This comment came in today:
I taught at charter schools which, supposedly, have a great new way of reaching and teaching kids. What I discovered, sadly, was it was the same nonsense of “blame the teacher” for everything. I saw children so undisciplined from day one in my classroom who simply hated school and had parents (or parent) who had zero interest in what their child did or did not do in class.
Then I suffered through “cooperative learning” seminars which means the smart kids do the work and the kids who don’t care just goof off and pretend to learn something. I wore out on “learning styles” of each child. Really? The real world is not going to ask you, “Which learning style are you so we can best teach you how to do your job every day.”
The continued “research” in education is killing a generation of kids. Charter schools have become “let’s hire all my family and make a lot of money off taxpayers” but charter schools are not even close to the answer.
The answer is society itself. The demand for ALL children to be taught that school is important. Whether they become a truck driver, carpenter, dentist, etc…they need to learn the basics and learn how to think and process information. I had kids who could not read a watch or clock, could not write a paragraph and who could not solve the simplest of math problems and yet they passed the 8th grade math state exam.
The system is broken and the politicians don’t care and the parents don’t care. It is the reason private schools are bulging at the seams because anyone who has any $$$ will do anything to get out of public schools.
The culture we live in today is destroying education. It’s not the teachers. It’s the breakdown of families, the outsourcing of jobs destroying our middle class and the poor attitudes of many cultures who consider education a “bad” idea.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This letter might be an argument to allow students to gather together with other students that value education. Would those students get a better education if they were allowed to do that? Should we care if they get a better education?
Well, it’s certainly true that charter schools don’t have the answer. But there are several troubling comments in here, too. For example, if cooperative learning means the smart kids (actually it would be the motivated kids) do all the work and the others goof off, it’s quite possible that you’re not doing it right.
To say that research is killing a generation of kids is absurd and destructive. How can learning more about how people learn be a bad thing? Poor implementation of research-supported ideas can be harmful. Taking a research-supported idea and thinking it is going to cure all the ills in our schools is foolish. But to say education research is somehow bad is simply willful ignorance.
And, Diane, you’ve been debunking the myth that our schools are failing. Yet you share this post who claims that they are (though the blame is passed on to other sources.) Parents don’t care, politicians don’t care, etc. I don’t buy that. Not for a minute. I don’t think you do, either. Some of them have been fooled by the inundation of the reasoning of the ‘reformers.’ Some of it is well-intentioned but misguided – not a sign of not caring, but a misunderstanding of how the world works. Some of it is driven by greed. But that’s not from the parents, or even most of the politicians.
I’m not a fan of this post.
Corey, neither am I, but I have no problem at all with Diane posting it, even doing so with little or no comment. Diane trusts her readers to do their own thinking, and she certainly gives voice to dissenting and conflicting viewpoints. Good for her!
Fair enough.
I too agree with your statement but was still taken aback by this post because I feel I and others are putting this person into not such a favorable light. If this was just the comment within an original post that would be one thing, but when highlighted like this….it was just uncomfortable. I don’t think the author meant any harm and was just venting, but she/he also doesn’t seem to understand the nuances of teaching. And that’s why I feel uncomfortable that she/he is now put in this situation.
I think we have to remember that many who work in charter schools are not formally trained, certified teachers, such as TFAers.
Yeah, the dissing of research is very unprofessional. This person does not strike me as someone who is really familiar with education research, including the debunking of learning styles –while supporting the notion of personal learning preferences. Funny they would claim that learning styles have no value in the workplace and condemn cooperative learning (CL), when collaborative skills are really important in many work environments. As mentioned by Corey and SchoolGal, CL can be very effective when conducted correctly.
I know I found many things in this post off regardless if this was from an experienced teacher or someone with no real ed background. And frankly I was surprised it got highlighted.
The post disses “research.” Please note the quotation marks.
In my experience educational research often leads to the most absurd and counter-intuitive conclusions. For example, the poster mentions “learning styles,” which teachers have been been told are crucially important for decades now. Determine each child’s individual learning style, we’re told, and customize for that particular child; “research shows” that is the most effective method.
Leaving aside the obvious logistical problems with this idea–it makes some sense in the early grades but well-nigh impossible in high school, where teachers have 100+ students–why does it make sense to go to school and be taught in an echo chamber, where what you’re already good at is what is emphasized? Why should pedagogy be built around the idea that the child’s individual learning style is sacrosanct? Shouldn’t the student be reaching beyond herself, encountering environments beyond her comfort zone, to grow and learn? Research indicates that a student learns best in environments suited to that student’s particular learning style; but the conclusion we often arrive at, that we should cater to that specific learning style, is problematic.
