A large national alliance of civil rights organizations has joined under the umbrella heading of “Journey for Justice.”
This coalition has called for the resignation of Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
To understand why, read the flyer it distributed.
Anyone who thinks that closing public schools and replacing them with privately managed charters and with vouchers is somehow part of the civil rights movement has no understanding of the purposes of the civil rights movement.
It was not to destroy the public sector but to assure access to good education, decent housing, and jobs without any racial discrimination.
It struggled for equality of educational opportunity, not privatization or a “race to the top.”.
It did not claim that poverty could be cured by “fixing” schools or privatizing them.
It demanded an end to poverty by creating jobs and justice.
It fought segregation in schools and housing.
That vision is not the vision of the corporate reform movement in education today.
It fights not for equality of opportunity but for a market-based system of winners and losers.
It accepts segregation as tolerable.
It is not a civil rights movement.
The Journey for Justice calls out these contradictions and speaks truth to power.
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“A National Grassroots Education Alliance”
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| COORDINATING COMMITTEE:National
Alliance for Education Justice
Washington, DC
Empower DC
Chicago, IL
Kenwood Oakland Community Organization
Baltimore, MD
Baltimore Algebra Project
Detroit, MI
Keep the Vote, No Takeover
Black Parents for Quality Education
Newark, NJ
Parents United for Local School Education
New York, NY
Alliance for Quality Education
Urban Youth Collaborative
Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia Student Union
MEMBERS:
National
Leadership Center for the Common Good
Oakland, CA
Oakland Public Education Network
Los Angeles, CA
Labor Community Strategy Center
Hartford, CT
Parent Power
Atlanta, GA
Project South
Miami, FL
Power U
Chicago, IL
Action Now
Wichita, KS
Kansas Justice Advocates
New Orleans, LA
Concerned Conscious Citizens Controlling Community Changes
Coalition for Community Schools
Boston, MA
Boston Youth Organizing Project
Boston Parent Organizing Network
Detroit, MI
Detroit LIFE Coalition
Minneapolis, MN
Neighborhoods Organizing for Change
Eupora, MS
Fannie Lou Hamer Center for Change
Camden, NJ
Camden Education Association
Englewood, NJ
Citizens for Public Education
Jersey City, NJ
Parent Advocates for Children’s Education
Concerned Citizens Coalition
Paterson, NJ
Paterson Education Organizing Committee
Philadelphia, PA
Action United
Youth United for Change
ALLIED MEMBERS
National
Annenberg Institute for School Reform
Chicago, IL
Teachers for Social Justice |
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FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Laurie R. Glenn
Phone: 773.704.7246
E-mail:lrglenn@thinkincstrategy.com
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
THURSDAY, AUGUST 22, 2013
MEDIA ALERT
25 CITIES KICK OFF NATIONAL CAMPAIGN CALLING FOR RESIGNATION OF U.S. SECRETARY OF EDUCATION DUNCAN
Journey for Justice Demonstrations Spearhead Campaign To Restore United Nations’ Proclaimed Human Right To Education
WHAT: In light of a rash of school closings targeting low income communities of color in cities throughout the country, a national 25-city coalition is calling for U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s resignation. In the midst of the 50th anniversary for the March On Washington, which sought to end segregation and job discrimination, members of the Journey for Justice Alliance have banded together to fight the continued privatization of public schools under Secretary Duncan’s leadership.
Students, parents and advocacy representatives all over the country will come together in local actions to demand a stop to the destabilization of low-income communities of color and restore the human and civil right to a quality and safe education for all children.
National Journey for Justice Alliance demands include:
- · Moratorium on school closings, turnarounds, phase-outs, and charter expansions.
- · It’s proposal for sustainable school transformation to replace failed, market-driven interventions as support for struggling schools.
- · Resignation of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.
