If you read about education, you are sometimes tempted to think that all common sense has departed this nation, its leaders, and its mass media.
They keep looking for quick fixes, miracles, turnarounds, and magical answers as “solutions” to education problems.
Here is Ray Strabeck, a retired school superintendent in Mississippi, who reminds us that there are still people who know what they are talking about and who are willing to speak up.
He reminds his readers of the fads that came and went over his 50 years in education.
He reminds them of the limitations of standardized tests.
As for all the weeping and wailing about how “our schools are failing,” “we are losing the race to nations with higher test scores,” Strabeck has a few wise observations about the goal of “beating” other nations:
I find such a motivation ridiculous. Who first landed on the moon? Americans trained in American public schools. Who has orbited Earth more times than any other nation? Americans who were educated in public schools. Who has probed deeper in the sea than anyone else — maybe excluding Jacques Cousteau? Again the answer is Americans who began their learning in public schools. Solar energy, fossil fuels, electronic technologies, social programs, jurisprudence — and the list goes on and on.
If history is to be examined regarding Common Core, it is a program that might last some four to eight years. Having been involved in public education for nearly 50 years, I have watched this timeline remain fairly constant across the years: both politicians and educators finally conclude that the latest fad is not working, and something new arises they want to try.
What, then, assures good schools and higher student achievement? Economics, pure and simple. Find me a good school, and nine times out of 10 there will also be found a flourishing economy in that school community.
Our plea that good schools bring good industries is a misnomer, a case of getting the cart before the horse. Make sure that parents have good jobs, that small businesses are flourishing in the neighborhood and that people take pride in where they live and one of the unfailing outcomes is good schools.
And he adds:
If we would spend the money currently being spent on Common Core on economic development and sustain that kind of effort for, say, four or five years, we would soon see “good” schools emerging.
Please read the whole article.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
YES!
Yes, again. Since good schools actually require a good economy, don’t we need to secure the future of our economy right about now? Our economy is about to implode because we have done nothing to stop the fraudulent practices that caused the crash of 2008; so we are poised for an even bigger crash of 2013-14. There is a solution. Educators should get educated about this topic and take action. It has even been introduced in both houses of congress as identical bills which is amazingly efficient since if they passed both houses, they would go straight to the president’s desk for signature and implementation. H.R. 129 in the House and S.985 in the Senate are both titled, the “Return to Prudent Banking Act of 2013,” and would reinstate the Glass Steagall Act. Glass Steagall was put in place in 1933 as a response to the fraudulent practices of Wall Street bankers that caused the crash of 1929. It remained in place until 1999, when it was repealed because Citibank wanted to merge with Travelers Insurance and that would have been illegal under GS. It was the repeal of Glass Steagall that allowed the banks to steal people’s savings and gamble them away on risky investments and then go to congress and beg for a bailout (which they used to buy up smaller banks and give their CEO’s big bonuses). Now they are planning a “bail in” for American suckers that still have money in the bank, like they did in Cypress, where they take a percentage of everyone’s account to make the bank solvent. We can avoid this. We can stop Wall Street from looting the American people and we can stop the billionaire’s boys club from privatizing our public schools. The hedge fund charter school investors just want to close traditional schools, fire good teachers, and open charter schools, where non-union teachers can be uncertified and are exempted from APPR. They are getting 39% tax credits off this scheme. They can double their money in 7 years even if the kids are failing.
So if you really want to have an impact on your schools, your bank account, your nation and your future…..call 202 224-3121 and demand that your congressman and senators in the house and senate cosponsor the “Return to Prudent Banking Act of 2013,” to reinstate Glass Steagall and restore common sense to banking….. and by extension to schooling.
Love your accurate education here, Dawn.
Yes, FDR knew in 1933 that derivatives were gambling casino investments, and he got Glass Steagall passed to keep commercial and investment banks operations strictly separate.
It was only in the Clinton era that Rubin and Summers could pull off their deregulation coup, and with Gramm, Leach, Bliley prepared to fill the gap. And the crooks from AIG and the too big to fail banks were off and running…blended it all into bundled credit default swaps and collaterized debt obligation investments that could not be traced, with the rating agencies like Moody’s and Standard and Poors (who are paid by the corporations they supposedly impartially review) upgrading this garbage to triple A ratings. No one is in jail, no one has even been indicted with the exception of one or two low echelon fools.
Raise your hand if you would vote for Obama and his DoJ. and his advisors like Summers, Rubin, Immelt, Geithner, etc. again.
Lehman Bros. were essentially made to fall on their own petard and go bankrupt, while the big boys let Bear Stearns survive.
