Anthony Cody describes his debate with a reader who thinks Public education should be wiped out and started over from scratch. The reader remembers seeing a few stories about some schools that succeeded with every single child. Cody gently explains why some schools produce miraculous results by excluding the children likely to get low scores and by losing a significant number of students before graduation.
This is the exchange that all of us have had again and again. We have to keep putting facts and reality on the table, and eventually people will be embarrassed to offer silver bullets and miracle cures for education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
A report on how much time testing takes out of the school day
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/07/23/1225947/-Standardized-tests-take-over-the-school-day
I think we’ve reached a tipping point. The following is from the dailynews.com – less than two scrolls away from the latest Weiner article. (I hope I am not banned from posting now that my daily news habit is out..)
http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/education/nyc-charter-schools-successful-article-1.1410880
“(I hope I am not banned from posting now that my daily news habit is out..)” Well, we all have our one personal private vice, whether it be religion, sports, sex, alcohol, drugs or even the ny daily news.
thanks for the ok and more so for the big laugh you just gave me!
Again, a lot of people think that the fact that “miracle” schools exclude kids is a feature, rather than a bug. Kids likely to bring down test scores *should* be excluded so that they don’t drag down the other kids. From a commenter on Eric Zorn’s blog: “I want the private schools to siphon off all motivated students and to leave the unmotivated students behind…. I do not want the motivated students to be held hostage for the benefit of the unmotivated students.”
We need an effective counter to such ideas if we want to save public education.
Dienne: I am not sure any argument can win over someone committed to destroying a “better education for all.”
However, one of the most important functions of this blog and others like it is to provide translations of what is promoted by the MSM, politicians, and edupreneurs. That way those who are as yet uncertain have a fair and accurate picture of what is being debated and implemented and there is a chance to change their minds.
For one admittedly narrow example, the variation on Michael Petrilli’s ‘strivers’ argument you bring up is a good example. IMHO, what is actually being proposed and implemented is not that the “motivated” shouldn’t be brought down by the “unmotivated.” It’s that the “good” kids should be protected from the “bad” kids by segregating them in separate and unequal facilities. Further, why even bother to waste time, money and resources on those who are seemingly [actually?] congenitally unable to benefit from a formal education at all?
For the great majority, give the virtuous few such training as will enable them to be docile citizens and low-paid workers. As for the ungrateful rest: they will have to prove themselves worthy before even getting a crack at the nearest Centre of Compliance.
Put in realistic, if stark, terms like the above, this will make the charterite/privatizer arguments seem a lot less appealing to most people. That’s what this and other blogs do.
Exception: the above does not apply to any student—motivated or unmotivated, well-behaved or not, grateful or ungrateful—at Cranbrook, U of Chicago Lab Schools, Harvard-Westlake, Waldorf School of the Peninsula, Delbarton School, Deerfield Academy, Harpeth Hall, Sidwell Friends, etc. They come from the “right” families and will not be allowed to fail. ‘Nuff said.
“Fairness and equity”—to paraphrase a moral inspiration of the current crop of edufrauds—“is only for the proper sort of people.” [with no apologies to Leona Helmsley]
Just my dos centavitos worth…
Dienne, how about the notion that crime is rampant and expensive when education is done on the cheap. The average felon isn’t caught the first time, but rather, committed numerous crimes before getting caught. Admittedly, it may not be possible to give every child a decent education and entirely eliminate poverty, but social welfare programs to feed, clothe, and house the poor so that we can give education a decent chance costs less than prisons and the damage of crime. We lack the will, but these children that are scorned and rejected will come back to haunt us when they find a family, a job, and future training in a street gang. Like the old Fram oil filter add stated, we can pay now or pay later.
No one would be left behind if high stakes testing did not rule the education world and teachers were allowed to just teach.
> eventually people will be embarrassed to offer silver bullets and miracle cures for education.
I sure hope so Diane, but I doubt that will be anytime soon. And I’m not sure some people can be embarrassed into changing their minds.
Mathcs, yes, the time will come–and it’s not far off, when people will ridicule what is now called “reform.”
Unfortunately, the biggest critics of education in general, that I have met, seem to be those that rejected real education for themselves, deciding at some point in time to do as they please. Some are very successful, but it wasn’t through typical avenues of education, but through a sort of trial and error or appreticeship into some craft or way of thinking. Those in my family who really reject education are governed by the love of money. Money for themselves, avoiding banks, hating taxes, hoarding all they can for their own families and showing distaste for everyone else, toting their guns, and rolls of money in their back pockets.
They seem to think that they are the “real” Americans, the “real” Christians, and the “real” leaders. (It is laughable.)
They have some kind of idea that they are the owners of “TRUTH” and that public school teachers are just idiots that have nothing to offer their children except to “corrupt” them with thinking that other people have rights, that other thoughts matter, that questioning authority is always wrong … unless it is an authority that THEY don’t find acceptable. They think that no one can teach them anything because they have all things figured out.
And, of course, there have been bad school experiences for some people … people who live vicariously through their children project their insecurities on the children and try at all costs to prevent their children from some conceived idea that they were mistreated or misgraded by some dang teacher.
It is a huge, huge obstacle that is being faced currently. And, even though this has been an undercurrent for decades, I believe that their reaction to our current President has fueled the different groups to band together and to use any means they can in order to make him fail. They are so sure that only they know what is best for the country and their children that they will risk everything most of us have fought so hard to support and change. Globalization has reinforced their fears and caused them to feel they must hunker down, build bunkers and arsenals, and be suspicious of all the “other” people. That would be the non-white, non-Judeo Christian, non-monied, non-natural born citizens. And, we need to realize that this is seldom discussed but is at the root of much of what is happening in our society and surfacing in the drive for privatization of education.
Just my opinion.