WHO/WHERE: Journey for Justice members and groups will hold local actions in 25 cities across the country including: Oakland, Calif.; San Jose, Calif.; Los Angeles; Hartford, Conn.; District of Columbia; Atlanta; Miami; Chicago; Wichita, Kan.; New Orleans; Baltimore; Minneapolis; Camden, N.J.; Englewood, N.J.; Paterson, N.J.; Jersey City, N.J.; Newark; New York; North Carolina, Boston; Detroit; Eupora, Miss.; Jackson, Miss.; Philadelphia; South Carolina.
WHEN: Events will be held Monday, August 27th – Thursday, August 29th, 2013
WHY: A clear pattern of racial and economic discrimination documented by the Annenberg Institute for School Reform has demonstrated that while there have been advances in the nation, as shown by the election of the nation’s first black president, the federal administration’s policies have embodied education strategies that continue to perpetuate racial and class bias and support inequality in education.
Despite research showing that closing public schools does not improve test scores or graduation rates, the federal agenda has incentivized the privatization of schools with primary fall out on low-income communities of color. Explosive school closings resulting from this agenda violates the United Nations proclamation of 1948, Article 26 (http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml) establishing the inalienable human right of every child – regardless of race, income or community — to receive a quality education in a safe environment.
JOURNEY FOR JUSTICE ALLIANCE
Journey for Justice is a national grassroots alliance whose goal is to bring the voice of those directly impacted by discriminatory school actions into the debate about the direction for public education in the 21st century and to promote equality in education for all students and sustainable, community-driven school reform for all school districts across the country.
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
And before the schools are closed, the children are thoroughly abused as Producers of acceptable test scores for the revenue machinery. Once a child is dehumanized and cast in this role, everything is possible. They are barked at like prisoners, addressed in shame-based voice tones, made to feel supremely incompetent and incapable of containing that unique spark we all know they bear. To call the curriculum an arrangement of wisely-selected learning experiences tailored to promote their growth and development is an outright lie.
This definitely is a new version of Jim Crow and it must be stopped now.
Agree completely Kathy.
Just leave Arne; I’m sure Bill and Eli will create a cushy job for you somewhere.
Parents, teachers, students, taxpayers do not want a top down, corporate takeovers of our schools, curriculum control, never ending testing schemes and federal mandates. You’ve done enough damage for the rest of us to clean up for years to come. Please go.
I also believe what is happening in our public schools is the civil rights issue of our time. l find the fact that it is happening under the watch of the first African American President to be the most disturbing truth of all . His silence speaks way too loudly. I am thrilled to see this grassroots alliance’s activism growing and sharing its voice.
I cannot imagine losing our public schools in this county, but watching Chicago, Newark, Philadelphia, Detroit, Muskegon, Camden… well, you all know the list 🙂
Anyway, I know we’re next. Watching how the parents in Chicago were rolled over by reformers was instructive, and now we’re watching the same thing happen in Philadelphia.
In Ohio we’re watching the Mayor of Cleveland learn a hard lesson. He cooperated with reformers, and now they’ve completely usurped his control of charter schools. He’s pathetic to listen to. They’re running his school system.
Reblogged this on Blog of an e-marketer by Main Uddin.
It seems to me that traditional zoned schools reinforce the SES segregation found in housing patterns in the US. How should we address that problem?
Good observation and good question. The answer would be real choices for quality education. Local, charter, magnet, voucher, etc.. Pretty much what both the Democrats and Republicans are pushing for. Cruel and unusual is forcing families to stay somewhere while there’s no improvement across generations.
easy.armstrong, Disagree: dividing the public money into multiple pots guarantees no quality education for anyone. Why not have a choice of four different police forces or 6 different fire departments? Will that improve them?
Money already goes into different pots when it goes into different school districts an school buildings in a district. The question is what the optimal scale for education might be?
By the way we do have four different police forces in my town. State, county, city, and campus.
TE: Do you also have state, county, city, and campus public schools in your town?
Dr. Ravitch asked if if towns have four different police forces, and of course we do.
There are traditional zoned schools, a charter that is run by the local school board, and a variety of private schools in my town. The largest private school is a Montessori school. That sort of education is available to students who come from families with sufficient income.
Those police forces have different roles, however.