Hedge funds are the true bottom feeders who bet against a stocks success, but all of Wall Street, including a series of both Repub and Dem presidents and their appointed choices, were and are complicit in creating the economic disaster of the last few years wherein most of us lost our life savings, and our homes depreciated to negative value.
But, Dawn, I worry if we have any voice left since now all the banksters gamble and feel safe to take the greatest risks since they are indemnified with both our stimulus money, and our money from the FDIC, and this happened under Geithner and Obama. Read Sheila Bair’s book for the disheartening details.
And we should all be calling Obama every hour on the hour to demand he appoint Yellin, not the worst of these deregulator guys, Summers, to be the next Chair of the Fed.
Read Joseph Stiglitz’s book Freefall to get a play by play explanation.
A bit off topic….but…needs to be said and we who teach economics suffer with this.
Ellen, so glad to get an educated response. You said you are not sure we have a voice left. In our republic we have a representative and two senators. They are our voice. We have to call them everyday and demand that they reinstate Glass Steagall. H.R. 129 in house and S.985 in the senate. Even if they are corrupt and taking money from Wall Street (as I was told by a 24 year old legislative aide in congress: Wall Street put me through college. I work for Wall Street) we have to make them more afraid of and more annoyed by “we the people” than their Wall Street benefactors. The AFLCIO represents 12 million union workers. If they would put the word out to their members to call congress and demand the reinstatement of Glass Steagall, AND if they would make it easy by putting a link with a button on the website for this to go directly to congress as they do with other laws they want passed, we could cause a ruckus. Unfortunately, our union leaders have been bought and paid for. So I use this blog to encourage all of the people who have not given up to call congress and demand Glass Steagall. It is going to go bankrupt. We can either control the bankruptcy to our advantage by keeping people in their homes and pensions in tact or we can let them kill us as they are doing to the people in Detroit. Call the congressional switchboard, they will direct you to your representative: 202 224-3121. It is our choice and the wrong one is deadly. It is not at all off topic. Without an economy, who cares if our student’s are college and career ready? And it is Wall Street that is engineering this education coup. Not Arne.
Right on, new friend, new colleague. You make all the points with direct suggestions and a passion….and I heed your gadfly advice all the time. The problem in my state, is that my senior Senator is married to a billionaire who makes much profit off the war industry. It is a conundrum.
But as a political wonk, I agree that if the unions were not also bought and paid for, as witness even some teachers’ unions, we would have a huge power block. So they question is, how do we force the unions who take our dues to truly represent us?
A rhetorical question, unless anyone in cyberland has a solution.
Like anyone else, union leaders dislike criticism, especially when it comes like a tsunami, such as an unending barrage of phone calls from some of the membership. Most people never call them or even email them. I was surprised one night to get a timely response from my email to Randi. We actually had a back and forth for a bit about Glass Steagall. I sent her a possible press release suggesting that this is what would make unions relevant to the entire population: Unions Step Up To Save The Nation From Financial Collapse. The AFT and the AFL-CIO have each written letters to Marcy Kaptur thanking her for introducing this legislation. But why haven’t they put the link on the website with an alert to all members and a press release to the public? These things are in our hands. As FDR once said, “You have convinced me….Now go out and make me do it.” Bother your local president to put out an alert to call the union leadership and demand union support for Glass Steagall in addition to each member calling their own representatives to demand the cosponsor of Glass Steagall (HR 129 and S985) 202 224-3121. Put a sign up in the faculty room. I want to be able to answer when my children ask me, “What were you doing when fascism took over the U.S and ruined the 250 year old unique experiment to allow individual freedom?”
What Strabeck observes of educational fads is true, but he fails to recognize that this latest run at schools has nothing to do with schools, kids, and education, and everything to do with greed, diverting public funds in private pockets, and creating a false narrative. We are dealing with actual evil today. Not fads.
Great comment Joanne…absolutely pertinent to all the conversation…greed and profit prevail. Poverty is the key to failure of students…and poverty in America is caused by insatiable greed.
JoanneS I agree. And you can’t and don’t fight evil with petitions, calls to your representatives, rallies, and passionate letters to the editor or blog posts. No evil in history had been brought down by those methods. There have always been casualties and that’s where we are stymied right now: fear of loss.
Evil must be removed from the proximity of those whom it is inflicting its influence on and it is not easy, it is not clean and neat, it is not without risk or cost.
Teachers and parents right now are too squeamish to face this reality. They are not yet to the point of having little to lose that inspires standing up and taking back their lives and their world.
History has taught us how evil has been defeated, over and over again, for millennia.
