Mike Petrilli of the conservative Thomas B. Fordham Institute just posted his first blog exchange with Deborah Meier. Mike argues that the key to closing the opportunity gap between rich and poor children is to close the vocabulary gap. He cites the work of E.D. Hirsch to support his contention.
In his article, he refers to me as one of the people who say that nothing can be done until we fix poverty. To be sure I don’t misquote him, as he misquotes me, here is the relevant paragraph:
“Still, the message that comes through in Professors Reardon’s and Carter’s work—and from others on the left, including Diane Ravitch and Richard Rothstein—is that there’s not much schools can do about these gaps. They are visible before kids even enter kindergarten; they don’t grow much, if at all, while children are in the K-12 system; and they are fundamentally related to our country’s economic and political system. We’ll never make much progress until we get serious about redistributing income, or reviving labor unions, or raising the minimum wage, etc.”
Actually, I have never said that. I do believe that the dramatic income inequality in this country burdens children, nearly a quarter of whom live in poverty. I do think it is a national scandal that our nation has a higher proportion of children in poverty (about 23%) than any other advanced nation.
But I have never said that schools can do nothing to improve the education of poor children until we redistribute income or raise the minimum wage, etc. I have said and written on many occasions that we must improve schools and improve the lives of children at the same time.
There are many things that schools can do to help poor kids succeed in school. Start with reducing class size. If we were serious about helping poor kids, they would be in classes no larger than 12-15, just like the classes at Exeter and Deerfield Academy and Spence. Why do the richest kids get what the poorest kids need, while the neediest kids get stuffed into classes of 35-40 and do not get the individual attention they need? Would Petrilli agree?
Poor kids need schools that have a rich program in the arts and physical education, as well as other essential subjects, like foreign languages, history, and the sciences. They need beautiful facilities and playing fields, laboratories and libraries. Instead, they are invariably crammed into worn buildings that have few of those facilities, buildings that rich parents would never permit their children to attend.
Poor kids need teachers who have excellent and deep preparation to teach, with the training to help children with disabilities and English language learners. Instead they get the newest teachers, who have little or no preparation for the work they are expected to do. This cheats poor kids.
To suggest that poverty doesn’t matter is simply wishful thinking. Poor children miss more days of school because they are likelier than their advantaged peers to get sick, and likelier not to get the medical care they need. They are less likely to see a dentist or have their vision tested. They are subject to many burdens imposed by poverty, and those burdens affect their school performance. Being sick and hungry interferes with one’s school work. Being homeless interferes with one’s school work.
Yes, schools matter a lot. They can change lives. Yes, teachers make a difference. They change the lives of children every day.
But poverty matters too. Anyone who is serious about changing the lives of children in this nation will insist that poor kids have equality of educational opportunity. Not harsh discipline; not threats and punishments tied to test scores. Not a Race to the Top.
Just equality of educational opportunity.
That is a good starting point.
Reblogged this on Transparent Christina.
I used to think no one could be more detached from reality than William F. Buckley, Jr.
Mike Petrilli must be channeling him … with a vengeance …
Another point about older children living in poverty. I asked a high school student once why he hadn’t done his homework. He said he had to work. He went home every day and went to work to help his family make enough to pay for food and rent.
Yep, that is the vast majority of my students.
Have quite a few like that also here in a rural MO poverty district. Others who have to fix dinner for and take care of their younger siblings because parent(s) are working to make ends meet.
Yep again.
In my community the “caregiver for family” role disproportionally falls on my female students. Many of them are expected to cook, clean and care for younger siblings. All of these must be done before they can do homework or attend school functions, sports practices etc., however brothers are often exempt.
Apropos of the educational treatment of poor kids, e.g. overcrowding, I just received this note from a former education student of mine who works in one of those schools in Chicago, under the charter-loving Rahm Emmanuel: “It was just announced to the kindergarten teachers that CPS’ solution for the Mayor’s mandated full day kindergarten was not to give us another modular building, but to pack 45 kindergarteners in each room for 7 1/2 hours each day next year. The rooms are already crowded with only 20-25 students. How the hell is a 5 year old supposed to learn that way?” I wonder how many kindergartens in, say, Lake Forest will have 45 kids in them next year?
Thank you for this great post. You have succinctly laid out a true reform agenda for public education in the United States, We need to elect people who can hear this message instead of the barrage of blather coming from Broad, Gates and Walton.
