The “I Ching” teaches that “Before there can be great brilliance… there must be chaos.”
This is PART 2 in a series of blog posts that document our research, strategic thinking, observations and debates as we take on one of the last vestiges of the industrial revolution: the practice in schools of organizing kids into grade levels according to their chronological age.
This past week we completed the 2009 version of the California Standards Test. It is a standards-based test designed to assess the degree to which children mastered the standards at their grade level. If they get higher than a scaled score of 350, they will be considered “proficient” and everyone will be happy.
Of course, anything less than that means they are “not at grade level” and it will be a reason for great concern. And if 45% of our overall students or 45% of our Latino students or 45% of our English language learners are not at grade level, the state of California will declare us to be a “Program Improvement” school.
So here is what I don’t get.
If we have a standards-based curriculum, and students’ mastery of those standards is determined by a standards-based assessment (in our state: the California Standards Test), then why aren’t kids grouped in classrooms according to their mastery of those standards ? In other words… a true, standards-based school.
Where do we see standards-based schools? In that Taekwondo studio down the street– the one in your neighborhood strip mall.
In Taekwondo and other martial arts, students are assigned a white belt until they demonstrate mastery of ALL of the techniques, blocks, kicks, forms, and philosophies that are taught at that beginning of the learning continuum. They advance through the curriculum- color belt by color belt– until they reach the level of black belt. There is a high price to pay for not mastering all of those blocking and striking techniques if you spar with another black belt so Taekwondo instructors tend to promote students only when they are ready to be promoted.
Not so in your school or mine.
The significant difference is that in Taekwondo we group students by their demonstrated competence. In public schools we group kids according to 1) their chronological age and 2) the grade level they were sitting in when the clock ran out at the end of the game last June. Our 11 years-olds are fifth graders no matter what level of mastery they have attained in school. And next month, they will become 6th graders and they will struggle to catch up all year until it is time to take the California Standards Test again. When that time comes, they will be handed the Sixth Grade Test– not because they are ready for it… but merely because we placed them in a student grouping called “Sixth Grade”!
So what if we organized our students for instruction like they do in so many of the schools for the martial arts– in a mastery-based model that is thousands of years old instead of the archaic system that we all perpetuate today where students are promoted merely because it is June outside.
I have a pretty good idea what would happen and I’ll bet you do too. Some of it would be good… especially for students and teachers. But some of it would create such profound dissonance within the “testing and accountability system” that my school will face absolutely blistering criticism. And maybe worse.
So we are going to have to think this through. And we are going to need your help.
Cross-posted, in part, on Leadertalk
So today I am throwing the first brick in the revolution. Right through the freaking window. Today it will be one brick. Tomorrow another. And then another. And I’ll invite you to pick up a brick or two as we get the momentum leaning our way. We are going to change El Milagro. And this blog is going to chronicle the change– the revolution– brick by brick by brick. 
This is the anniversary of my first blog. I have now been blogging for a full year. 59 posts, 147 comments and countless hours and caloric expenditures of creative energy later… here I am. Somewhere.
It’s Week 2 of the California Standards Test and students are fingering their math facts like an abacus. Many of 
And this morning, they will each complete question number 21– a pre-algebraic word problem with one absurd possible answer choice, one answer choice that will trick a number of children who aren’t yet test-savvy enough to smell a rat, one answer choice that is correct and one answer choice that goes down smoothly…a sugar sweet placebo to remind us all that standardized, multiple-choice tests are to the disadvantage of the children that actually think. But they don’t know if they got question #21 right. They don’t know if they fell for the tricks and the traps so they cannot make mid-flight adjustments like they do on their video games. They’ll never know.
But imagine what our teachers might do with the data if they could get it back next Tuesday. As they unwrap the tangled trends: 
It is Day 3 of the 2009 California Standards Test and it is quiet across the campus. Still. Ghost-like. Except for the traffic up on I-5 whistling like a turbine and leaning ceaselessly into the North wind. The South.
Now we are in it. And that heads-down, pencil-gnawing silence of testing is mixed in with a healthy dose of celebration. Every day. Today the staff will play the 7th and 8th graders in flag football. Yesterday there was a school-wide movie, a huge game of “Capture the Flag” and a chess tournament. The day before we cranked the music up and danced on the black top. Testing time is also a celebration of learning. We equate it with the team that practices all week long for a big game on Saturday. The practice is fun… but it doesn’t compare to the rush of competing in bright uniforms against another team.
Back on March 10, he described his 
Universal health care. 
We are two weeks from the 2009 iteration of the California Standards Test. The clock is ticking. We are prepared. We are in a zone. And we better be…considering the high stakes.
• High stakes because schools with low API’s (<700) will continue to replace those migrating veteran teachers with brand new inexperienced teachers who will take five years to learn their craft… and then they will migrate too. And while they are learning, those younger teachers will be just starting to raise families of their own. So you can expect those teachers to be out two to three months on maternity leave and to be temporarily replaced by long-term substitute teachers who have less training and less experience than the inexperienced young teacher they are replacing.
• High stakes because we are all compelled to strike hard against the mountainous challenge of quantifying children’s learning on the basis of a single standardized test. We will balance the winners and the losers and the inevitable damage caused when the best of intentions collide with unintentional consequences. And that is, by definition, high stakes– where our systems align poorly or not at all. And for that incongruence…our children pay.
Anne and I have just returned from New Orleans where we volunteered for service with 
I wondered why so many of those uninhabited houses still bore the crimson “X’s” spray-painted by search and rescue teams and framing the cryptic code for the number of victims still inside. And I wondered how those search tattoos worked on the psyche of children and adults alike.
Gunpowder Point is bathed in ocean breeze and bird poop. It is now a protected marshland in what seems to be the last square foot of undeveloped land in Chula Vista. Bordered by freeway noise to the east, and insulated by acres of natural foliage, the Nature Center leans into that stealthy wind.
And all of this matters. The Nature Center is less than two miles from 
Imagine children rotating through varied learning opportunities over the course of a school day: contributing to data collection and exhibit management, developing individual research projects that make a significant contribution to the body of knowledge accumulated here, serving as museum docents and guides at the sting ray petting area, performing community service to help maintain the sprawling acres, advocating for green energy. Imagine children not just simulating the work of science, but being scientists. Contributing. Developing not just an appreciation for the fragile interdependence of living ecosystems, but a profound reverence for their own place in the world. Here there are owls and sharks, reptile and eel aquariums, there are marshland aviaries, and shoreline birds. There are rare sea turtles. There is an adult bald eagle. 
"El Milagro Weblog" 