The research may be sound but the conclusions drawn from the research are unsound; that’s the pattern I’ve discerned all too frequently in education.
There is a far easier, more sensible take on “learning styles,” “different intelligences,” “What color are you?” and similar things that have some reasonable ideas at their core, but have evolved into woo, cult-like followings, and a lot of very profitable scams.
That is as follows: recognize, as really good teachers usually do, that it takes more than one model, metaphor, experience, approach, etc., to reach all or nearly all students with just about any academic/intellectual material. One size has NEVER fit all, but has been expected to do so, unquestioningly, for decades.
Then some researchers and theorists began to question the wisdom of that and to conduct investigations and construct frameworks designed to make everyone more aware of the different ways people learn. And that, on my view, was ducky.
Where it went badly awry was when some people decided that the lesson to be drawn from the work of, say, Howard Gardner, was that we should identify and label people by learning style or dominant intelligence or. . . color. Once you do that, you’re in deep, deep manure.
My strong suspicion is that most folks can in theory learn via any given approach. However, some approaches may be more likely to reach a given person effectively with a given bit of content, a given idea, an overarching concept, etc., ON A GIVEN DAY. And the next day, another approach might be more effective with the same person, or might add a great deal of depth to the previous day’s learning that a repetition of the same approach would not.
In other words, people are more complicated than any label we might wish to put on them. And no one should be told, most particularly not a child, something like, “Oh, our research shows you’re a visual learner, and so. . . ” because the child may lean towards visual ways of understanding, but that hardly means that s/he can’t learn other ways and/or wouldn’t benefit greatly from exposure to and experience with other modalities.
What does that mean for teachers? Simple. Teach things in more than one way, make sure you give students more than one shot at catching on, don’t let your personal preferences dominate the types of activities and presentation styles you make available to your students.
We’re in an era where there are WAY more resources available to supplement lessons from different viewpoints – via multimedia and the Internet, for starters. Teachers really do need to use them, for the sake of reaching more students.
Does that mean that every lesson must be taught 20 times (or some other impracticable number of times)? Of course not. But teachers need to be honest about whether they falling into ruts, shying away consistently from something that is helpful to some kids because it just isn’t something that teacher likes or enjoys, and so forth. Balance from teachers and more opportunity for kids is a reasonable expectation, viewed over time.
If parents and teachers and students work together (without inane interference from some experts who really should put a sock in it, frankly), they can generally work out a reasonable plan that will reach pretty much every student. And that should be the goal, not paying homage to some cult-like belief in magic beans and silver bullets.
The people in my state who work in charters are formally trained certified teachers. This person is frustrated and angry.
I think the post reflects the frustration of a charter school teacher who has had enough with being blamed for low performing students. This person probably has low pay, few benefits, and very little respect. The “Let’s hire all of our family members” is so true it’s not even funny. Most teachers have never worked in a charter and would be shocked at how poorly they are run. There is a reason why they have incredibly high turnover rates.
The beginning of the end was Bill Clinton. No one but democratic presidents could get away with the destruction Clinton and Obama have done for their right wing masters who also own lock, stock and barrel the billionaires who also have owned the republicans for a long time. In 1994 with NAFTA and WTO when Clinton signed those bills it was the end of good jobs for Americans as the offshoring and paying to offshore began and this is why there are not jobs today and with Obama and the Pacific Trade Partners secret talks to give away even more you have destruction by presidents who say they love you and stab you in the back with a smile on their face. Then Clinton signs the 1996 Telecommunications Act. With that it is the end of the “Free Press” and you cannot even bring up for discussion the potential bad effects of electromagnetic power from microwaves for cell phone and such. In L.A. we beat their top attorneys 3 times and then they worked with the city to have a methodology whereby they do not have to have any public process. Cute, isn’t it? Then in 1999-2000 Clinton signed the Banking Deregulation Acts which created the financial crisis which Obama has made sure stayed in place for his masters. Didn’t he just put up Larry Summers? Didn’t the heat make Summers drop out as he is one of the planners of the crash?
Now they are talking about Hillary for PREZ. No way. We do not need two things: no more dynasties or corrupt Clintons to make us take a bigger dive and that is what will happen. As it is said “If you do not know your history, you are bound to repeat it.” Do we really want to do this again? Do you mean to tell me there is no other talent who will not sell us out as the last two democratic presidents have? Remember this “I hear real good, but I see a whole lot better.”