Happy National Teacher Day to all teachers we love and appreciate!
http://www.nea.org/grants/teacherday.html
Yeah, we were supposed to “dress up” for “a walk on the beach”. My dressing up (or is that down) for walking on a beach wouldn’t be appropriate for minors.
Poverty may be one of the problems, but redistributing more money to poor people may not be the answer. Many poor people will just use extra money in the wrong ways…drugs, gambling, drinking, etc. etc. Most poor people need parenting skills more than to be given more money. We have given money and almost rewarded poverty since the War on Poverty started under Lyndon Johnson and, my goodness, how long ago was that. We have more poverty now than ever. We reward women for having out of wedlock babies which just creates more children who often are not cared for very well and the cycle continues. As far as the minimum wage, anyone who has taken Economics 101 knows that raising the minimum wage just cuts people out of jobs as employers won’t hire workers unless they make money for the business. Businesses are not charities. Actually, not having a minimum wage would allow employers to hire many unskilled workers and train them on the job. They would then move up on the wage scale as they had skills and a good work ethic. As long as welfare is more attractive than trying to improve one’s life by working, it will grow. I vote for health care for children in schools. Although all children in Louisiana have heath care if the parent takes them to the doctor, etc. Poor people here have Medicaid. It is the parenting skills and basic love and caring in the home that are the real problems, character of the parents, work ethic. So many people play the system. I see women in line in the grocery with a food stamp card, designer purses, designer clothes, well maintained hair and nails and they leave and get into a late model SUV.
I am not in favor of more taxes to support someone’s lifestyle that I can’t afford myself as a retired teacher pinching pennies. Sorry. My advice to poor people is stop having children out of wedlock as that is the greatest predictor of poverty. But, our government actually rewards women who have children out of wedlock. Poor people here in New Orleans have been given everything they need….housing, medical care, food stamps, etc. etc. , free breakfasts and lunches for children in school. What they need is character, a work ethic and parenting skills. Is there anyway to distribute those qualities?
“We have given money and almost rewarded poverty since the War on Poverty started under Lyndon Johnson….”
Bwahahaha! Thanks for the laugh – I needed that.
Dienne,
And your solution is? Perhaps you would like to give 1/3 more of your salary to a poverty redistribution?
Susan, the problem with your “argument” (sic) is that your premise is faulty. During the “war on poverty”, poverty was actually decreasing. You see, you have your horse and your cart mixed up. The number of children out of wedlock is not a predictor of poverty so much as poverty is a predictor of children out of wedlock. When you help people with basic resources and education to allow them to climb out of poverty, rather than degrading them further into it, they are in a better position to make better choices. We were on the right track throughout the sixties and most of the seventies until Carter and especially Reagan came along with the whole “supply-sided”, “trickle-down” nonsense that started reversing all the gains that had been made. Things really escalated under Clinton with “welfare reform”, along with NAFTA, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, etc., and more and more people were pushed into poverty and, once in poverty, unable to climb out. Then we had Bush 43 and now Obama, all continuing on the same track and – surprise – things are getting worse instead of better. Remind me again of the definition of insanity?
BTW, Susan, I once heard a thought experiment I think you should try. Imagine that you are queen for a day and you can make any laws, policies, regulations, etc. that you want. The only catch is that tomorrow morning you’re going to wake up as someone different and you don’t know who. Given that, what laws and policies would you enact regarding poverty, knowing that you yourself could wake up the next morning being poor?
Dienne — the thought experiment, that’s John Rawls — the “veil of ignorance” and the “original position.” It’s profound and challenging.
And it’s almost cheating to limit yourself to outcomes within America when you consider the range of possible other circumstances you could be born into. Being born a “poor” American is a pretty good outcome compared to a lot of other possibilities.
FLERP! – thanks for the background info. But personally, I’m not sure how challenging it is. If I woke up the next day as a former billionaire who became a mere millionaire as a result of my own policies, I could live with that, and still quite comfortably too. But if I woke up as a poor person who no longer had food stamps or heating or housing subsidy because of my own policies, I might not be able to live at all, comfortably or otherwise.
Dienne,
As always, wow…very well done series of posts.
Really enjoy reading you!
Thanks.
I tend to think that if it’s not challenging, then you’re not doing it right. It’s more than just an exercise in empathy, a “trading places” moment. It’s also about defining with some specificity the principles that should govern a society. It’s also complicated by how wealth and power are currently distributed — because you assume your new place in society at random, so the game involves a calculus of likely outcomes — and also how risk averse you are. And why not look at global possibilities. Your odds of being born poor in India are probably much greater than being born poor in America. How would that change the way you’d allocate rights and obligations? Anway, it’s challenging to me, at least.
