3. Controlling OUtcomes through standardization
Controlling Outcomes Through Standardization is the third category of public education pedagogies, programs, and policies that are overwhelming students, families, and schools featured in Higher Ground’s Tsunami of Systems series.
Standards
Is there anything more dehumanizing than efforts to make us all the same?
Standards set the expectation of what students "should know and do" at each grade. Bureaucratic and corporate efforts to control student outcomes through state and de facto national standards has lowered the floor, not raised the ceiling, on academic achievement, and has also resulted in the micromanaged and politicized informing of instruction.
Though the word “standard” conjures up the picture of a high bar for achievement, the implementation of standards in education has had the opposite effect.
Standards frequently reduce the “knowing and doing” of students to mindless compliance with checklist requirements of questionable academic merit, and enforce conformity to some random, anonymous committee’s compromised vision of learning.
The push for the nationalization of education standards began in 1983, with NCEE’s report, A Nation at Risk: The Imperative for Educational Reform, which was followed by a 50-state summit under the Bush White House in 1989 that resulted in the adoption of national education goals, including standards, by the year 2000.
In 1994, the U.S. Congress passed the Improving American Schools Act (IASA), which effectively nationalized control of local education by tying federal funding to the requirement that states establish standards, measure the achievement of those standards through assessments, and report the results back to the Department of Education to continue to qualify for federal education dollars (accountability).
The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.
Though federal law prohibits the creation of national standards, it doesn’t preclude national organizations from exercising influence over local education systems, as was seen through the adoption of Common Core standards in 2010. Headed by the National Governor’s Association (NGA), the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) and ACHIEVE (a non-profit founded by state governors and business leaders to advocate for K-12 standards common to all 50 states), the push towards a Common Core gained critical financial support from the Gates Foundation to the tune of $160 million.
The widespread adoption of Common Core (and its state-branded variants) was a foregone conclusion, especially as major curriculum and assessment developers like Pearson got involved, ensuring that the national market for instructional materials would be dominated by Common Core-aligned products. Even if the Common Core standards were branded as “voluntary,” what real choice did local districts have to resist them? Discussion and debate surrounding the standards were pro forma, as all the decisions had been already made by an unelected public-private partnership with zero unaccountability to the public.
In the absence of specific state standards, schools or districts align with the standards set by professional associations—just one among myriad ways in which standards are controlled to achieve specific organizational outcomes.
Standards have become a political football, with control over what goes into them being intercepted by entrenched educrats and activists who dominate the managerial realms of public education.
Curriculum
Is your child learning the foundational academics that inspire creative & independent thought?
Curriculum is how standards are taught to students. Many parents are under the impression that curriculum is focused on academics and determined by teachers, but much of the decisions regarding curriculum are outsourced to districts, which adopt curriculum designed by outsiders and aligned with standardized priorities.
Curriculum is the instructional material and content that is communicated or provided by a teacher or other means for the purposes of student learning.
These materials are intended to make thought and developmental processes visible so they can be informed, tracked, evaluated, measured, and shaped by schools.
Explicit, or overt, curriculum is the curriculum people tend to think of—it’s the formal or official instructional materials that generally conform to what state or national standards require to be taught.
Hidden, or covert, curriculum is the messages modeled and implied through language, behavior, routines, and rules emphasized in the school environment. Hidden curriculum is what educators and schools want students to internalize to the extent that it becomes reflexively learned, or second nature, and its application becomes seen as normal or expected.
Examples of hidden curriculum can include displaying posters that encourage activism, calling students “folks” instead of “boys and girls,” and messaging depicting schools and school officials as both physically and emotionally safe for students.
With the advent of adaptive and dynamic materials via tech, a lot of instructional content can be considered “hidden” in another fashion, considering that the curriculum is subject to changing on the fly, and is less likely to be seen by teachers using turnkey platforms, or by parents who will never see the “work” done at school on apps or other learning management system tools.
Null curriculum is what is left out of explicit curriculum. Its omission is seen as a deliberate attempt to control what is taught by controlling what isn’t taught.
School is a twelve-year jail sentence where bad habits are the only curriculum truly learned.
Much explicit curriculum has become self-contained or contextualized, meaning that a student’s learning is purposely limited to the parameters of the material itself to exclude that student’s demonstrating prior knowledge.
Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) are comprised of school and district educators to standardize departmental approaches to instruction, ensuring that core curricular concepts are taught with “fidelity.”
Assessments
How does being endlessly assessed damage a child's normal development?
Schools only assess what they want to control. Educators say they administer tests, or assessments, to account for student learning achieved via curriculum to demonstrate "mastery" of standards. In practice, however, testing has become an ongoing way of surveilling student behavior, and of informing student mindsets with premises that can't be challenged without academic penalty.
Testing has long been a feature of public education, typically manifested in a form of student performance, such as recitation and demonstration.
But in the 1880s, Hermann Ebbinghaus, a Prussian philosopher, invented a method of “scientizing” learning that set the stage for administering artificially contrived assessments that continues to this day.
