This is a message for corporate reformers from Katie Osgood.
I hope it will be read carefully by the folks at Democrats for Education Reform, Stand for Children, ALEC, Teach for America, Education Reform Now, StudentsFirst, the Gates Foundation, the Walton Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Dell Foundation, Bellweather Partners, the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, the Heartland Institute, the NewSchools Venture Fund, and, of course, the U.S. Department of Education.
Please forgive me if I inadvertently left your name off the list of the reform movement. If I did, read it anyway.
Katie Osgood teaches children in a psychiatric hospital in Chicago. She knows a lot about how children fail, how they suffer, and how our institutions and policies fail them.
Please read her short essay. Help it go viral if you can.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Katie’s heartfelt essay eloquently “says it all”. I will forward it on to my teachers and ask them to forward it on to at least 5 friends.
I am not kidding when I say this — it is now time to get star power to help us. Is Ellen Degeneris aware of the travesty that is occurring with public education in her home state of Louisiana? Would Lady GaGa speak out in defense of maintaining the Arts and public education??
I am feeling the extreme frustration of feeling we are not being heard or taken seriously.
I feel desperate and concerned about my finest teachers suffering with poor growth scores.
Help!!
Marge
I would love to get Ellen on our side. She touted that execrable film about the parent trigger.
I wish I knew how to reach her or Lady Gaga.
Ok, all seriousness aside – did you ever think you would be sending a response on a blog with the words “Lady Gaga” in it?
I bet John Dewey never saw the need to put up a poster on a U. of Chicago bulletin board “I wish I knew how to reach Bessie Smith, Bing Crosby, or Fanny Brice!”
The times they are a changing! And, now everyone is an expert on, well, everything so we need that star power to open some eyes.
Ellen DeGeneres Show 818-954-5929 //Ellen Managers 310-786-4900 // Ellen Publicist 323-822-4888 I have not called any yet but I Googled the info & that is what I got.. The address is The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Telepictures Productions // 3000 West Alameda Ave. Suite 2700 // Burbank, CA 91523
http://famous-relationships.topsynergy.com/Ellen_DeGeneres/Contact.asp
Ms. Katie, thank you for this soulful message, and thank you for being there for these kids.
High performing schools are the winners because we have allowed a system that created schools to be holding cells so the winners can exclude all the at risk kids. It’s a tale of a well thought out design of winners and losers.
Thank you for sharing Katie’s essay about the real “human” costs of current reform practices. I just finished watching a PBS Newshour story about the Rocketship charter schools in California. The reporter started his story asking why no one has figured out how to mass-produce high quality education such as Henry Ford did with the Model T. Besides coming across as an advertisement for this Rocketship schools, I was appalled at the ignorance of comparing production of cars to providing quality education for children….human beings. (http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/education/july-dec12/rocket_12-28.html) The Ellen DeGeneris show seems to love focusing on individuals…..perhaps some of the individual human stories would appeal to the show’s producers. I am skeptical because they would likely be more interested in showering gifts on successful individuals who had seemingly overcome poverty through charter schools….not those left behind.
See my latest post on Rocketship.
Ms.Katie, Thanks for a framing the issue in such a way that one hopes it shocks some to their humanistic senses.
Our children is our nation’s most important asset and we are destroying them.
Your message needs to be rammed down the throats of the policy wonks that tout the importance of data over common sense.
Ms. Katie – you are a gem. Thank you for a thoughtful, eloquent, heartfelt plea that the world really needs to hear.
For what it’s worth, I forwarded it to Eric Zorn (Chicago Tribune columnist) with a rather stern message that it’s past the point to be “agnostic” or sit on the fence anymore. It’s time to choose sides and inaction is the same as choosing the wrong side. I don’t know if he’ll listen or respond, but I’ve been an active member of his blog for over a decade and I’ve met him personally, so maybe I have a little pull? I think he’s tepidly sympathetic, but he’s been afraid to dive in and really look at the issues. He does, after all, work for an extremely conservative paper, plus he’s a pretty strong Obama supporter (and white and affluent, so he’s not personally touched by the “reforms”). I’m keeping my fingers crossed because his blog reaches a pretty broad range on the partisan/ideological spectrum, and his columns have even bigger impact, especially in Chicago. His support could really tip the balance in Chicago where there’s already been a lot of momentum, and maybe if we can turn things around here, the pressure will be on in the rest of the country.