AMEN! Thank you. Don’t forget Reagan and the horrid book based on lies…A Nation at Risk.
George, the things I’ve been reading actually trace the beginning of the end to Nixon and Reagan, with the Ford and Carter years being a brief respite. Surely Reagan’s crushing of the air traffic controllers strike was a significant turning point, followed not long after with A Nation At Risk. Surely George Bush, Sr. and GWB made some significant contributions to our current problems. I recall something called NO CHILD LEFT BEHIND. That did happen under Bush II, right? Bipartisan, of course. No one who is awake claims this is just a GOP conservative plot. But I know few knowledgeable people who suggest, as do you, that it’s all being done under Democratic presidents. Tunnel vision? Selective memory? Something is quite working.
You DO get that some of us think that the political party label isn’t meaningful any more, that most politicians are bought and owned by the rich and powerful, right? But at least in the case of CCSSI, the agenda is much more financial than it is purely ideological, though there are neo-liberal, neo-conservative, and other political elements involved.
I’m no fan of HRC, but right now, I think most of us have bigger fish to fry, and as far as education policy and politics are concerned, it matters little who gets into the White House in Jan. 2017. We fight against bad educational policies because they’re bad, not because they are Democratic or Republican initiatives. Or at least I do, and I’m unapologetic about it.
Thank you….
Maybe he means the beginning of the end of the Democratic party, since it is due to Clinton, his “New Democrats” and their neo-liberal agenda that the party looks so much more like the GOP to many of us today.
CT: could be. Neoliberalism is, for me, hard to separate from neoconservatism. I think they’re similar enough to be translated as: two names for the political philosophy that allows Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, and others to justify self-centeredness, rapaciousness, and greed.
Neo-liberal does not mean new liberals, contrary to what one might be inclined to think. Neo-liberalism refers to economic policies that promote free markets, deregulation, and privatization, as well as slashing funds for social programs and “eliminating the concept of ‘the public good’ or ‘community’.” See, “What is Neoliberalism? A Brief Definition for Activists”
http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376
Most neo-liberals in the US have been Republicans, like Milton Friedman, which is why the Democrats today look so much like the GOP.
For a long time, schlubs like me wondered what happened to my party and didn’t realize that “New Democrat” doesn’t mean new liberal any more than neo-liberal does. In reality, it means something more like old Republican.
I think we can forget about seeing any major reforms in the Democratic party by the 2016 election. I didn’t know about the Working Families Party until learning about their connection to the school board members who won the CT primary, because that party is not in my state. Maybe we should get behind supporting their expansion as a national party: http://www.workingfamiliesparty.org/
I agree that Clinton had a part in it. It began with Bush Sr. and Clinton ultimately signed them into law. If you look back at the votes you can see that both Repubs and Dems took part in the destruction. Pretty sad. No way with Hillary too!!! I’m sick of the same bought out people in Washington ruining the country. The fact the Chelsea Clinton was on Education Nation tour says it all.
First let me say as teachers we should also be lifelong learners and open to any new methodology.
Cooperative learning was on of the best approaches I ever used, and I started it at a time when most classrooms were sitting in rows. I couldn’t imagine teaching any other way!!The students loved it, and there were wonderful interactions. However, it must be done correctly. I have also used the Workshop Model and took many courses at Columbia. Like anything else, you find what works and what doesn’t and tweak it. I loved teaching writing using the model and also used many of the techniques in the reading model even when my class used a basal reader. I found it works with all academic levels.
We as teachers cannot ignore any new methodology, but we shouldn’t have to follow mandates that support methodologies that aren’t working for our kids.
Where did you teach?
NYC public schools.
Children are a product of their environment. With that said, local control of schools–not the corporate takeover of the system–is essential to a basic education for all sectors of the population. Yes, we as educators are part of an American institution in which all the social ills are laid at our door. Still we are responsible for motivating, teaching, and caring for every student in our charge. We use any and all methods–research-proven and not–to accomplish our goals. We obviously work in tandem with other mechanisms in our society to improve the lives of all of our students, but at the same time we cannot lose our focus or blame our ineffectiveness on societal problems. We are the solution. We are not broken. We endeavor to persevere despite what is thrown at us because our job is so vitality important to every aspect of our republic–socially, economically, politically, etc. Do not cop out blaming someone else. Fight for what is right in public education. Fight for bedrock our civilization against corporate tyranny and greed, and poltical nativity. You are the professionals. Do something about the problem, but do cry foul and do nothing.
I think the lesson here is when it comes to charters, the question is, “What happens when the honeymoon is over?”
