Thinking About Schools: Heidi, HEDI... Whoaaa!

Heidi strikes again!
On November 17, 1968, with 65 seconds remaining, the New York Jets had just kicked a field goal to go ahead of the Oakland Raiders 32-29 in a rough and tumble exciting game that changed television history.? This was the AFL, a gritty upstart league with brash and colorful players and where innovation abounded.? It was new school energy that preserved old school ?sports drama and integrity and a once-in-a-season comeback waiting to happen. ? Yet, only the?thousands of?fans in the stadium got to see the story unfold live. Granted, New Yorkers may have been the only people in the country who were glad that the rest of the country didn?t get to see the Raiders last-minute comeback; but for true sports fans everywhere, including New Yorkers, who love authentic, get-your-fingernails-dirty football at its best, the only drama? watched was the opening credits of the movie, Heidi. ?

Heidi 1, Fans 0. ?No one saw Raiders 43, Jets 32.

A few real-time minutes later, after 7:00 p.m., the Raiders scored two touchdowns in 9 seconds of football time and won the game, 43-32.? Mention ?Heidi? to anyone in Oakland or New York, or to old-timers like me from around the country, and they?ll get the reference.

And, today, a modern day version of the same disaster is sweeping New York.? Only a few of us old-school folks know the football reference; but for New York teachers and principals?today, ?HEDI? has become the modern day Heidi.? Out with the new, in with the old!?

With a few minutes left in what could be substantial, exciting educational reform, the corporate executives and proverbial powers-that-be have switched off the meaningful, gritty, authentic endeavor we call public education and switched on the dated, factory model of excessive standardized testing affecting children and teachers, alike.?

HEDI?? "Highly effective, Effective, Developing, and Ineffective."? Unfair labels to assign children based on how they score on a test?? No.? We have other egregious labels for children, especially those who do not speak English or those with disabilities.? HEDI is for teachers and principals.? Labels assigned to professionals based on evaluation ratings with a potential gross margin of error.? Labels based on necessarily subjective yet clinical observations of teachers and test scores of students assigned to those teachers.? Labels based on psychometric methodology in its infant stages and far from being deemed reliable.? (Look up ?irony? or "oxymoron" in an education dictionary and you?ll find ?reliability of value-added testing measurement.?)?

?So,? you ask, ?What?s the big deal? , So you didn?t get to see the end of a dramatic football game and teachers will be rated on a four-level scale.??

In 1968, corporate policy was that no matter how exciting the new, live television was; that no matter how much this new, brash league was making a statement that the game could progress with energy and authenticity; and that no matter how much the fans and players wanted to experience the progressive future that foreshadowed how we would watch sports for decades to come; corporate policy was to stick to the basics, go back to the classics, and preserve the old-factory model because they presumed the fans and the future wanted to watch HEDI, oops, Heidi.

Complementing what we know about teaching and learning in the 21^st century, there is potential for a new system of exciting, motivating, and authentic professional evaluation and the expectation for accountability.? Some testing and some measures of student learning for evaluation approached in a meaningful way can be valuable.? Rushed, untested, underfunded, factory measurement of students and teachers, and publishing the inaccurate results of both is destructive.? But just like those corporate executives far away from the action on the field literally pulled the plug on the most exciting game in town; understandably impatient politicians, corporate sponsors, and those far away from the action have thrown the baby out with the bathwater in order to start their game promptly at 7:00 p.m.??

p.s. As the story is told, it seems the corporate executive in charge did decide to show the game in its entirety, but because of the barrage of phone calls coming into the studio, the executive couldn't get through to the producer who followed the protocol to make the 7:00 p.m. switch.??

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