FLERP,
You beat me to the punch about Rawl’s. He should be mandatory reading for all public school administrators, except it might be over the heads of most.
One thing folks should think about is how we measure poverty. The Earned Income Tax Credit clearly reduces actual poverty but does not reduce measured poverty. Medicare reduces the impact of poverty on individuals, but does not reduce measured poverty.
There’s also absolute versus relative poverty, otherwise known as “why everyone in their right mind would rather be a poor American than a poor Indian.” Poverty is usually measured (in the comparative studies that cite international poverty rates) by a percentage of income below median — I think 50%. That’s a vastly different thing from country to country, and doesn’t try to describe actual living conditions (e.g. access to indoor plumbing, potable water, heat and/or air conditioning, calories, *any* access to education or medicine, drastically different crime rates, etc).
It is true that relative and absolute poverty measures are very different. I have been scolded several times on this blog for pointing that out, so I thought I would leave it out of my comment.
Susan, I don’t think most people who want more education funding for the poor are really considering mailing them checks and thinking that equates to evening the scales. It’s pretty hard to give all kids in a community universal quality preschool and havge that money be spent instead by parents on drugs and gambling. *pauses to shake head and laugh hysterically at that picture*
Are there instances where just giving people money results in that money being spent poorly? Of course – just look at how our tax dollars are spent by our government. And I’d be naive to think that jsut because a poor family gets money to take care of their kids that it will only be spent on child expenses; I know cases in my own community where parents are buying drugs and tattoos with money that was meant for food and rent. But targeting the money to actual improvements is a whole other picture that I don’t think you’re seeing here.
“Are there instances where just giving people money results in that money being spent poorly? Of course – just look at how our tax dollars are spent by our government.”
Can you say MIC?????
Ms. Susan–teenage birth rate is lowest since 1946, steep declines since 1960, esp among black teen girls, but declining in all racial groups, not increasing. Fewer teen girls are having babies, but black child pov rate is 33%, same for Hispanic kids, white kid pov rate in 11%. Social programs of 60s/70s plus integration efforts and fed investment in preK and early childhood paid off ernormously! About 20% of the b/w ach gap closed from mid-70s to mid-80s, when the conservative era of cutting social programs and freezing wages accelerated under Reagan-Bush. We already lived through that earlier a decade of social policy enhancing achievement of poor kids. We already know that small classes help all kids but esp low-income kids. The problem is not ineffective teaching or union obstruction or parental neglect—problem is social policy transferring our vast wealth from pub to private sector, and a testing/privatization war being waged on our pub schls.
One reason the poverty measures have not changes is because of the way we measure poverty. Earned Income Tax Credit transferred about 60 billion dollars to poor households, but had no impact on the poverty rate of any household because the US measures poverty using before tax income.
“Poor people here in New Orleans have been given everything they need….housing, medical care, food stamps, etc. etc. , free breakfasts and lunches for children in school.”
So, I suppose you would be willing to trade places with them.
I mean, you would have everything you need, right?
Exactly, if poverty is so great, Susan should be the first in line to sign up. If you can’t beat ’em….
I don’t understand this communal thinking. In my life, I have been taught to be an individual and be careful what decisions I made, as I would live with the consequences. It is not my responsibility or anyone else’s to make sure that all people in the US have a high standard of living. Definitely a thread of socialism in these responses. I believe in free market capitalism, not crony capitalism and not giving people stuff they have not earned. Let’s say equal opportunity but not necessarily equal outcomes. Luckily, I know many people who think the way i do. I do believe in public education and am totally against corporate reform. Why should I pay for other people’s cell phones when I cannot afford one of my own?
It sounds like you were raised to care only about yourself. I was raised to care about humankind.
A cell phone is not an extravagant luxury. I am poor and I had my landline cut off because I could not afford to pay a flat rate for service each month regardless of how much I used it. With my tracfone, I only pay for the minutes that I actually do use and my cell phone is MUCH cheaper than my landline ever was.
I had my gas turned off for the same reason. I could not afford to pay over $40 per month just to get the service, plus additional fees to actually use my stove. Electricity is much cheaper around here than gas, so I have adapted and use that to power my cooking appliances.
I have some relics from the brief time when I earned a middle class income, like my 14 year old used car and old TVs and VCRs that won’t work without cable, but I have never owned an HDTV, a flat screen television, blu ray etc..I have not had a vacation in 15 years and I will never be able to afford to retire, though I’ve been working for 45 years and I have three college degrees.