Ebbinghaus controlled for students’ varying prior experiences and acquired interests (which could give them a natural advantage in learning something new) by administering tests comprised of nonsense words—words that no student would have an advantage over another in deciphering. Ebbinghaus believed that by eliminating the variable of preexisting knowledge of a specific content area that it would be possible to “scientifically” compare, or measure, the learning of two different people against one another. What was lost on most of the adopters of this new “science of learning” was that it was based on decoding nonsense words—an exercise of no practical, personal value, nor a reliable indicator of increased intelligence or actual learning.
Since Ebbinghaus, this pseudo-scientific approach to learning has only gained in popularity, spawning a lucrative industry of applied educational psychology. Testing companies like Pearson, Amplify, and Acadience score multimillion dollar contracts with states competing for NAEP rankings, or aiming at improving high stakes testing scores used to create accountability to the government for education spending.
In keeping with this “scientific” approach, children continue to be tested on nonsensical content, and are frequently not permitted to apply their outside knowledge and experience to assessments—instead, they are asked to draw their inferences entirely from the context of the question, so that teachers or algorithms can then “objectively” compare one child’s knowledge to every other student’s. Standardized rubrics and mastery-based grading scales are other rigid tools used to measure the work of one student against another’s.
Students themselves have become so addicted to tests—particularly the students who expect to score well—that they are reluctant to read or write anything, in school or not, unless a score or a grade will be attached.
The distinction between formative assessments (tests used to check for understanding, like quizzes), and summative assessments (tests used to evaluate learning at the end of a unit) has practically disappeared with the advent of technology-enabled embedded assessments. Artificial Intelligence can now collect, in real time, thousands of data points on a student within a matter of minutes, all of which can assess for any number of proficiencies or performance indicators on an ongoing basis without beginning or end.
These continuous assessments result in the constant surveillance of students, in which every action is considered of consequence in the creation of a child’s comprehensive transcript and student profile.
‘Teaching to the test” has now evolved to include “testing as a means of teaching,” with messages about environmental activism, social justice, and transgressive culture embedded in both questions and answers.
Ongoing, embedded assessments paired with the continued practice of formal state-mandated end-of-year (EOY) assessments results in a non-stop cycle of student evaluation. Even students who opt-out of EOY testing can’t avoid being assessed according to it, as districts align required curriculum, instruction, and benchmark tests to the EOY assessments and grades.
Portrait of a
graduate (POG)
Can a paint-by-numbers picture of your child pass as a work of art?
Portrait of a Graduate programs push families out of the picture of their children's future and replace personal education priorities with a non-academic, social justice vision of "correct" mindsets and behaviors (SEL competencies) that every child is expected to model and master.
Portrait of a Graduate is best compared to a blueprint used to create a product that’s standardized to an exact set of specifications. In the case of education, the product is the students.
Originating with the non-profit organization Battelle for Kids, and shaped by transformational education partners like KnowledgeWorks, POG programs have been adopted by states and districts nationwide, all using similar terminology geared towards a single vision:
- Collective goals for graduates
- Mindset requirements for student “success”
- Equitable practices embedded in schools
The Portrait of a Graduate framework is fundamentally incompatible with the classical liberal idea that “hopes, dreams, and aspirations” for a student solely belong to the student and his or her family, not controlled by a “community” or “collective vision” six degrees removed from the student.
To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.
Despite claims that Portrait of a Graduate programs are “not meant to be measured,” strategic planning documents reveal that social and emotional expectations, instruction, standards, and assessments (PCBL) are all aligned with POG, which is the “north star” for a “system transformation” of education.
The stage for systemic transformation has already been set through pilot programs and legislation on competency-based education, with “competencies” aligned to those in Portrait of a Graduate. Local teachers are brought into the process to determine competencies, but only for show. In actuality, teachers are being shifted into becoming facilitators of the SEL system and, over time, the entire system will be geared toward SEL.
The Portrait of a Graduate initiative has spawned other cookie-cutter spin-offs, such as Portrait of a First Year Teacher, Portrait of a School, Portrait of a District, etc.
Personalized Competency based learning (PCBL)
Is it ethical to assess children on the content of their character?
Personalized Competency Based Learning shapes, measures, and tracks Portrait of Graduate mindsets and behaviors (SEL competencies) through adaptive and predictive technology (EdTech & AI), tying assessments to subjective metrics that have nothing to do with the academic skills parents send their children to school for in the first place.
All forms of tampering with human beings, getting at them, shaping them against their will to your own pattern, all thought control and conditioning is, therefore, a denial of that in men which makes them men and their values ultimate.
Personalized Competency Based Learning uses instruction, curriculum, assessments, and professional training to mold our children into the standardized products specified in the Portrait of a Graduate blueprint.
In a PCBL framework what matters most to schools is that students acquire the subjective SEL competencies emphasized in a school’s Portrait of a Graduate program. Curriculum, instruction, and assessment are invariably aligned to DEI or global value frameworks, and process-and-outcome based, with the content serving as the middle-man means. PCBL intends to make a student’s thinking visible, quantifiable, and actionable, and thus more easily predictable and controllable for economic and social ends.
