jacobs — April 27, 2010 @ 6:16 pm
Joanne-
How are you defining “well qualified”?
Unfortunately the meaning in my state is the requisite ed courses and passing Praxis 2.
I’m afraid I think no one should be teaching elementary school in the US who hasn’t demonstrated an understanding of the phonemic nature of English.
It’s not sufficient but it really is necessary.
Comment by Student of History — April 27, 2010 @ 8:30 pm
“I don’t know?” Come on! Someone is being a bit disingenuous here. Does the purported ignorance of the cause emanate from the associated prestige of the name(s) Stanford or Linda Darling-Hammond?
If one considers the source, the WaPo Answer Sheet with its primary author, Valerie Straus, with guest writers like Monty Neill and Lisa Guisbond (Fair Test), etc., one can easily predict where the dialogue is headed.
“None of this was reported in the press, so it’s not really possible to analyze what’s going on at the school with any subtlety.” Now there’s a clandestine indicator if I’ve ever heard one. “None of this was reported in the press?” Why/How could that be? Sorry for the cynicism here but this whole story begs for a semblance of honesty and it’s blatantly been evaded.
The “I don’t know?” borders on hyperbole. A more accurate assessment might be, “I don’t want the world to know.”
FYI, read “Left Back” p361, Diane Ravitch’s chronicling of what happened to progressive education in this country during the last century.
What I learned from the Stanford charter’s failure confirms my belief in the “progressive” education. Talk about an oxymoron.
Comment by Paul Hoss — April 28, 2010 @ 7:59 am
Paul, there’s a difference between “I don’t know” and “I don’t want to know” or “there’s no way of knowing.” Of course it’s easy to point the finger at their pedagogical methods (and I had an impulse to do just that). But we know very little about what went on in the classrooms there. The descriptions I have seen are general and vague. Two schools could describe themselves in this way and have drastically different curricula and approaches. Now, is this because someone is keeping the truth from the press, or is it because jargon and vague descriptions pervade education discussion? I don’t know how much it is of the former, but I’d say it’s at least a little of the latter.
Comment by Diana Senechal — April 28, 2010 @ 8:23 am
As I live and breathe, guess who got another shot as a guest columnist in today’s “Answer Sheet” in the WaPo? Why, it’s none other than Fair Test’s own Lisa Guisbond espousing more gobbledygook on how to measure student achievement.
If you guessed portfolios would be part of her repertoire for alternative assessments, you’d be correct.
Couldn’t help adding a little comment of my own regarding the lack of authenticity/credibility/reliability of any of her suggestions.
That’s right, it’s a cold, wet blustery day here in the Northeast and not too many balls will be slipping by this catcher’s mitt, not even spitballs.
Comment by Paul Hoss — April 28, 2010 @ 3:53 pm