By Greg Sampson
If you want to know why Education Reform is off the
rails and cannot succeed, you have to understand the fixed mindset, its
implications, and ultimate destructiveness for those who have it.
The fixed mindset believes that talent, intelligence,
and ability are fixed at birth. Improvement and achievement are only possible
if someone has the genes, the inheritance from their progenitors, for it. This
has the following implications:
·
A refusal to recognize failure and grow from it.
Failure must be covered up lest the world find out that the fixed mindset
person is a fraud—not really talented, not really intelligent, not possessing
the right stuff, as Tom Wolfe described it.
·
An avoidance of challenge. New challenges are not
opportunities for growth and learning, but tests that one might fail.
·
A lack of effort. Trying to achieve is doomed to
failure if one is fixed, cannot improve, and will never succeed in surpassing
set levels.
·
A lack of humility. The human ego protects itself at
all costs. The fixed mindset lies about its true results, always inflating
measurements of achievement, to maintain a pretense of competency.
·
A persecution of subordinates. The last thing a fixed
mindset wants around it and under it is people who might be better than them.
They will drive those people out of their organizations. They have to be the
best; they have to be the smartest person in the room.
Carol Dweck, Professor of Psychology, currently
teaching at Stanford University, previously at Columbia University, has made
the study of mindset a key feature of her research. My summary comes from her
book, Mindset—The New Psychology of Success: How We Can Learn to Fulfill Our
Potential. You can preview a copy on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Mindset-How-Fulfil-Your-Potential-ebook/dp/B000FCKPHG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1407599126&sr=8-1&keywords=mindset+by+carol+dweck
or check out the website www.mindsetworks.com.
Her discoveries are astounding and the implications
far-reaching. The fixed mindset explains what is wrong with educational reform
and those who lead it, including foundations, charter school advocates,
legislators, state boards of education, and commissioners of education. In a
series of posts, I will sketch the implications of the fixed mindset and how it
is leading those in charge to erroneous conclusions and disastrous policies. At
the end, I will provide prescriptions for educational improvement that works.
As an introduction, let us look at standardized
assessments and how they promote a fixed mindset in students that erodes their
confidence and leads to apathy, if not outright contempt, toward school.
In Florida, we have given the FCAT (Florida
Comprehensive Assessment Test) for many years. Every state has its version of
the once a year test that measures and labels students for their achievement.
These tests are not designed for growth. Their purpose is to label achievement.
If these standardized tests were designed for growth, students would be allowed
to revisit the questions they got wrong and investigate what they did wrong to
discover ways to correctly solve the items. But not even teachers are allowed
to review the tests.
In Duval County, we take the same approach to our
Curriculum Guide Assessments. After the students have taken the test, we are
not allowed to let them review the questions they got wrong and work on how to
come up with the right answer. The fixed mindset: this is what you are—accept
it. You get no chance to improve.
The test labels children and they take it to heart.
They cannot believe that with effort and study they can learn and surpass these
achievement labels. “No, the test said I’m a 1. That’s all I’ll ever be. No
more homework for me. It’s worthless. When can I drop out of school?”
The surprising and outrageous consequence of the way
we test is that the process creates low-achieving students. Let’s hear from Jo
Boaler, Stanford University, who wrote the book What’s Math Got to Do with It?
(page 95):
The ways in
which assessment reporting can affect students’ confidence as learners was
illustrated poignantly by a ten-year-old student in England reporting on the
standardized tests (called SATs) she was about to take. She said, “… I’m afraid
I’ll do the SATs and I’ll be a nothing.” When the interviewer tried to convince
her that she could never be a “nothing,” no matter what happened on the tests,
the young girl insisted that the test would make her one.
Students buy into the label. And they live down to it
to the point where they will disrupt a class to make their peers laugh and
prevent the teacher from teaching. If no one is learning, no one will find out
how low they are. If they could change that, well maybe they would give the
class a chance, but since they cannot, their best way of protecting their
self-image is to take the class down.
CHAMPs (a classroom management system),
zero-tolerance, parental involvement, and restorative justice cannot solve this
problem. Instilling a growth mindset will.
From Carol Dweck:
One day, we
were introducing the growth mindset to a new group of students. All at once
Jimmy—the most hard-core turned-off low effort kid in the group—looked up with
tears in his eyes and said, “You mean I don’t have to be dumb?” From that day
on, he worked. He started staying up late to do his homework, which he never
used to bother with at all. He started handing in assignments early so he could
get feedback and revise them. He now believed that working hard was not
something that made you vulnerable, but something that made you smarter.
(Dweck, Mindset, page 59.)
Have I convinced you that we should throw out
standardized testing because it is destructive in the lives of children? If so,
Vive La Revolucion!
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