PCBL evolved from Outcomes Based Education (OBE) and Competency Based Education (CBE).
OBE controls student achievement by measuring standardized expectations. OBE means that all kids, regardless of differences, are expected to demonstrate the same objective knowledge and skills at the same age, at the same pace, at the same time, and that those outcomes could also be measured objectively (e.g., run a mile, memorize multiplication tables).
CBE evolved out of OBE, expanding measured outcomes beyond objective knowledge and skills to include subjective knowledge, skills, or dispositions (or “competencies”). Competencies encompass social and emotional attitudes, behaviors, and beliefs (SEL).
PCBL takes CBE one giant leap forward by using technology to inform, shape, track, and measure subjective competencies.
PCBL EdTech maintains control over a student’s perpetual demonstration of predetermined subjective competencies while allowing for those demonstrations to vary in pace (within limits).
The “personalized” component of PCBL is misleading. Algorithm-based programs, gamified applications, and computer-adaptive assessments give students the illusion of personalization of content, when in reality the AI is preconfigured to elicit specific responses and extract private behavioral or psychometric data, while simultaneously informing that data through the content generated.
PCBL is “intended to transition education from a model of fixed time and flexible learning to flexible time and fixed learning.” In this new model, children learn (and are learned about) anytime and anywhere, but they’re not free to learn just anything. Systems now have virtually unfettered access to children with no temporal or spatial limits.
Students work asynchronously, but that doesn’t eliminate schools from mandating learning intentions and success criteria that all students are expected to eventually fulfill, even if completion takes place at different rates.
In practice, “personalized” learning means government entities and their EdTech partners learning the in-depth socioemotional details of a child’s personal life (past, present, and potential) through extensive tech-based surveillance and data collection.
This granular and comprehensive level of analytics facilitates behavior being predicted and controlled for economic or social agendas on a scale that prior to 21st century technological advancements was impossible.
MTSS, PBIS &
RTI Monitoring
Why are schools using wide-scale behavioral modification on our kids?
MTSS, PBIS, & RTI Monitoring leave no student behavior to chance—all children are expected to embody state-dictated mindsets and behaviors (SEL competencies), without deviation and without exception.
Multi-tiered Systems of Support, Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports, and Response to Interventions provide quality assurance to determine that the Portrait of a Graduate (POG) blueprint is closely followed.
Educators are tasked with making sure ALL students exhibit the mindsets, behaviors, and cultural values (SEL competencies) defined by Portrait of a Graduate programs and shaped, tracked, and measured through Personalized, Competency Based Learning (PCBL).
MTSS is a behavioral modification and conditioning framework used by educators to accomplish their task of assuring ideological and behavioral conformity in students.
PBIS, RTI, and Restorative Justice are strategies that can be deployed within an MTSS framework to further condition compliance or achieve DEI objectives.
In an MTSS framework, all students receive interventions to begin with, with two-fold goal of:
A) Preventing unwanted social emotional behavior and mindsets, including those not defined as diverse, equitable, or inclusive enough; and
B) Reinforcing desired social emotional behavior and mindsets, including those seen as conducive to diversity, equity, and inclusion.
The first level of tiered interventions is universal, applied to all children. Children who do not respond as desired by the school are subjected to increased levels of interventions (Tier 2 – Targeted and Tier 2 Intensive) until compliance is obtained.
This behavioral modification framework is used to train in children the “correct” social emotional skills in conjunction with other reinforcement methods, like Positive Behavioral Interventions & Supports (PBIS).
PBIS defines desired student “competencies” and then reinforces the demonstration of these through positive (proactive, instructive, or restorative) methods, like sending a child to the principal’s office for a candy bar. Parents and other educators skeptical of PBIS’s effectiveness often claim, with merit, that it rewards bad behavior.
Gauging the fidelity of teachers applying MTSS & PBIS methods to students requires that teachers meticulously document these interventions and the students’ responses to them (Response to Intervention, or RTI), which results in “data-based monitoring and evaluation” of our children on an ongoing, reiterative basis.
There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.
Restorative methods of addressing behavior (restorative justice) take into account students’ “cultural backgrounds” and give them leniency based on whether they identify with a marginalized or historically oppressed class. Restorative methods are required to impose “educational equity,” meaning that the schools can’t risk being seen as punishing “marginalized” groups of students more than others, even if it is students from those so-called marginalized groups responsible for delinquent behavior.
MTSS, PBIS & RTI interventions (along with TIPS, or Team Initiated Problem Solving) are by necessity intertwined in what is called an Interconnected Systems Framework, or ISF. This framework encompasses not only SEL monitoring, but behavioral and mental health domains. The first assumption of ISF is that schools must be designed to deliver educational, behavioral and mental health supports for all students.
The prevailing mindset among educators now is that all children are “at-risk” of academic failure due to any number of factors (Covid-19, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, trauma-informed stress due to race or sexual orientation or gender identity, “because they breathe,” etc.).
This premise explains why schools are treating all kids as “broken” by default. It also leaves parents with no real tenable way of opting-out of intrusive data-collecting or deficit-based “supports” that their normally-developing children simply do not need.