I agree completely with rratto that this message “needs to be rammed down the throats of the policy wonks that tout the importance of data over common sense”, but I don’t know how to make that happen, especially if decent people like Eric won’t listen.
In these times—I guess any time—silence in the face of injustice implies consent. Silence amidst the deafening drumbeats of charterization and privatization is touted by the for-profiteers as consent.
Thanks for trying to raise our voice, along with yours, above the rheephormy din. All props.
Thanks, Dienne!
Katie, Diane and Friends,
I am loving your article Katie, it is right on in every way.
No more! No MORE!!! NO MORE!!!!
I have contacted Ed Schultz, a production company in California, Michelle Alexander, author of The New Jim Crow who teaches at Ohio State, state senator and superintendents in Michigan, I have a panel ready to go with the media when we get someone to pick up the ball and run with it.
I have been in touch with Parents Across America about a project based on “Hands Across America,” where, state by state, we join together, simultaneously, on the same weekend afternoon, and celebrate public education and present the cold, hard facts of privatization to the public, across America… remember “This land is your land, this land is our land?”
I have been relentless since running for state rep in Ohio as former Ohio Teacher of the Year and being kept out of the Statehouse by a malicious 1.5 million dollar ad campaign the last 2 weeks of the election of which Michelle Rhee was a player. I am determined to join others and take action from the Outside/ In where ever, whenever and however we can.
As a 29-year veteran educator and supporter/supervisor/facilitator for over 250 IEP/IAT meetings in my elementary school each year, you have got it right!!!
These are perilous times for our kids who are fragile, vulnerable and at risk. Taking the experts out of the equation and ping-ponging children across town in the name of for-profit avarice and greed is destroying our children and their crucial connection to community.
We ALL have momentum and the power to get moving on CIVIL / HUMAN rights issue of our time, namely, protecting our children and preserving public education.
It is time to take action from the Outside/ In.
Keep contacting people in a position to bring Katie’s facts to light, keep going with reaching your contacts, newspaper columnists, talk show hosts, etc.
Keep moving with your words, your expertise, your stories, your ACTIONS.
Keep doing what you can to save our children and public education.
Thank you Katie, thank you Diane, thank you to all friends who are fighting for our precious children, the real victims of corporate reform.
Maureen Reedy
Parent/29 year Public School Teacher
Columbus, Ohio
Thank you Maureen! Keep fighting!
You too Katie, also, would love for you to consider being on a panel for news media, will explain in conversation. Shoot me an email if you would be interested, maureen.reedy@gmail.com
“There can be no middle ground or compromise when kids are being hurt.”
– Ms Katie
Many education reform pundits and advocates got the assignment of sweet-talking public school supporters. They have to engage in a form of self-censorship to prevent themselves from accidentally exposing their bosses, because often their true sympathies really lie with us. It’s a tough spot, psychologically. They still plead for a comfortable piece of middle ground from which they can continue to receive their paychecks, but they already know exactly what they dare not write. Our first job is to counter their mis-leadership and prevent them from paralyzing our unions and community organizations. We can replace them, or go around them, and let them decide where that leaves them. In the meantime, it shows maximum respect if we try to talk them over.
You can’t break through existential bad-faith arguments by ramming anything down anybody’s throat (Yes, I really did read Being and Nothingness when I was 19, and have revisited it a number of times).
The argument that compromise is better politics than polarization is made everywhere, as though that’s the only answer to a polarizing attack. Notice that Students First is a pioneer in no-compromise rhetoric, so accommodation to them is no compromise. Let’s leave the throat-ramming to them, and seek better ways to challenge potential allies to choose a side.
Yes, we can point out that the supposed middle ground has crumbled under them, but we’re asking people to take a step into human authenticity and freedom, in the face of their own self-interest and built-up defenses.
