In response to another post, asking what would you do if you were Secretary of Education:
If I were the Secretary of Education, I would take all the
money being spent on testing and use a good portion of it to hire
aids, reading specialists, nurses, librarians, and all the other
support staff needed to truly serve the needs of a school.
School boards would consist of teachers and parents.
Our education system would promote supporting a student’s strengths, instead of making
school a place of failure.
I would have industry work with ourschools to help train high school students for job readiness when
they leave school. I would fund higher education so people
graduating from college would not bestrapped with a great debt.
I would invite working education models like Finland to come and share
what works with us.
The NCLB and RTT would be disbanded.
I would sever all ties with Pearson.
There would be no Federal funding for
Charter or online schools.
I wish this could happen. I’m sick of
the reformers.
I can’t believe Obama is letting it go on and on.
Sincerely, Fed Up Fourth Grade Teacher
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
In the decades before 2002 the fed involvement was minimal – states and localities ran education – the achievement gap by race and class was huge, exceedingly low graduation rates, why would a return to the past increase teaching and learning effectiveness? To quote Thomas Wolf, “You Can’t Go Home Again …”
I’m not sure which decades before 2002 you are talking about, but what you are saying is not true of the ones I lived through.
Calculating graduation rates turns out to be hard, as detailed in the 2007 paper here: http://ftp.iza.org/dp3216.pdf
The authors conclude that the actual graduation rate is “substantially lower than the official rate issued by the National Center for Educational Statistics”, the rate has been declining over the last 40 years, and “majority/minority graduation rate differentials are substantial and have not converged over the past 35 years”.
TE,
you are right that it is hard to calculate graduation rates, and there are many ways of calculating them.
The US DOE says they are 78.4%, but that does NOT include kids who graduate in August, or take five years or get a GED.
The Census shows that among all those ages 18-24,the graduation rate is 90%.
The Census figure includes people who earn a GED while in prison. I am not sure that is useful as a metric for evaluating K-12 education.
And poor kids dropped out and went to work and handicapped kids did not get an education at all. Pregnancy was also an automatic push out and girls sports consisted mainly of cheerleading. And then there was desegregation. That was another thing that did not happen until the federal government intervened. The black kids often had no high school to go to. Remember the school only had to educate students with disabilities starting in 1975
Good old days? I think not.
twinkie1cat: the incisive comic Jackie “Moms” Mabley said it well: “They’re always talking about the good old days, the good old days. Well, I was there, where was they?”
🙂
There were some good things that we should consider: solid foundational skills, playtime, developmentally appropriate activities, less hovercraft parenting, less meaningless homework, less non-proven “indoctrination-type” programs, less standardized tests, shared belief in the value of childhood, shared belief in the importance of creativity and discovery, etc.
Today, education is driven by everything except what is best for children as a means of creating some perfect market-ready product!
Fed Up Fourth Grade Teacher for Secretary of Education❢
Yes Jon!
So what we do if parents and teachers made up the Boards of Education?
Oh, and teachers made up the Department of Education!
I like this thread:)
If I were Secretary of Education, I would cut the number of students in the early grades in half, cut government involvement & unproven mandates in half (or more); split administrator jobs to be half admin/half teaching; focus energy on pre-k through grade 4 to ensure solid reading and writing skills; return curriculum control to the school; create stronger home/school connections; reform welfare etc. to encourage people to transition off without plunging into poverty and strengthen families…
Take the best practices that have emerged and eliminate the ones that are overburdening schools to the point of failure.
And that’s what I’d do to start!
I mean cut the number of students IN A CLASS in half:)
I”m not sure welfare reform is something that falls under the Education Department’s purview.
Education used to be a part of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. That department should be reconstituted.
“focus energy on pre-k through grade 4 to ensure solid reading and writing skills”
Yes, that’s one of the MOST important things we could do for our students! How can they learn any other subject if they can’t read or write?
I like your ideas, but having been both a teacher and a site administrator, having to split the day between the two would be rough. How about limiting the time as a principal to 3-5 years and then being required to return to the classroom for at least 2-3 years? This would make for more empathy, remove any stigma, and could allow the pay scale to be compressed. I was told many years ago that it was done this way in Australia (not sure if it still is).
You will never get people to take more then less money if they did not make a mess. Actually, it is unfair. We need competent caring people or they should not run a school. That should be the rule. Also, why are not the proven turn around artists who have actually turned around schools put into a room and to train others in success? Seems KISS to me.
Yes, teachers need to be on the school board or have a greater input in the decision making process. Many successful companies have a culture of valuing their employees and taking their suggestions for improving processes. Like Southwest airlines or Boeing http://boeingblogs.com/randy/archives/2013/01/keep_on_rolling.html
True education reform would be imlementing all the teachers great ideas for making the system better.
