Roy F. McCampbell's Blog

Sue Altman of the new and unaccredited EduShyster Academy notes the irony that Microsoft has finally abandoned its stack ranking system but the schools are stuck with it, thanks to the Gates Foundation and its best buddy Arne Duncan.

What is stack ranking?

“Now, after hiring a new HR person, Microsoft is getting rid of the stack rankings—and good riddance. But thanks in no small part to Microsoft founder Bill Gates, our schools are still ruled by an education reform-mindset that’s informed by the same wrong-headed ideas that Microsoft just rejected.

“The belief that punishment motivates people to work better

“The belief that competition is better than collaboration in an organization

“The idea that worth of employees can be measured by ranking them on narrow criteria and that teamwork, innovation, problem solving and communication don’t count towards that criteria”

Now that Microsoft has decided that its players should not compete…

Dear Mouse,

You went to a birthday party today and your father’s report was… well, not great.  It seems you spent most of the time being a barnacle on your daddy’s leg, despite the kind efforts of other kids to get you to play.  In fact, your daddy told me you were pretty unkind to one of the kids, and that hurt my heart a bit.

For several weeks, an eighth-grade boy outside of Kansas City has been expressing his individuality by carrying a floral-print Vera Bradley purse. But yesterday, his assistant principal demanded he remove it. The boy refused, and he was immediately suspended from school.

This raises a question: Why is it a problem for a boy to carry a purse instead of a backpack if he wants to? By breaking gender stereotypes, he’s not hurting anyone. Instead, he’s showing the world that he has good self-esteem and self-confidence—that he is secure his identity.

Unfortunately, his school administrators’ actions show that they want to force a 13-year-old kid into stereotypical masculinity. Apparently, they value gender conformity over creativity and individuality.

Mercedes Schneider has identified 17 states where protests against Common Core standards are heating up, in some cases leading to a slowdown or cancellation of implementation.

She writes:

“Over one-third of the states whose governors and state superintendents signed the CCSS Memorandum of Understanding as part of US Department of Education Race to the Top (RTTT) funding are now percolating with CCSS misgivings.

“That is what happens with top-down reform. The “bottom”– those directly affected by the “top’s” decisions– eventually seethe.”

She provides a description of each state where CCSS is in trouble.

I have been wondering lately why we are so obsessed with giving every student, every teacher, and every school a ranking, rating, and/or grade.

It seems to me that we are thinking about children, teachers, and schools the same way we think about sports teams. In every league, there are winners and losers.

But if we think about education as a culture that is very different from that of a competitive sports league, then the picture and the questions change.

What if we thought of schools as if they were akin to families?

Then we would work to develop school cultures that are collaborative and supportive. We would make sure that those with the greatest needs got the resources they need. We would stop thinking of winners and losers (and “racing to the top”) and think instead about the full development of each human’s potential.

It is a paradigm shift…