They have different roles because we have defined them to be different. We still divide the law enforcement pot of money up into multiple pots. That division is what Dr. Ravitch was criticizing in her post.
Please define improvement.
Surely you do not refer to test scores on unreliable, corporate made, state mandated tests.
Calling Duane….
I am not sure what RA would say, bit I am a fan of Amatya Sen’s capabilities approach to talking about development.
Naming an Economist = defining improvement?
OK
I would look a little deeper. You might run across a philosopher or two as well.
Still waiting for that definition of improvement.
If you are asking me for citations of articles on the capabilities approach, they are too numerous to list. Anything by Sen or Nussbaum would be a good place to start.
Pointless, as always
I requested a definition to improvement form the original poster. TE dives in and begins down a blind alley of endless red herrings and distractions.
There is no there, there.
As I said, I could not answer for the original poster. Sorry that you think that, in the words of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “that freedom to achieve well-being is to be understood in terms of people’s capabilities, that is, their real opportunities to do and be what they have reason to value.” Is a red herring in the discussion of the goals of education.
@RA – “Cruel and unusual is forcing families to stay somewhere while there’s no improvement across generations.”
Charters are failing, vouchers have fared dismally in Milwaukee and New Orleans. When are people like you going to figure out its not schools that are failing kids?
WOW this is so powerful!! What the Fed. Gov. has been doing and remained silent on is a hug violation of CIVIL RIGHTS! Every child has a right to High Quality Public education in THEIR NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOL! The rash of closings, TFAers taking HQT jobs, and for profit charter openings in these various cities shows the agenda for Corporate deform is NOT to help children in poverty but to profit off them!!
sorry typo***should say “huge violation…..
Finally a heartening piece of news.. mass action to try and rectify a serious wrong that has been spreading like gangrene across this nation. Every day a child from a title one school struggles to learn the English likely to be found on a high stakes test, is a day of wasted time that could have been spent on learning. And that is just one example of a Civil Rights violation that our education secretary – with full presidential approval – has inflicted on a nation of children who deserve to be passionate about learning – NOT ANXIOUS about test-taking. Thank you to the organizers of this event!
I recently read something in the Economist (an ad for an international news media organization) and it REALLY STRUCK A CHORD as it SO APPLIES TO THE EDUCATION PROBLEM!
Here is the ad, “I want to be informed by the news, not influenced”… I am struck at how this so accurately should send a message to the public at large. Do not trust a PR firm hired by Duncan or Bloomberg or Bill Gates whose purpose is to SELL a point of view. If an education program has integrity, it can stand on its own and the public through educated research can decide for themselves… without a “hard sale”.
Professionalism needs to be restored to education NOW! Those of us who earned education degrees learn the many ed philosophies out there and methodologies (although I am not sure now which schools have been “bought” by “ed reformers”) . The professionalism comes in when we are in the classroom and use our expertise to figure out what will work best. Nowadays, teachers are FORCED into one cookie cutter methodology that has been SOLD NATIONALLY by our ED Secretary. When it fails, teachers are blamed and worse.. our students suffer and it seems all to be for the profit of corporations centered around the “reformist” methodologies. So I will repeat the very wise words of this ad…. “I want to be informed by the news, not influenced”. The last media personality I can think of that lived by this adage was Ted Koppel. And now I will alter this quote just a bit. As a teacher, ” I want to educate at school, not indoctrinate an imposed “Ed Reformist” profit-making strategy sold to the nation by a non educator – our own ‘Education’ Secretary ….”. Food for thought.
Exactly…we are having a mass epiphany today that education is the prime civil rights issue of our time…and it joins with declaring real change as to poverty in the inner cities, such as raising the minimum wage to a living wage so that students come to school rested and well fed and ready to learn.
Obama was a farce with “change and hope” and his choice of Arne Duncan made public education retrogress. Arne must go! It is clearly a civil rights issue.
The civil rights movement and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., were pro union and pro worker rights. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., died in Memphis fighting for the right of public workers to have a union. Throughout his life, King stood up for union rights.