Diane’s recent conversation with John Thompson on the question of privatization is an example. John’s stance continues to evolve, as he puts it. Here’s a current column addressing the increasing effects of extreme poverty; in the comments, I’ve asked him to respond directly to Ms. Katie’s challenge.
http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/living-in-dialogue/2012/12/john_thompson.html
We should send this to every superintendent and principal in our neighborhood schools. Until those who wear the boots on the ground speak up, nothing will change for the better. Students will continue to suffer, teachers will continue to lose hope and admins will continue to push that awkward rope of reform until it collapses. No time to waste. If children suffer, then stop what we’re doing. VAM be damned, be not afraid, change will come only when we have the courage to stand up and be counted. I wish I were still teaching so I could make a nuisance of myself. I feel like I have little influence now that I am not on campus. The only lasting resolve for me is that I did just that for the two years before I retired. I was right to speak up. From what my former colleagues tell me, no one is saying anything against the reform regime machine and the halls are eerily quiet with complacency. Pity.
Please include The Oxford Group of Michigan to the list of Reformers whose agenda is rank with a lack of empirical evidence regarding real help for children.
An outstanding article revealing the effects of “reform”. I teach in a so-called “excellent and affluent” school system but there are hurting children everywhere. When a child trust you enough to share their personal anguish you want to cry with them. The “reformers” live in another world. They are out of touch and their “handiwork” must be exposed and shoved in their faces.
As a recently retired teacher of the deaf at the Rhode Island School for the Deaf, I thank from the bottom of my heart Katie, Maureen Reedy, Diane Ravitch, and all the courageous educators, parents, and community members who are speaking out and exposing the true nature and malevolent consequences of education reform as practiced by the corporate reform juggernaut. I especially love this idea from Maureen:
“‘I have been in touch with Parents Across America in Chicago about a project for Preserving Public Education based on “Hands Across America in 1986,” where, state by state, we join together, simultaneously, on the same weekend afternoon, and celebrate public education and present the cold, hard facts of privatization to the public, connecting our cause across America… remember “This land is your land, this land is our land?’”
I think that we have to have a sustained national action, as well as within each state, to fully inform the general public about the serious negative consequences these policies are having on real children and adolescents, as opposed to the rhetorical children that the reformers are claiming to save from ineffective teachers. When ALEC legislators pushed through voter ID laws in state after state, the situation seemed hopeless, but courageous people pushed back, and the laws were thwarted, and ordinary people waited for hours in long lines to show that they value their rights and obligations as members of our society. We even more urgently need to rally the country to push back against and defeat the Orwellian corporate education policies that are harming our children and our democracy.
Sheila, I am really excited that you like the Public Schools Across America idea, talk it up and spread the word. Let me know if you are interested in actively being involved. Shoot me an email: maureen.reedy@gmail.com…. congrats on your retirement!
“Why this isn’t a national scandal, I will never understand…”
What about getting a well-known journalist to report on the national malpractice of the reformers? I think it’s time for a reverse “Waiting for Superman.”
I think we need “Clark Kent” and “Lois Lane” as an investigative journalists.
YES and since photojournalism is essential to the news, bring on Jimmy Olsen!
I could not remember who ran the paper so I just googled it. Remember Perry White? Also, perfect name for the paper, “The Daily Planet”. This could be “Waiting for Superman” alter ego.
Yes – to right the wrongs of the Metropolis and the world!
Superman was after all faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive. With his superpowers and the Daily Planet’s trusty staff they might save our children from the sorry situation we find ourselves in. To heck with Waiting for Superman – bring on the teachers and concerned adults, those with an understanding and a passion for the needs of our little people, those willing to see that there are many, many, many times more great people in public education than is portrayed by the media and the PR people for the reformers.
We need an action figure!!! Diane, care to step up for the cause???
Sometimes I feel like the only way to get anyones attention is if we all were to don a bikini with a sash that gives the state we live in while holding a child’s hand, strutting on a stage to show the world what is going on! You know Miss Alabama…this child is a 2 because…Miss Louisiana……Miss New York….(sarcasm), etc.
Great piece by someone who actually cares and is knowledgable of the reality these youth live in today where very few seem to care about them. Children understand when no one cares. It is sooooooo obvious. Much of what she is dealing with could be eliminated by stopping the chaos and dealing with the underlying problems. Do not expect the philanthropists to help. Their minds are way too twisted to have that conversion. Money and power rule the day for them and they feel as though they have a “Divine Right.”