There are people who are getting six figure incomes working in my profession with just one degree that is in a completely different field, and they have no experience. But then you don’t care because “equal outcomes” don’t matter to you.
I happen to believe that anyone who works hard should be paid a livable wage, but 60% of those in poverty are working people like me. We live in a highly stratified society where upward mobility is challenging for many people, as millions even with college degrees are forced to take low paying jobs to try to make ends meet: http://chronicle.com/article/Millions-of-Graduates-Hold/136879/
I think the world would be a much better place if there were a lot less people who were raised to be rugged individualists that don’t care about equity and blame people in poverty for the circumstances they face.
I totally agree with you, Susan. You make some very good points.
Repeat this mantra, and riches will be yours. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
Or “Think and Grow Rich”.
Outside of the Chamber of Commerce, most MBA graduates, and the BBB club, is there any other person less informed about child development than Mike Petrilli?
Question: If he read Bronfenbrenner’s theories on the ecology of development and Vygotsgy’s social learning theories on cognitive and language development, and Sameroff’s classic work on the developmental consequences of multiple stressors, would he continue to ignore the lasting effects of societal deprivation and humiliation and keep arguing for stupid, amoral, corporate style education reforms?
Why does would anyone want to look this foolish given the amount of evidence he chooses to ignore? My theory is he and most corporate reformers have a deep contempt for educators.
Hey now, you’re not playing nice and being civil to those superior beings!!
More nonsense from Petrilli:
E.D. Hirsch has argued for 30 years that the key to building students’ vocabularies, and thus their ability to read and learn, is content knowledge. Once a child learns to decode, her “comprehension” ability mainly comes down to the store of knowledge she’s got in her head. If she can sound out words but can’t read a passage about dinosaurs, it’s not because she hasn’t been taught “comprehension skills”—it’s probably because she’s never been taught anything about dinosaurs.
Yet our preschools and elementary schools systematically reject this obvious approach because they deem it not “developmentally appropriate.” Furthermore, they say, why teach all those “facts” when kids can just Google them?
“What they need is character, a work ethic and parenting skills”. Are we talking about “Corporate Welfare?” Character, ethics – ha!! Lets keep subsidizing Exxon et al.-
Why do the middle class pick on each other and poor people!! We are NOT the cause of a screwed up economy!! Education is our only hope without corporate interference!
You must be right – poverty means that people don’t love their children, have poor character, and have well-maintained hair. Of course, those that live in New Orleans are apparently quite lucky to have all that cool stuff given to them and I bet they’re happy as clams to be poor. You have trotted out just about every ugly and unjust stereotype and have made your point – the poor have only themselves to blame. Thanks for your post.
Susan needs to update her right wing libertarian rant against poor people. She has brought up so many zombie myths about poor people that it’s breathtakingly hilarious. Welfare was reformed in 1996 by Clinton. It is much harder to get on welfare and the welfare rolls have been REDUCED by more than 60% since 1996. LBJ actually reduced poverty by about 50% with his War on Poverty. Poor children did not choose to be poor but according to Susan, those SUV driving poor kids with their giant plasma TVs and caviar dinners should just be allowed to rot in their own poverty. Susan really hates poor people.
“If we were serious about helping poor kids, they would be in classes no larger than 12-15, just like the classes at Exeter and Deerfield Academy and Spence.”
With all due respect, Diane, if this statement is true, then I don’t think you are serious about helping poor kids, either. It’s one thing to say that class sizes of 12 are good. It’s another to say that we should increase spending on education however much it takes to achieve that number. I haven’t seen ANYONE make that proposal. And I certainly haven’t seen anyone propose that public education spending should be increased to match the spending at schools like Exeter, Deerfield Academy, and Spence. Chicago spends about $10,000 per student. Should it spend $30,000, like Chicago Lab? NYC spends about $20,000 per student. Should it spend $50,000, like Spence?
How can anyone expect the public officials who create tax and education policy to do what bloggers don’t even have conviction or courage to even say?
To be clear, I don’t except myself from this criticism. Believe me, nobody wants my daughter to have the same education that Diane’s children got more than I do. But should the NYC Department of Education increase its budget by $50 billion? What kind of tax policies would that require? Would these policies ultimately be good? Let me be the first to admit that I don’t know. And based on that, let me be the first to extrapolate that I don’t know how serious I am about “helping poor kids,” either.