When we are pushed down far enough into the dirt, when our children have suffered enough, when our daily lives consist of endless suffering and no hope for a better future, then we will stand up and fight because we will have nothing else to lose at that point.
Until then we remain victims and manipulated pawns, hoping to pull off a bloodless coup with no casualties and no payment in blood, sweat, and tears. It doesn’t work that way and it never has, unfortunately.
Even the advocates of nonviolent resistance paid with their own lives, as did many of their followers, as we remember tomorrow on Dr. King’s birthday.
There are far, far more of us with far, far less to lose. They are terrified of that and that’s why they are pulling all the shenanigans they do to keep us suspicious of each other and fighting amongst ourselves instead of fighting them.
Eventually the reform wizard will be exposed as the humbug he really is.
Until then, stay strong and join the guerrilla resistance: opt out, heckle, protest, and scream for our children at board meetings, in legislative halls, and in the streets. That’s what I’m doing.
If we would spend the money currently being spent on Common Core on economic development and sustain that kind of effort for, say, four or five years, we would soon see “good” schools emerging.
There’s the rub, such practices would not put money in the right pockets. Plus it makes too much sense.
It depends on what we mean by economic development. We have been trying a trickle down model for decades that has done little to nothing for the majority of Americans. The whole corporate reform movement continues the pattern of enriching the few on the backs of the many. What will we be left with if we just let this “fad” run its course.
Hi pal…I agree….in LA, if we had WPA-like projects creating well- paying jobs to repair all the deep and endless potholes, sidewalks, bridges, etc., it would be the correct stimulus to improve our economy particularly in inner cities. Parents could pay their rent and put enough food on the table that children could come to school rested and fed and ready to learn. Instead our mendacious Governor bullied an initiative for more taxation for schools that has resulted in the huge windfall $2 Billion that is instead now being directed to iPads, purchased above retail, to teach and test Common Core.
The insanity is endless.
..and in another twist in California, this week our Governor decided that in order to meet the government mandate to thin out the prison population, he wants to tax us more to pay to place prisoners in our rapidly growing ‘private prison industry.’
Instead of changing strangled laws which sentence mainly kids of color to long prison sentences for smoking pot and/or crack, but lets wealthy kids off with a slap on the wrist, and instead of working to ameliorate harsh sentences for these youth by working with Juvenile Justice to remediate rather than imprison a preponderance of ‘of color young males’, he wants the public to pay even more to this vast new free enterprise endeavor…for-profit prisons.
Supt. Strabek reminds us to be hopeful, and I try to be, but have spent 45 years on all this and wonder what next?
Your blog helps me cope with the madness that is education today. I wonder if you could post your thoughts on the proficiency based grading reform that is simultaneously being forced on educators in many states. I’m all for letting students and parents know where they are relative to the standards, but there are so many issues about this that are not being addressed. Lack of continuity of practice for just one (done differently at different schools and even in different classrooms in the same building). Elementary does this well with a breakdown of skill sets and behaviors, but they have 25-30 students, not 180. Plus, there is a push with this to not penalize students for late work or even missing work (no longer giving zeroes for missing work) and many students figure this out quickly, doing as little as possible to get by. And, at this point, what are the consequences for not being proficient? Are students held back? Sent to an intervention class? Given an incomplete? Not likely with our lack of funding. So students may pass, but I predict they will be less prepared for real world college and career expectations as a result. Do I want to hire someone who maybe CAN do the work but DOESN’T? Do I want to hire someone who doesn’t care about deadlines? And, will parents accept their child receiving a C or B based on performance when they’ve gotten Bs and As based on hard work and (sometimes) extra credit? Sorry for the long post, but I haven’t seen much backlash on this practice and wonder if I”m alone in my concerns.
Karen,
The accountability measures now being forced on schools by non-educators at the U.S. Department of Education and state education departments (just following orders, of course) are insane. They don’t work, they won’t work. They will eventually collapse of their own weight because they make no sense–not to teachers, parents, students, not even to the people who designed them on paper.
Here’s a new initiative. Replace Common Core with common sense?
Agreed…… so sad….. and so many young teachers are buying into this movement b/c they don’t have a choice not to. The system I work in just hired a new HR person who comes to us with little or no experience working in education. However, has a wealth of HR experience in industry. Given the state of education today, not surprising.
Right on…thanks Diane….wish he would now run for Congress.
Wish Diane would run for US Senate, actually.
Excellent points, all. Good jobs, strong commnities, good schools. It is certainly all connected. Building a communuty of people who earn a living wage will create the conditions for excellent schools.