Lucky for Chicago they have the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) with Karen Lewis as its president. Chicago has a good chance since CTU has awoken to the real danger in the room and that is the corporatization and privatization that is a cancer in both the democratic and republican parties. In the democrats you have the corporatists DNC and DFER who do not differ from the republicans on policy. Those so called democrats should really be in the republican party. Democrats are not and have not been for awhile liberals or progressives they have been for awhile right of center. This is a lie the dems have purposely allowed to be perpetrated on the public is that they are progressive or liberal. Not when you look at the policies. We need back not only the financial laws of the past but the civil and human rights of democrats past. Everyone has lost their way in this totally corrupt mind controlled society. After all to get real news I have to go to Russia Today. You cannot get it on our TV anyway.
One can hardly doubt the accuracy of Ms. Katie’s depiction of the psychological trauma and damage to thousands of kids arising from unstable and shifting school experiences in Chicago, and I suspect in Detroit, New York, Atlanta, and LA as well.
The remedy she proposes below, however, is the same one I hear perpetually: Let the Government Eradicate Poverty. HOW does “eradicating poverty” improve kids’ mental health?
And, granting that, HOW does one eradicate poverty? Explain the assumptions, please.
“Meanwhile, all this focus on the corporate reforms of school closures, charter expansion, and teacher/school accountability means we are not investing in other types of reform, most notably anti-poverty programs. The number of kids I have met who are suffereing from trauma, abuse, PTSD, depression, anxiety, anger issues which could have been prevented by working towards eradicating poverty is staggering. School leaders’ “choice” to focus solely on corporate reforms at the expense of all other types of change means more kids must suffer. I am tired of the tragic stories I hear.
Simple, instead of investing the millions into data systems, testing, new evaluation systems, charters, and turnarounds, Chicago politicians could better improve the lives of students simply by creating a jobs program for their families, by not destroying and instead expanding low-income housing, and by creating some sort of plan to desegregate the concentrated poverty and racial/economic isolation of certain neighborhoods. They could also stop closing down mental health clinics (like our Mayor just did, closed 50% of them) but instead expand them to combat the growing violence.
No,instead they are selling edreform as a solution to the problems in the city, when all it does is make things worse.
At the end of the day, I want to start talking prevention. Create opportunities for families and you will have less anxiety, depression, PTSD, etc. It is a much better use of our resources. Affordable housing and living-wage jobs would do more to help children than any charter ever could.
I totally agree about the jobs program. Maybe about the housing. Desegregation will be the sticker. They won’t do even the first, but I wonder why. Are they getting kick backs, or campaign contributions from the corporations? Follow the money, as Deep Throat used to say.
We need to re-conceptualize our state/federal school funding models to a “wrap around model,” from prenatal & Apgar score to age 21.
Let’s talk EARLY intervention for maximum return on $ investment for those legislators that think only in $ and cents. For every $ 1 invested in a child ages 0 – 3 with developmental, cognitive delays, there is an $11 return down the road. That is a 1,100 % return on the investment. Where does the return come from? Kids who grow up able to reach potential because of early strategic expert intervention and family support. This means higher high school graduation rate, lower unemployment, lower crime rate, better mental health, fewer addictions, healthier tax base, vigorous economy (again, for the bottom line $ and cents people).
Furthermore, 50% of low income children with delays, aged 0 -3 supported by strategic, expert intervention through Easter Seals close their deficits. Of the 50 % who still have deficits, when they go on and are served by intervention programs such as Head Start for kids aged 3 – 5, 50% of that population closes their deficits with the support of experts (physical therapists, speech pathologists, occupational therapists, strategic early literacy and numeracy instruction).
For example, start with 100 children with developmental and cognitive delays identified from their Apgar score at birth. Follow those children and parents – parent support/training is KEY (ie. Help Me Grow program).
Those 100 children are served by Easter Seals, ages 0 – 3 and of the 100, Fifty children close their deficit gap.
