Marzano, Are You Kidding?

The name Robert Marzano showed up a lot in my final teaching years, mostly in the form of articles copied and passed out to all of the teachers in the school or in the district. We were supposed to read them in order to learn how to be better teachers. It seemed that every article we were given to read had Marzano's name on it. That must have been one heavy educational dude I was ignoring.

Because I always wanted to know what manner of bovine waste was being passed down to us from above, I usually attempted to read these articles. I'm almost sorry to say that I never even made it through one of them. I can't even recall what they were about, but they didn't seem to be much help. Much of what is being passed off as school improvement these days involves data, testing, testing data, data from the tests, and cosmetics.

Yes, we're told, posting the learning target for each subject daily will improve students' scores. Oh, did we say posting? We meant posting and reading each learning target to the students. Oops! Forgot! And have the students recite the learning targets back to you. Oh, and one more thing; have them repeat the learning targets in their own words. We'll let you know if there's anything we have to add to that.

Meanwhile, don't forget to update your data wall.

But - oh yeah - Marzano. I should have assumed that some teachers and especially administrators who had either forgotten what the classroom is like or who were never classroom teachers would accept the word of an "expert" with no classroom experience. I discovered years ago, that those who carried the educational day, the ones who advance the farthest, were the ones who can talk a good game, who can exaggerate their classroom success with a straight face.

It seems that I'm better off for not reading Marzano, especially since, whether or not I knew who he was, my teaching career was made more miserable because of him.

There are many reasons Marzano’s tweet touched a lot of raw nerves.

First, those of us who have been in the arena for a while are predisposed to dislike whatever he has to say. Here’s a guy who barely taught, an academic who’d rather read studies written by other academics than remain in the classroom and teach actual kids, who writes books that are only possible because of the labor of other researchers (who at least visit classrooms), and who then has the audacity to tell teachers everything they’re doing wrong and what they should be doing instead. I’m not giving him the benefit of the doubt and neither are a lot of other teachers.

Second, the tweet reveals what most of us suspect: that he’s out of touch. It’s no surprise that a lot of the comments call Marzano out for not being a teacher. That’s a fair criticism. Don’t tell me how to do my job until you’ve demonstrated that you can do it.

From my experience, Marzano will still be required reading, and school administrators will still believe in him until he is replaced by the next educational guru whose advice and pronouncements will have as much effect on student achievement as Marzano - Zero.

And the circle goes round and round.