A big part of the reform movement seems to be the destruction of the teacher unions. Before we oust Duncan, we need to oust the educational policies of Obama, we need to oust RTTT. Obama selected his best bud, Duncan, Obama is the one who put his seal of approval on RTTT which is just as bad as if not worse than NCLB. It’s a sad commentary on this country that so many of us had to vote for the much lesser of the two evils. I voted for Obama to block a much worse choice, Romney and the GOP. However, when it comes to education, both parties seem to be on the same corporatist/billionaire boys’ club page.
The two parties are not different they are just different sides of the same coin. We have to stop voting for the “lesser evil” and demand real choices otherwise there should be an organized national boycot of elections There is no lesser evil there is just evil and Obama and Duncan are perfect examples of that. How evil is it that the FIRST African American President puts into place policies that have destroyed public schools in African American neighborhoods and sold these children, their families and communities tio Wall St and rapious billionaires. That is pure evil.
Joe… totally agree with you … totally!
The purpose of the destructive policies of Duncan/Gates is to siphon funds from local classrooms to enrich shareholders, for-profits, non-profits and other insiders like hedge fund managers who are connected to ed corporations and charter schools. They work together and use the press to shut out education experts.
It seems Joanne Weiss was selected as Duncan’s chief of staff to destroy public education and neighborhood schools.
Replace Duncan and his Gates’ conflict ridden staff with qualified educators. Race to the Top is about corporate and common core bribery – not evidence based education.
Great…but why is she citing this as a UN violation? This movement violates the U.S. Constitution. And that should be enough. I am skeptical.
I have heard nothing about this in Los Angeles. I just looked at what I think is their website and I can’t really figure out who this group is. They do represent some non-profits that appear to be working for social justice but they also represent Bank of America, Chase, Citi, Washington Mutual (a bank that no longer exists but is part of Wells Fargo). I’m all for dumping Arne but not sure if this is legitimate. .
Kim, I think you are looking at the wrong link. I checked the links and could not find any corporate sponsors, not even one. You must have been looking on the TFA page.
Try this link: http://www.padresunidos.org/national-work-alliance-educational-justice
Kim, no corporate ads here either. https://www.facebook.com/pages/Alliance-for-Educational-Justice-AEJ/123778274327296
You must have landed on a fake site.
I just sent an email via the link for some info. Will report back.
Today, as I was reading about the anniversary of the Civil Rights movement, I couldn’t help thinking about how fifty years later, black children are still confined to mostly impoverished neighborhoods and schools. Some are herded into all-black test-prep academies where they are treated like prisoners and taught to respond with hand claps, foot stomps and chants. If that isn’t enough, the vultures who emerged after the Great Recession are seeking to “improve” these schools by channeling the tax money into private pockets and dismissing the mostly black teachers. Why the Obama administration would sanction this is beyond me.
We know that President Obama recognizes good schooling because of the choices he’s made for his daughters. While Sidwell Friends is not possible for everyone, some of its characteristics are. Let’s advocate for the right of all children:
to have their basic needs met
to live in an integrated community
to attend a school populated by children of all colors and backgrounds
to have a broad curriculum that includes the arts and P.E.
to have small classes
to learn in a safe environment
to be treated with respect as a learner
to have experienced teachers; ideally two per classroom
to have social and medical supports.
Yes, education is the civil rights issue of the day and I believe this battle will be fought and won by the people willing to educate our children, and not those trying to make a buck off of them.
Linda, the programed behaviors you mention sound like the KIPP school where I observed a few years ago. The children, all of color, seemed like robots.
Yes, I just read a book that described a KIPP school. One of the students complained about the treatment.