“I saw children so undisciplined from day one in my classroom who simply hated school and had parents (or parent) who had zero interest in what their child did or did not do in class.”
My guess is that those kids had received far more “discipline” than most other kids, at least if you define “discipline” solely as punishment. And that’s often a large part of the problem with kids who don’t “like school”. No one has ever actually tried to teach them anything, they’ve just yelled at them (and worse) for doing or not doing something which they never explained in the first place, let alone ever gave a reason for. To kids like that, school is just one more place where you have to do a bunch of meaningless stuff that someone else tells you – especially if you have a teacher like this commenter. With kids like this, if you want them to care about school, the first thing you have to teach them is why they should.
Nicely stated.
I also found that comment a little off. I don’t believe that parents or the code word (parent) do not care about their child learning. They need help and the role of a teacher is to assist the parents to ensure that their child gets the best education they can.
I agree with Corey and Schoolgal here. Cooperative learning and project based learning were also some of the best and most rewarding approaches I’ve used to teach….and yes it has to be done well like any approach.
I don’t think that traditional teacher training programs necessarily do the best job in preparing teachers to teach (as mentioned in a comment above). I actually avoided the school of education at my highly acclaimed undergraduate university because the classes I took there felt too easy and irrelevant (of course this was 18 years ago now…. and I’m sure there are programs that are good). I just don’t think alternative methods should be condemned. I went through an alternative route to teacher training (not Teach for America) and felt extremely prepared as I learned to teach. It was rigorous, reflective and used peer review as well as administrative review.
And of course, the original post talking about the education research ‘killing a generation of kids’ is way out of line. It seems to me that the poster feels strongly about the topic because he/she felt blamed as a teacher at a not-so-good charter school. Perhaps the idea of multiple learning styles and non-traditional teaching methods were pushed without any true support in how to implement them successfully. Or perhaps there were a lot of other problems at the school that are not mentioned.
I think that parents do care about education, but people don’t know what to do.
Friedrich Schiller (1759–1805): “Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.”
Even the gods fight against stupidity in vain. The deeper truth is that most Americans are not very smart. Most foreigners in America know this, especially those from more educated countries. Just go walk through your local mall and take a look at the average Americans. They are nice and simple, and usually obese, but not very bright. They don’t know anything about the world, etc. Europeans are usually very bright, more likely to be thin, but not very friendly. Take your pick. You can’t turn one set of people into the other. Profound cultural change takes a long time. You would first have to tell American school children to stop bouncing and throwing balls and focus on their school work. That alone would take generations. Read the article in “The Atlantic” about that.
So, let’s see. Charter school doesn’t get any different results. Check. Teachers are blamed. Check. Charter school is about money and nepotism. Check. Home environment/culture (read poverty) is not conducive to academic achievement. Check. Trainings that don’t sufficiently train and/or that oversell the usefulness of the strategy/program. Check. Education IS important to everyone, even if they don’t plan on being a STEM genius. Check.
But let’s hyper-focus on the fact that cooperative learning didn’t work for her…
Seriously! People sure do cling to their fads for dear life.
(And the post didn’t even criticize cooperative learning; it just criticized how it was being required in that particular school.)
Yes. The people didn’t pick up on the fact that the teacher was in a miserable environment that was all about one family making money. I would guess that most of them never worked in a charter in a rough environment.
Don’t blame research, blame top-down micro-managing the research into the classroom.
A decent teacher can take the research and use it as a guideline. ‘Learning-styles’ research was a good guideline for me in designing curriculum for teaching for lang to small children: before it came naturally, I would map out lesson plans to make sure I was using audio, visual, tactile, musical, role-play, games-w/-rules applications throughout.
‘Cooperative-learning’ strategies are great for team-building, but it’s just one more approach among the many, to be used sparingly, like a strong spice. Yet as a parent in the early 2000’s it was a craze & I saw it grossly overused to the point where every single project of the school-year was a team effort, with predictable results.
You’ve got to have strong (if not visionary) dept heads, & experienced teachers mentoring newbies to strike a good balance. If you’ve got rule-following, literal-minded people running the show, every fad that strikes some bonehead’s fancy will proliferate until the next one comes along.
I’m not a teacher, so I defer to the many great comments above, but this statement is interesting to me:
“The real world is not going to ask you, “Which learning style are you so we can best teach you how to do your job every day.””
I’m thinking… maybe it should. Some people learn by instructions while others learn by hands-on use. If companies don’t respect these different kinds of learning styles (at the very least), they’re going to have problems.