Thank you so much, Dr. Ravitch for putting into words what most of us think. I don’t agree with Susan. I didn’t know much about poverty until I did some reading. Most states have very strict laws about who gets welfare and why. Also, 1% of our population has 40% of the wealth. These people like the Waltons now dictate how many in poverty get money. If you work for Walmart, you are probably eligible for food stamps and public insurance. How does one in poverty get ahead that way? Our poverty rate has increased significantly since the Reagan years. I taught exclusively in Title I schools. The majority of my parents were doing the best they could. I had a family that had to move into the neighborhood due to the recession. The dad worked construction and was injured. They lost their house, insurance, everything. They moved in with his father. They are doing better now with a rental house of their own. I could tell many stories like this. I had very few parents in 13 years who I suspected were abusing the system.
honestly, if I hadn’t been paying attention what has been going on in this country for the last 30 years while I was teaching, I would believe that the previous comment about unwed mothers and people on welfare was a joke.Are you kidding, Could you live on welfare or have three low paying jobs (most of the assistants in my school had two or three jobs, just to make it). What does a child need at home in order to have a relative amount of success at school. A home that is warm in winter, cool in summer, Enough good and nutricious food. A quiet place to do homework, How about a parent to help with questions. Clean clothes,,, the list goes on. Do you know any poor people. They want what eveyone else does. A chance to make a good life for themselves and their kids. People who talk about poor ( they probably mean black) people and who don’t know any make me want to gag. For every story you have heard about greedy welfare recipients, I have a story about real people who are true heroes. One gentleman working in our school as a wraparound (I’ll let you look it up), has an Autistic child at home. He also has two other jobs,,one at night and one on the weekends, just to keep his family going. Then there is the 70yr old woman ,although is not living in poverty, lives in a fairly depressed neighborhood, yet she has time and the wherewithall to cook meals for sick and old folks she knows using her own money. So you have only heard about all those lazy people who don’t want to work. I have seen otherewise, Good solid citizens who feel a great resposibility toward their friends, neighbors and community.
Get a brain, and start thinking for yourself. And while you are at it, get a heart.
How well has that “blaming the poor” strategy been working? Yes, people take advantage of systems, but better to let that happen then to have kids grow up suffering. We can deal with people gaming the system easier than lives damaged by years of poverty.
Wow. Petrilli waxes poetic for someone who as far as I know has zero experience in an actual classroom.
There simply isn’t enough time in the world for me to spend it picking apart his diatribe point by point and still teach my kindergarten classes this afternoon. It would sure be fun to do, though. SMH…..
Ok, as a devil’s advocate.. His idea has basis. As an employer it was disheartening to turn away impoverished city kids over and over and over and even run short because their image was not conducive to a customer service business. I longed someone who was just normal, and spoke normal business English instead of gang slang. Finally I tapped into a family who spoke well and was able to begin utilizing their contacts to employ some locals.
if they could have just spoken correctly, they could have had a job….
That said. It does not make children want to learn in school. I used to be a good learner. But after hundreds of corporate meetings, I now curse the pages of crap I have to read. They primarily are useless and get in my way of doing what is important.
That is where poverty comes in. When I’m poor, what is important is not adding three digit numbers together. It is not trying to memorize a word I’ve never heard and never will again. Instead, what is important, is trying not to get beat up. robbed, or raped. Making connections for survival is where my focus now lies. In that regard, I’m probably a lot wiser than some suburban student suddenly finding themselves alone in my world. Knowing I can stop by grandma and get a couple of crackers and cheese. Then go to my uncles and probably palm off a soda from him. Then if I hang by the store, someone I know will come by with chips, and let me have a few… With that, I can hold off till school serves breakfast tomorrow….
That is how poverty affects education.. It requires 100% of one’s focus on surviving. You say you want me to close the vocabulary gap? “I ain’t got time for all that.”
. .
According to Susan most poor people are disgusting lazy bums with no morals, no self respect and no desire to improve themselves. What a biased, hideous and inhumane point of view. Many Americans are just one serious illness away from bankruptcy and abject poverty. Many of the poor people that she despises so much work 2 or 3 low wage jobs just to survive. Susan wants to make sure that they have low wage jobs since she regurgitates the right wing nonsense about the minimum wage. That’s the ticket, keep those wages low, those poor bums don’t deserve a living wage for an honest day’s work. Susan is lacking in all human empathy.
Must be nice to be an “expert” voice on education reform. You need not have any accomplishments, or experience at all: opinions and a stage ate all that is needed.