The Administration and their followers(benefactors) need to stop telling(dictating) the experts(teachers and administrators with legitimate degrees and credentials) what works and start to become students and find out from the Educational Experts who actually have done research, have real classroom experience, and have legitimate degrees and credentials what may work in certain circumstances and what will almost never work. They need to understand that children come from various cultures, backgrounds, life experiences, socioeconomic levels, and many other factors that have an impact on how they learn and how teachers need to adjust their teaching stratigies for each child. But, they instead attack those who do because they are behaving like the spoiled child who does not get his way. They blame others such as: the Schools Of Education are all failing, public teachers belonging to unions are failing, the teachers union is protecting those failing teachers and so on. They need to do some homework, maybe for the first time. So hopefully, they will talk to one of those Educational Experts from one of those countries out-scoring us in math. However, this would cause them to see their mistakes and people like them never admit makings mistakes. I am willing to help them find such an Expert. All they have to do is read the section below.
Why do we say we need to compete globally, but we do not want to learn from those countries supposedly outperforming us? Please read the following and remember, Finland is one of the top scoring countries in math year after year. Let us read and learn.
Finland’s education expert Pasi Sahlberg
Finland’s Pasi Sahlberg is one of the world’s leading experts on school reform and the author of the best-selling “Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn About Educational Change in Finland?” In this piece he writes about whether the emphasis that American school reformers put on “teacher effectiveness” is really the best approach to improving student achievement.
He is director general of Finland’s Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation and has served the Finnish government in various positions and worked for the World Bank in Washington D.C. He has also been an adviser for numerous governments internationally about education policies and reforms, and is an adjunct professor of education at the University of Helsinki and University of Oulu. He can be reached at pasi.sahlberg@cimo.fi.
By Pasi Sahlberg
Many governments are under political and economic pressure to turn around their school systems for higher rankings in the international league tables. Education reforms often promise quick fixes within one political term. Canada, South Korea, Singapore and Finland are commonly used models for the nations that hope to improve teaching and learning in their schools. In search of a silver bullet, reformers now turn their eyes on teachers, believing that if only they could attract “the best and the brightest” into the teaching profession, the quality of education would improve.
“Teacher effectiveness” is a commonly used term that refers to how much student performance on standardized tests is determined by the teacher. This concept hence applies only to those teachers who teach subjects on which students are tested. Teacher effectiveness plays a particular role in education policies of nations where alternative pathways exist to the teaching profession.
In the United States, for example, there are more than 1,500 different teacher-preparation programs. The range in quality is wide. In Singapore and Finland only one academically rigorous teacher education program is available for those who desire to become teachers. Likewise, neither Canada nor South Korea has fast-track options into teaching, such as Teach for America or Teach First in Europe. Teacher quality in high-performing countries is a result of careful quality control at entry into teaching rather than measuring teacher effectiveness in service.
In recent years the “no excuses”’ argument has been particularly persistent in the education debate. There are those who argue that poverty is only an excuse not to insist that all schools should reach higher standards. Solution: better teachers. Then there are those who claim that schools and teachers alone cannot overcome the negative impact that poverty causes in many children’s learning in school. Solution: Elevate children out of poverty by other public policies.
For me the latter is right. In the United States today, 23 percent of children live in poor homes. In Finland, the same way to calculate child poverty would show that figure to be almost five times smaller. The United States ranked in the bottom four in the recent United Nations review on child well-being. Among 29 wealthy countries, the United States landed second from the last in child poverty and held a similarly poor position in “child life satisfaction.” Teachers alone, regardless of how effective they are, will not be able to overcome the challenges that poor children bring with them to schools everyday.
Finland is not a fan of standardization in education. However, teacher education in Finland is carefully standardized. All teachers must earn a master’s degree at one of the country’s research universities. Competition to get into these teacher education programs is tough; only “the best and the brightest” are accepted. As a consequence, teaching is regarded as an esteemed profession, on par with medicine, law or engineering. There is another “teacher quality” checkpoint at graduation from School of Education in Finland. Students are not allowed to earn degrees to teach unless they demonstrate that they possess knowledge, skills and morals necessary to be a successful teacher.
But education policies in Finland concentrate more on school effectiveness than on teacher effectiveness. This indicates that what schools are expected to do is an effort of everyone in a school, working together, rather than teachers working individually.
In many under-performing nations, I notice, three fallacies of teacher effectiveness prevail.
