This may sound like a baseball story, but it’s really about standards-based education.
There are baseball games when even the best hitters and fielders in the major leagues do not meet the standards — and yet they win the game. In fact, a championship batter can “not meet the standards” two out of three at-bats, and then hit a grand-slam, walk-off home run to clinch a game or play-off series and be considered a hero.
There is no such thing as “partially meets,” “meets,” or “exceeds” the standards for a home run. It’s either in or out of the ballpark. It doesn’t follow mode or mean. Such a grand slam performance wins accolades on the sports pages, to say nothing of multi-year gazillion dollar salaries.
School should be more like baseball — in fact, it is. It occurs to me that baseball is a pretty concise analogy for the way we’re learning to talk about student achievement. Like any good metaphor, it helps cut through a lot of the mystifying jargon by describing one thing in terms of another.
Standards-based learning and reporting actually have a lot in common with the way statistics and lore are recorded in baseball — a balance between the data that tracks individual performance over a career, the highlights of particular games and seasons, and it allows room for the ecstatic moments and unpredictable breakthroughs that statistics belie. Some statistics can be parsed and examined; some can’t, until they are aggregated in a grade — like winning a game, or a pennant, or series, or entry into the hall of fame.
But we can use our stats to be students of the game, and, most importantly, our game. We just need an agreed-upon language to talk about what’s happening on the field: RBIs, hits, homeruns, errors, stolen bases, ERAs, etc. There’s a lot to keep your eye on, besides that fly ball getting lost in the sun.
If you think about it, baseball and school share the same interplay of individual and team achievement. Students all play field positions and take their ups at the plate — working on multiple skills that will contribute to solo stats and, maybe, induction into the School Hall of Fame. But they are also contributing to the achievement of the team. Sure, we all want to break various solo season records. The thing about school is, we are each playing in a different race.
We each must play our own game; our own position. We use our stats to determine how it’s going, relative to our past performance, and to set goals for the next game: post-secondary competition.
To do so we need coaches, managers, umpires — even a commissioner. These wise and experienced people work on the fundamental skills and conditioning during practice, strategize about pitching rotation and batting order and manage our responses during each “game.” But it’s up to each one of us as students to adapt to the shifting standards and conditions in any given game.
No matter how dismal a season or term may feel, there’s always next year. The fans (parents) are loyal. The umps and coaches (teachers) are fair and knowledgeable. The owners (school board) supportive and the home field advantage significant for the prospects of even the smallest of clubs. “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over,” as Yogi Berra would say.
The key is that successful players learn about themselves from their statistics, and contribute to their team with their performance. Little by little, we learn what kind of player we are. We choose a position and work hard at the specialized skills it takes to excel. Every student and player needs to keep their eye on the ball of self-efficacy — not try to be a better pitcher than Roger Clemens but be the best pitcher, catcher or switch hitter they can be.
Perhaps the day will come when school progress reports do read like baseball trading cards. I certainly made a lot of progress from my rookie year to my last season with the Cubs. Baseball players might benefit from a page borrowed from our play book: a section on their cards recording their progress in citizenship.
Meanwhile, we can use the metaphor to imagine the possibilities and translate the jargon. Now if only there were a neat analogy between school and baseball salaries. The baseball owners could save a lot of money just by meeting in the middle.
Todd R. Nelson is principal of Brooksville Elementary School.