CURMUDGUCATION: Backpacks for Clueless Parents + 10 Things Smart Teachers Don't Do

CURMUDGUCATION: Backpacks for Clueless Parents:
Backpacks for Clueless Parents

Over at Getting Smart, a website devoted to selling educational product, guest writer Aimee Rogstad Guidera makes her case for more data collection for each student-- because it's what parents want.

Parents are eager for information about their child’s education. As a mom, I want to know if my daughter is struggling in math before she comes home in tears. I need information to support my child’s learning at home, and to support my child and her teacher in making the best decisions for her learning in the classroom.

Maybe I just don't get it, but I'm inclined to think that if you didn't know your child was having trouble in math before the coming-home-in-tears part, you're just not paying attention. I have heard this pitch enough times to make me occasionally wonder if there is, in fact, some place where teachers keep every scrap of information carefully hoarded, students never speak to their parents about school, parents never ask about school, and all parent requests for conferences and information are denied by all school personnel. Maybe there is some place where parents are so deeply clueless and helpless that they have no idea how their students are doing.


Or maybe Guidera is the CEO and President of the Data Quality Campaign, a group interested in student data and funded by the Gates Foundation, the Waltons, the Dells, and the Ford Foundation. They do have some rules about how such data should be kept in a safe lockbox, but they are clearly Big Data fans.

Guidera is advocating for student data backpacks-- little (or not so little) bundles of data that just follow students around, providing parents with all sorts of longitudinal data (because, again, parents don't know much about their own children).

Guidera says the backpack should be available, timely, portable, secure and understandable, and CURMUDGUCATION: Backpacks for Clueless Parents:

10 Things Smart Teachers Don't Do

Over at the Inc website, contributing editor Jeff Haden last week contributed "10 Things the Smartest People Never Do." It's business-oriented, but it actually translates well into the teaching world as well. Here's the teacherfied version of the list of things that smart people never do.

1. Thoughlessly waste other people's time.

This doesn't just apply to our colleagues-- it applies to our students as well. I actually make this explicit promise to my students every fall, and if they demand an explanation of why something I've asked them to do is not a waste of their time, I give them one. It is easy to view our students as essentially trapped in school, and so it doesn't matter how we spend their time because they never had any control over their schedule anyway. Wrong. We're talking about minutes of fellow human beings' lives. Don't waste them.


2. Ignore people "beneath" your level.

Every beginning teacher gets that important advice-- make friends with the office secretary and the janitor for your hall. But the word "ignore" is key here. For many of our students, the worst thing about life is that they are invisible to their peers and to much of the world they encounter. Haden advises to see people, and I believe that applies to students as well. It doesn't necessarily take a huge fifteen-minute interaction with them-- just a quick exchange that translates as, "I actually see you." It is one of the most powerful things we can do.


3. Ask for too much (especially too soon).

Do not be the teacher who depends on all other teachers to take care of your business for you. Do not require everyone else on staff to cover your butt. Take care of your business and more people will be more inclined to give you more help.


4. Ignore people in genuine need.

This includes colleagues and students. This can be hard because we are always tight on time and genuine need never arrives at a convenient moment. Haden offers this observation:


Though I don’t necessarily believe in karma, I do believe good things always come back to you, in the form of feeling good 

10 Things Smart Teachers Don't Do

ICYMI: This Week's Great Reads



In case you missed it, here are some of the more important reads from the last week. Happy Sunday!


The Costs of Accountability by Jerry Z. Muller
If you are only going to get to one item on this list, this should probably be it. Muller puts the cult of accountability in a historic and cultural context, shows how it slammed into education, and reminds us that schools are not the only ones to suffer from accountability's heavy and not very bright hand.

Schools are more segregated than they were in 1968
Article in particular looks at how the Supreme Court has not exactly been a big help in working on the issue.

Testing in kindergarten
Okay, if you read here, you likely read Diane Ravitch, but just in case you missed this among the gazillion posts, here's a must read account of what kindergarten testing actually looks like on the classroom level. 

Pinellas Failure Factories
Okay, maybe this is the one piece you must read. A hard-hitting, thorough look at how racism and school district mismanagement can turn successful schools into a disaster. And all, I am sorry to note, in the name of neighborhood schools. 

Education's Merchant of Doubt
Whenever you find the assertion that spending money on schools is just a waste of time and makes no difference, you'll find the work of Eric Hanushek. This is a great and thorough takedown of who he is, what his work says, and why it's all bunk.

Alfie Kohn on growth mindset 
Alfie Kohn takes on the idea of growth mindsets and shows why they've turned from a potentially useful tool into one more educational baloneyfest.

Man, these are all must reads this week. I hope you have a few extra minutes to sit and check them out today! ICYMI: This Week's Great Reads