I agree with all your recommendations except having school boards being made up of parents and teachers. Public education is under assault because boards have been dominated by parents and teachers. Their perspective tends to be driven by whatever benefits their immediate (family) interests. They have raised taxes with abandon, with the result that the public’s endorsement of the concept of public education has been undermined. The cost of education must be reined in, not unlike the cost of medical care. One of the underlying assumptions of this blog is that only parents and teachers really care about education. This is a gross distortion. I agree that corporate greed is driving much of what goes for education reform. They see huge opportunities to profit from the wide-ranging criticisms of public education. But these criticisms do not arise from thin air. There must be a critical analysis of cost drivers, and of old assumptions that are propagated over and over by the NEA’s of the country. I’m not sure that teachers on school boards can credibly carry out these kinds of analyses. The reality is that random teachers would not end up on the boards, but rather union sponsored teachers–or their surrogates. You cannot guard the hen house with the foxes.
Full disclosure. I’m a school board member. I consider myself pretty progressive and well informed concerning education issues. Unfortunately, my experience with the bargaining unit has been that of people who are oblivious to the burdens of the community in which they work, who grieve every minor effort to, in fact, improve the way we deliver learning, and who are woefully uninformed about what is going on in education, to say nothing of what is going on in the world and the larger economy.
The solutions to public education are not to be found by turning the control of it over to those who have direct, personal interests, but to convince the larger public that the stakes of education are high enough that smart, talented and fair-minded people run for these positions.
Merlyn Clarke
“I’m not sure that teachers on school boards can credibly carry out these kinds of analyses.”
I’m not sure that’s being fair to teachers. Can’t teachers be smart, talented, and fair-minded also? Maybe your experience is different, but who knows more about educating a child than a teacher?
I agree that teachers from that district should not be on the school board. That is a conflict of interest. However, having educators on a board is important. Community members, as well as parents, who bring different skills to the board are also stakeholders who need to be included. If your teachers are grieving every minor improvement you try to make in delivering education, then that brings into question the management style of the board. There is nothing to grieve if you are honoring the contract the board has made with the teachers. It sounds like the teachers feel their voice is dismissed and or ignored if they have gone to such extremes. That being said, I know you have an extremely difficult job, but having such an adversarial relationship with your employees cannot be good for your schools.
2 old2 tch wrote, “, Having educators on a board is important.” Agreed, that’s why many Mn charters have teachers on their boards. Any some Mn charters have a board that is a majority of the board – using the cooperative model. What would you think of teachers being a majority of the board that sets their own salaries & working conditions? New approach to teacher professionalism. This is happening: http://www.edvisions.com
Why won’t our President listen to us?
How much did you contribute to his campaign?
Now we are at the bottom line. You have to buy him. Seems to be that way when you really look at it.
Obviously not enough. Lol
He’s not YOUR president unless YOU paid for him!
I would put on ban on any private school/charter receiving any federal funds/taxpayer’s money.
Start a school? Sure, go ahead but you have to pay for it. Then … and only then you get to teach whatever you want!
Barack and Michelle Obama are in fact corporate privatizers from long ago. Barack in 1995 became head of the Annenburg Foundation for Chicago Public Schools and worked privatization in Chicago as did Michelle when she worked for Daley on privatization and one of his $100,000 club as she made $132,000/yr. working privatization. So, unlike FDR, Barack has no correction factor in his wife as did FDR in Eleanor. Without Eleanor there most likely would not have been the turn around of the Great Depression as she pushed him in the direction of society and the people and today we are reaping much of the benefits of what they built then in public works and laws which the present group or corporatists are again trying to ruin and take for themselves at the expense of over 99% of the population. Once again we must turn around this insanity and self destruction. Obama is anything but a socialist. As my friends grandfather taught him “I hear real good, but I see a whole lot better.” Only watch what they do not what they say then you will know the truth.
I would deconstruct my entire office until only I was left.
Then, I’d fire myself.
Do you mean literally deconstruct your office? Either way, I like it.
I would immediately get that pompous BROADIE prize out of the USDOE and auction it off to a billionaire, then use the money to establish a bounty system reforms corruption and abuse of tax dollars!
If I were Secretary of Education, I would make Montessori education the law of the land.
So Sandy, are you saying all students must attend Montessori schools? You would force this on everyone?
First off, thank you Diane Ravitch for being a voice of reason! You, of all people, should be Secretary of Education. Hands down. Secondly, whatever you and many others are voicing on what is being done to public education will continue to fall on deaf ears as it is not in the cards for the corporate-state education reform agenda. To get a comprehensive look, read this essay on what the Chicago Way is presenting the nation with and what the corporate-state education reform agenda in general is all about: http://www.scribd.com/doc/106337306/THE-CHICAGO-PUBLIC-SCHOOLS-ALLERGIC-TO-ACTIVISM
Not sure if this list comes from Diane or from 4th grade teacher. Please clarify. Thanks.