The first belief is that “the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.” This statement became known in education policies through the influential McKinsey & Company report titled “How the world’s best performing school systems come out on top”. Although the report takes a broader view on enhancing the status of teachers by better pay and careful recruitment this statement implies that the quality of an education system is defined by its teachers. By doing this, the report assumes that teachers work independently from one another. But teachers in most schools today, in the United States and elsewhere, work as teams when the end result of their work is their joint effort.
The role of an individual teacher in a school is like a player on a football team: all teachers are vital, but the culture of the school is even more important for the quality of the school. Team sports offer numerous examples of teams that have performed beyond expectations because of leadership, commitment and spirit. Take the U.S. ice hockey team in the 1980 Winter Olympics, when a team of college kids beat both Soviets and Finland in the final round and won the gold medal. The quality of Team USA certainly exceeded the quality of its players. So can an education system.
The second fallacy is that “the most important single factor in improving quality of education is teachers.” This is the driving principle of former D.C. schools chancellor Michele Rhee and many other “reformers” today. This false belief is central to the “no excuses” school of thought. If a teacher was the most important single factor in improving quality of education, then the power of a school would indeed be stronger than children’s family background or peer influences in explaining student achievement in school.
Research on what explains students’ measured performance in school remains mixed. A commonly used conclusion is that 10% to 20% of the variance in measured student achievement belongs to the classroom, i.e., teachers and teaching, and a similar amount is attributable to schools, i.e., school climate, facilities and leadership. In other words, up to two-thirds of what explains student achievement is beyond the control of schools, i.e., family background and motivation to learn.
Over thirty years of systematic research on school effectiveness and school improvement reveals a number of characteristics that are typical of more effective schools. Most scholars agree that effective leadership is among the most important characteristics of effective schools, equally important to effective teaching. Effective leadership includes leader qualities, such as being firm and purposeful, having shared vision and goals, promoting teamwork and collegiality and frequent personal monitoring and feedback. Several other characteristics of more effective schools include features that are also linked to the culture of the school and leadership: Maintaining focus on learning, producing a positive school climate, setting high expectations for all, developing staff skills, and involving parents. In other words, school leadership matters as much as teacher quality.
The third fallacy is that “If any children had three or four great teachers in a row, they would soar academically, regardless of their racial or economic background, while those who have a sequence of weak teachers will fall further and further behind”. This theoretical assumption is included in influential policy recommendations, for instance in “Essential Elements of Teacher Policy in ESEA: Effectiveness, Fairness and Evaluation” by the Center for American Progress to the U.S. Congress. Teaching is measured by the growth of student test scores on standardized exams.
This assumption presents a view that education reform alone could overcome the powerful influence of family and social environment mentioned earlier. It insists that schools should get rid of low-performing teachers and then only hire great ones. This fallacy has the most practical difficulties. The first one is about what it means to be a great teacher. Even if this were clear, it would be difficult to know exactly who is a great teacher at the time of recruitment. The second one is, that becoming a great teacher normally takes five to ten years of systematic practice. And determining the reliably of ‘effectiveness’ of any teacher would require at least five years of reliable data. This would be practically impossible.
Everybody agrees that the quality of teaching in contributing to learning outcomes is beyond question. It is therefore understandable that teacher quality is often cited as the most important in-school variable influencing student achievement. But just having better teachers in schools will not automatically improve students’ learning outcomes.
Lessons from high-performing school systems, including Finland, suggest that we must reconsider how we think about teaching as a profession and what is the role of the school in our society.
First, standardization should focus more on teacher education and less on teaching and learning in schools. Singapore, Canada and Finland all set high standards for their teacher-preparation programs in academic universities. There is no Teach for Finland or other alternative pathways into teaching that wouldn’t include thoroughly studying theories of pedagogy and undergo clinical practice. These countries set the priority to have strict quality control before anybody will be allowed to teach – or even study teaching! This is why in these countries teacher effectiveness and teacher evaluation are not such controversial topics as they are in the U.S. today.