50 of the original 100 go on to be served by Head Start/Help Me Grow, of that group of 50, twenty five children close their deficit gap.
We are left with 25 % or 25 children from the original group of 100 who need intervention when entering school aged programs (K – 12).
These are for kids with ignorant, poor parents, right? What’s the cost estimate overall? Since the Feds are already borrowed to the max, what is the likelihood that the states will or can intervene? Since the Federal Government is pursuing a no-growth economic policy, where will the jobs come from. I don’t doubt you identify the correct solutions, or workable solutions, but who will buy them? Democrats won’t because more better kids would mean lower wages. Republicans won’t, because they think all deficits come from bad parenting, and that remedying bad parenting is the not the responsibility of the national or state government. Ain’t freedom a bitch?
This article is very true. It is sad that super wealthy arrogant people do not listen to people who are experienced on the ground level. Why? Obviously they have ulterior motives. I guess when your ego is larger than the Grand Canyon it is hard to admit that your ideas are completely foolish and wrong.
We need to re-conceptualize our state/federal school funding models to a “wrap around model,” from prenatal & Apgar score to age 21.
Let’s talk EARLY intervention for maximum return on $ investment for those legislators that think only in $ and cents. For every $ 1 invested in a child ages 0 – 3 with developmental, cognitive delays, there is an $11 return down the road. That is a 1,100 % return on the investment. Where does the return come from? Kids who grow up able to reach potential because of early strategic expert intervention and family support. This means higher high school graduation rate, lower unemployment, lower crime rate, better mental health, fewer addictions, healthier tax base, vigorous economy (again, for the bottom line $ and cents people).
Furthermore, 50% of low income children with delays, aged 0 -3 supported by strategic, expert intervention through Easter Seals close their deficits. Of the 50 % who still have deficits, when they go on and are served by intervention programs such as Head Start for kids aged 3 – 5, 50% of that population closes their deficits with the support of experts (physical therapists, speech pathologists, occupational therapists, strategic early literacy and numeracy instruction).
For example, start with 100 children with developmental and cognitive delays identified from their Apgar score at birth. Follow those children and parents – parent support/training is KEY (ie. Help Me Grow program).
Those 100 children are served by Easter Seals, ages 0 – 3 and of the 100, Fifty children close their deficit gap.
50 of the original 100 go on to be served by Head Start/Help Me Grow, of that group of 50, twenty five children close their deficit gap.
We are left with 25 % or 25 children from the original group of 100 who need intervention when entering school aged programs (K – 12).
Love this. If we were truly serious about closing the so-called “achievement gap” then this is the sort of thing we’d invest in. But call me cynical, but this won’t happen simply because when the focus is equity, no one would be able to take a cut. Investors and venture capitalists would have to say good-bye to the multi-billion dollar educational industrial complex which they are frothing at the mouth to get a piece of. As the reformers always love to say, “we know what works.” It’s equitable funding, experienced educators, small classes, well-kept buildings, stability, school safety, well-rounded curriculum including the arts and music, and of course comprehensive programs to combat poverty directly.
Nope, low-income kids get charters, TFA, and chaos instead.
With very little tweaking, what you’re writing here applies to the “ed reformers” in higher ed too. Thank you.
If we were to adjust our gaze and invert it by studying how successful, contented employers engage their employees, such as Google, perhaps we would begin the education of a child much differently. It sure wouldn’t be testing them to death or force-feeding them illogical, rigid exercises that numb the brain as is done in today’s so called “rigorous curriculum”…we would create learning environments that encourage out of the box thinking, collaboration in comfort and provide unleashed exposure to the world of knowledge so ideas can grow into solutions for each generation. We begin the task of
educating children with the wrong outcome in mind. College and career ready are such vague targets…isn’t the real target to be a good, productive citizens of democracy so to serve the planet as needed. We don’t even know what will be required in the future, just as few imagined today’s world of instant communication and knowledge. I wonder if the experience of students in today’s system has become irrelevant, just by shere attrition. Education needs to be untethered, unleashed, exposed, opened to all possibilities. Instead, the deformers would have us believe that more control, rigidity and limitations are what is needed to prepare students for the future. It appears to be quite the opposite.