Thank you for writing this, Diane. If education is “the civil rights issue of our time,” as reformers like to say, let’s look not only at what high-performing nations do, but what high-equity nations do. They provide every child with equal opportunities; they do what it takes to ensure every school is a good school, equally well resourced and equally well equipped with a sufficient number of experienced teachers. They do not make schools compete for students, or make students compete to get into schools.
I think Americans get distracted by the comparison between poor public schools and rich private ones; can we look instead at poor public schools and rich public schools?
I look at what the high school in my blue-collar, mostly Latino, inner-ring suburb of Chicago struggles to provide (bare minimum of academic credits, a 5-period school day, no opportunity to retake failed classes, a few clubs and a marching band, a smattering of electives [including Spanish, the only language offered], for which you will only have room in your schedule if you cut out one or more academic classes) compared with what the much wealthier, mostly white, adjacent suburb provides (a 7-period school day; French, German, Italian, Latin, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, as well as Spanish; courses in philosophy, sociology, and creative writing; a gospel choir, two jazz bands, two concert orchestras, a symphony orchestra, a dance team, a television studio, over 60 clubs). I consider that the school in the wealthier district also has more counselors, tutoring sessions, and health services available, plus a lower student-teacher ratio. And I have to ask: how is this equitable? How does it serve the cause of civil rights?
Should children attending public schools have equal educational opportunities, or not?
Yep. It’s knowing what a hoe is. Not a ho. A garden tool. Not the girl in a rap song.
It just dawned on me that the generation leading the reforms is the first generation of Americans (I presume) to be from a population where half of marriages end in divorce. No judgement—my folks are divorced–but doesn’t that change the value system of a generation? The 25-40 age group has weathered circumstances that most in the generation before them (us) did not. So the perspective of what works is different. And they are shuffling things to fit what they perceive to be better maybe because of life-altering circumstances such as blended families. ??? Just trying to figure out differences in motivation and the perceptions of what is right.
Michael Petrilli? Michael Petrilli?
This dude likes to pass himself off as “one of the nation’s most trusted education analysts.” And that’s not a joke.
Although it surely is a joke that Petrilli actually has a clue. He doesn’t.
He simply passes off the conventional conservative dogma as “reform.” Little if any of it is grounded in factual reality.
Here’s some of the pap that Petrilli parrots:
He says, despite a wealth of evidence to the contrary, that “our education system is tattered. Some of it is fine, but too much is mediocre or worse.”
He attacks inner-city schools, with hardly a mention of poverty or degraded environmental conditions, and then says also that “our suburban schools are just getting by. They may not be dropout factories, but they’re not preparing anywhere near enough of their pupils to revive our economy.” As if public schools CAUSED the stagnant economy (and piled up deficits and debt) in the first place.
He whines inaccurately that “our schools haven’t improved,” but that “Republican governors like Chris Christie, Mitch Daniels, John Kasich, and Scott Walker are demonstrating real reform.” Say what? Is Petrilli living on the same planet as the rest of us.
Like his pals – Scott Walker, Mitch Daniels, etc. – Petrilli attacks teachers and their “unions” for “their gold-plated health care benefits or retirement pensions or lifetime job protections.”
Petrilli wants more “rigorous academic standards and tests,” and he says that we
“should rate schools on an easy-to-understand scale, ideally from A to F, as Florida started doing under Governor Jeb Bush.” Jeb Bush? Seriously?
And Petrillli thinks the world of vouchers, saying that “one of the best ways to get more bang for the education buck is to strap it to the backs of individual kids and let parents decide which schools deliver the best value for money.”
Petrilli is a conservative charlatan. A huckster.
He might be an “analyst,” but he’s a very poor one, and most assuredly cannot be “trusted” to present an accurate picture of public education in the U.S.
Yes, he’s a poor analyst, but one thing he is really good at is misrepresenting the positions of those he disagrees with. Every post of his that I’ve read either attacks a “straw man” of his own making, or makes false claims about the positions of his adversaries. If you read him enough–and I have to admit it’s not a pleasant task–you will find a textbook’s worth of logical fallacies and propaganda techniques. This qualifies him as an apologist for the moneyed interests he represents, but that’s all.
Like I said, Petrilli is a charlatan, a huckster, and given that he knowingly misrepresents the truth about public education, he’s a fraud.
And certainly not to be “trusted.”
This guy has just a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science. See his bio here: http://educationnext.org/author/mpetrilli/ Only in America can people like this get top jobs in education, setting education policy, with no training or experience in the field. This is just so disgusting.