Second, the toxic use of accountability for schools should be abandoned. Current practices in many countries that judge the quality of teachers by counting their students’ measured achievement only is in many ways inaccurate and unfair. It is inaccurate because most schools’ goals are broader than good performance in a few academic subjects. It is unfair because most of the variation of student achievement in standardized tests can be explained by out-of-school factors. Most teachers understand that what students learn in school is because the whole school has made an effort, not just some individual teachers. In the education systems that are high in international rankings, teachers feel that they are empowered by their leaders and their fellow teachers. In Finland, half of surveyed teachers responded that they would consider leaving their job if their performance would be determined by their student’s standardized test results.
Third, other school policies must be changed before teaching becomes attractive to more young talents. In many countries where teachers fight for their rights, their main demand is not more money but better working conditions in schools. Again, experiences from those countries that do well in international rankings suggest that teachers should have autonomy in planning their work, freedom to run their lessons the way that leads to best results, and authority to influence the assessment of the outcomes of their work. Schools should also be trusted in these key areas of the teaching profession.
To finish up, let’s do one theoretical experiment. We transport highly trained Finnish teachers to work in, say, Indiana in the United States (and Indiana teachers would go to Finland). After five years–assuming that the Finnish teachers showed up fluent in English and that education policies in Indiana would continue as planned–we would check whether these teachers have been able to improve test scores in state-mandated student assessments.
I argue that if there were any gains in student achievement they would be marginal. Why? Education policies in Indiana and many other states in the United States create a context for teaching that limits (Finnish) teachers to use their skills, wisdom and shared knowledge for the good of their students’ learning. Actually, I have met some experienced Finnish-trained teachers in the United States who confirm this hypothesis. Based on what I have heard from them, it is also probable that many of those transported Finnish teachers would be already doing something else than teach by the end of their fifth year – quite like their American peers.
Conversely, the teachers from Indiana working in Finland–assuming they showed up fluent in Finnish–stand to flourish on account of the freedom to teach without the constraints of standardized curricula and the pressure of standardized testing; strong leadership from principals who know the classroom from years of experience as teachers; a professional culture of collaboration; and support from homes unchallenged by poverty.
But we do a much better job when it comes to high school sports and the arts. In fact, most of these other high scoring countries do not offer sports and the arts as part of the high school experience. We need to level the playing field and either require them to offer the same Common Core offerings, both academic and extra-curricular, or stop offering them in our schools so we are comparing Apples to Apples.
We need to educate our public about the reasons behind the decisions being made. I cannot wait for Professor Ravitch’s new book to help in regard to educating people about what is happening in our educational system.
International Comparisons of Students
You’ll Be Shocked by How Many of the World’s Top Students Are American
JORDAN WEISSMANNAPR 30 2013, 2:00 PM ET
(Reuters)
When you look at the average performance of American students on international test scores, our kids come off as a pretty middling bunch. If you rank countries based on their very fine differences, we come in 14th in reading, 23rd in science, and 25th in math. Those finishes led Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to flatly declare that “we’re being out-educated.”
And on average, maybe we are. But averages also sometimes obscure more than they reveal. My colleague Derek Thompson has written before about how, once you compare students from similar income and class backgrounds, our relative performance improves dramatically, suggesting that our educational problems may be as much about our sheer number of poor families as our supposedly poor schools. This week, I stumbled on another data point that belies the stereotype of dimwitted American teens.
When it comes to raw numbers, it turns out we generally have far more top performers than any other developed nation.
That’s according to the graph below from Economic Policy Institute’s recent report on America’s supply of science and tech talent. Among OECD nations in 2006, the United States claimed a third of high-performing students in both reading and science, far more than our next closest competitor, Japan. On math, we have a bit less to be proud of — we just claimed 14 percent of the high-performers, compared to 15.2 percent for Japan and 16.2 percent of South Korea.
Part of this is easy to explain: The United States is big. Very big. And it’s a far bigger country than the other members of the OECD. We claim roughly 27 percent of the group’s 15-to-19-year-olds. Japan, in contrast, has a smidge over 7 percent. So in reading and in science, we punch above our weight by just a little, while in math we punch below.