I posted this comment on EdWeek:
Pertilli is not an expert on Early Childhood Education (ECE) and he is very ill-informed and behind the times.
The 30 Million Word Gap study of Hart & Risley was published about 20 years ago and ever since then, experts in ECE across the country have been training teachers and parents in how to improve young children’s receptive and expressive language skills, with a major focus on the use of rich vocabulary.
We don’t need to spend millions of dollars on monitors to assess adults, because we already know a lot about this issue, as well as effective interventions, such as by encouraging parents to read to their children daily, using comprehension asides, such as synonyms, to aid in defining new words and repeatedly using that new sophisticated vocabulary in daily conversations in the natural environment.
Petrilli’s primary concern seems to be about the redistribution of wealth –by any means. Many educators who advocate that, in this grossly inequitable, highly stratified society, do support increasing the number of jobs with livable wages at highly profitable companies, but know that it will take more than that to overcome generational poverty, so a multi-pronged approach is necessary. However, our country has taken a single pronged approached, ignoring poverty and leaving it to teachers to ameliorate alone –and then scapegoating them for not eradicating poverty all by themselves. Had we implemented multiple methods of addressing poverty over the past two decades, we might have had more programs in place by now that aim to assist low income parents in effectively interacting with their infants and toddlers, in order to foster encouragement and to promote language development from birth, since vocabulary deficits are already very evident by age 3, instead of expecting teachers to play catch up in K-12.
Petrilli’s notions of developmentally appropriate practice (DAP), as well as those he cites, are decidedly inaccurate and bias. The interests of children are very important to ECE teachers and DAP takes that into consideration. If kids are interested in learning about content such as dinosaurs, as many young children are, then teachers are free to include that in their ECE curriculum. In fact, most of the literally thousands of teachers I’ve worked with over the decades teach units on dinosaurs, due to children’s interests.
Petrilli would be wise to stop painting with broad strokes and misinterpreting those whom he opposes, such as Diane Ravitch. I would suggest that he also consult with genuine experts on ECE matters, such as Nancy Carlsson-Paige and Ed Miller, rather than the go-to people and think tank propaganda that corporate “reformers” typically refer to in order to support and promote their neo-liberal agenda.
Ah, you are so correct about Petrilli. He should be embarrassed that he knows so little.
And thanks for reminding us all of Hart & Risley. Their first groundbreaking study was done in 1968 on applying an incidental teaching paradigm in play to increase vocabulary in preschool children from low income families. Thousands of studies have followed replicating and expanding on their work.
Petrilli and his compatriots couldn’t pick out an incidental teaching episode from a line up.
Petrilli and Diane are saying the same thing, that poverty does matter but that schools can still do a lot. The fundamental philosophical problem of the left is that it won’t accept that people who earn a lot of money have a right to keep it. The left makes its prime goal equity of result, even equity of school readiness, rather than freedom of opportunity. Freedom of opportunity is the fundamental promise of America, not equality of anything except equality under the law.
Now a good deal more can be done by schools and poor parents in supporting kids’ readiness for school, but until the left stops wealth bashing, and claiming that the rest of society has a right to some of that wealth, their credibility is nil because they are then defending theft from the rich by law. Unless you defend ownership and possession for all, even the rich, everyone understands that you’re just a pirate.
This, as I see it, is the flaw in Diane’s position. It will be interesting to see Deb’s response to Petrilli.
It’s easy to side with the wealthy if you are one of them, or if you assume that they have no ill-gotten gains, either morally or legally, or if you believe that they owe little to the country that enabled them to prosper and that it is just fine for them to hide assets in offshore accounts and avoid paying taxes.
It may be legal, but it is highly unethical for corporations to make their riches off the backs of the workers they employ in the trenches and do not pay a living wage, but they supply brochures to them with info about how to obtain Food Stamps, as they do at Walmart. This means that our tax dollars are subsidizing that company, whose six heirs have more wealth than the combined wealth of the bottom 40% of our nation.
Anyone who sees the Waltons et al. as the oppressed and not their exploited workers, including those they outsource jobs to in Asia, so they can pay employees even less than they do here, and who have died in fires and building collapses and have committed suicide in record numbers, due to substandard working conditions, is clearly incapable of feeling empathy for humanity. Not hard to guess that would be you, HU.
Yet another garment factory where Western companies outsource jobs to low paid employees in substandard working conditions went up in flames in Bangladesh today: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/05/09/18149623-8-die-in-clothing-factory-fire-in-bangladesh-as-rana-plaza-toll-passes-900?lite Oh those poor maligned corporations who lost more exploited workers.
How much money has been spent on NCLB and the testing associated with it? Maybe these funds could be redirected to actually help the students?
Great rebuff, Diane.
Here is an article supporting Reardon’s research
http://www.mikerosebooks.blogspot.com
Just wondering, Diane, Did your blog exchanges with Deb Meier over the years at all contribute to your altered perceptions of education and education “reform”?
Cosmic, I always told Deb that she converted me. I proposed that she try to do the same to all the leading conservatives. Apparently she is trying but they don’t hang around long enough to get the spirit
If only she could convince folks that geographically based admission standards are undesirable.
Diane, I suspect that you were amenable to conversion because you have such a caring heart, as well as a clever mind that is open to learning. Others are just too self-righteous, single-minded and entrenched to be able to see the picture and feel concern about how humanity as a whole is impacted by policies that are beneficial to just a fraction of our inequitable, highly stratified society –as we sometimes see on this blog.
Sorry, meant to say, “the big picture.”
Vocabulary instruction is basically a dead end, and the fact that conservative ed reform people latch onto it is a sign that they don’t know what they’re talking about. I’m an English teacher, and I tried to find the evidence for the oft-repeated assertion that vocab instruction can improve reading comprehension. The evidence I found was decades old and laughably lame. This is, as Diane says, largely about poverty–but it’s also, as Stephen Krashen always points out, about reading volume.
For what I think is an interesting look into the embarrassingly thin vocab research, here’s a blog post:
http://literacyinleafstrewn.blogspot.com/2012/06/breast-is-best-or-questionable-worth-of.html
See, “The Early Catastrophe: The 30 Million Word Gap by Age 3”
Click to access The_Early_Catastrophe_30_Million_Word_Gap_by_Age_3.pdf
The one thing Petrilli got right is that vocabulary development should not be about drilling kids with flash cards.
See more appropriate strategies, such as related to book readings and discussions, and the research base in “Vocabulary Instruction: Research to Practice”
http://books.google.com/books?id=gXdnnX0ysIcC&pg=PA55&lpg=PA55&dq=whitehurst+vocabulary&source=bl&ots=Qu40eHxHbk&sig=VusAwJP7zlcBu0K66qwz_v-J_Mc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=86mJUdLcEKGNyAGo0IDADQ&ved=0CEkQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=whitehurst%20vocabulary&f=false
Diane is being too kind about stating the disadvantages faced by the children of well-do powerful families. Let’s look at the school of choice for the single most celebrated education reformer of our times: Michelle Rhee. At least one of her children attends Harpeth Hall.
Disturbing reason #29 under 50 reasons for sending your child to Harpeth Hall: “8:1 ration: Our teachers know our students.” How can small classes be good for anyone?
Now imagine the unimaginable horror of a student having to endure #35: “Five theatrical productions, five musical performances, two dance concerts and hundreds of pieces of original art, each year.” An excellent example of girls and young women subject to unconscionable artistic exploitation.
And then there’s the unspeakably pernicious Big Brother [Big Sister?] control exercised by the school over the students: “10. Helping hands. In order to help our girls meet the challenges of middle and high school, each student is assigned a faculty advisor who serves as academic counselor, advocate and link to the Harpeth Hall community.” What child needs adult guidance and support? This is absurd! Hasn’t anyone considered what is developmentally prophylactic?
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I stop here. I am sure that viewers of this blog have read enough to know that the really disadvantaged students are those in Harpeth Hall and Cranbrook and U of Chicago Lab Schools and Waldorf School of the Peninsula and Deerfield Academy and Lakeside School and Delbarton School and… I stop here. Why add to this list of horrors?
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Another disadvantage of sending your child to a private school is that the school might be a Montessori or progressive or Waldorf school. Students can only be hurt by being subjected to those types of education.
Teachingeconomist, are you being sarcastic? In any case, let me recommend this article from the Wall Street Journal on the “Montessori Mafia”: http://blogs.wsj.com/ideas-market/2011/04/05/the-montessori-mafia/ It makes a practical case for the “types of education” you mention and counters the idea of “rigorous” academic standards for children.
I thought I would match Krazy TA’s tone, so I was being sarcastic.
It is true, though, that traditional zoned public schools cannot be Montessori, progressive, or Waldorf schools, so arguing in favor of traditional zoned schools is to argue against these approaches to education.
$20,000 Not Enough to Educate [Michigan] Governor’s Child