But the point remains: In two out of three subjects, Americans are over-represented among the best students.
If we have so many of the best minds, why are our average scores so disappointingly average? As Rutgers’s Hal Salzman and Georgetown’s B. Lindsay Lowell, who co-authored the EPI report, noted in a 2008 Nature article, our high scorers are balanced out by a very large number of low scorers. Our education system, just like our economy, is polarized.
What’s the takeaway? Salzman and Lowell argue that our large numbers of top scorers should help put to rest the concern that we’re losing the global talent race executives and politicians love to fret about. I’m not sure they’ll do the trick, though. In 2009, Chinese students in Shanghai sat for the PISA test for the first time, and their scores were spectacular. Although data for its other mainland provinces hasn’t been published, the OECD’s test guru says they’re similarly impressive.It seems pretty likely, in other words, that China has more young math and science geniuses at its disposal than we do (whether that’s something that should be keeping any of us up at night is another issue). But Salzman and Lindsay make another point that’s worth dwelling on: You can’t replicate a country’s style of education without replicating its culture, so instead of looking abroad for ideas about how to teach our kids, as some policy-types are inclined to do, perhaps we should look at what’s succeeding here at home and spread it. Our schools are already producing plenty of bright thinkers of their own.
Thank you for reading this paper and let us pray for our children and grandchildren.
Concerned Grandparent
Mark, you have fairly well summarized what we know about education. Furthermore, much of this knowledge has been available to us for the last fifty years.
President Obama promised to be the “data president” in education, but instead his administration has ignored the information that could, if applied, significantly improve education for our poorest children. Why?
I always like the Annenberg Institute. They financed those hugely successful Spanish videos “Destinos”. Those videos helped me learn Spanish. I like the Annenberg Institute even more now!
Bottom line for me is that I don’t oppose charters,as long as they do not get public money. Private charters are part of a choice but when private groups take public money to further private, discriminatory practices, no way. Arne and race to the top need to go. Obama on this, disappointing and supporting the wrong side.
Agree…
Good bye and good riddance, Arne Duncan!
I am wondering what it would look like it he did resign. Who would replace him? What would change? How long would it take before people were satisfied? Would it be more of a symbolic resignation, such as that of Imus, Trent Lott and Paula Dean, or would it be something more akin to Nixon? What would be the desired outcome of him resigning?
A Duncan resignation, or replacement, would have to be coupled with Obama changing his tactics and direction, or even being more open to changing his mind based on info from real trained educators. Doubt that this could happen.
As a true corporatist, Obama continues to show where he stands by supporting and lobbying to make Larry Summers head of the Fed, and his choice of Immelt as a prime advisor…and too many others to list who support only the free market and Wall Street.
Obama would probably pick Paul Vallas to replace Duncan.
Duncan, though, isn’t going anywhere unless he is impeached. He can be, you know.
Susan…I thought only elected officials could be impeached, not appointed Cabinet members.
Another grassroots group speaking out FOR public education ..encouraging.
I wonder how long the MSM will continue to silence our voices and our concerns?
Our voices will no longer remain silent.
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…..Since Arne Duncan likes evaluations …….Here is Diane’s evaluation of Arne Duncan’s job performance as Secretary of US Department Of Ed:
Arne gets an F
http://www.substancenews.net/articles.php?page=3132-
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Also when on the Substance News site. Click on HOME (left top) to read about Chicago and other ED news.
If this would-be national superintendent with nearly dictatorial powers doesn’t voluntarily leave his post, and he won’t, it’s time to pressure Congress to impeach him.
He has long operated above the law.
I shared this with my uncle who is a retired math professor. His response to me shocked me. He said that I shouldn’t believe what I read from this blog, and that he would like to hear more from Arne Duncan to understand his point of view. Well one thing is for sure. I won’t share anything else with him.
Ms Dee, let your uncle hear more from Arne Duncan. Good idea. I have heard enough over the past five years to know that Race to the Top is a monumental fail. $5 Billion down the drain.