Even though the main events of Education Nation over the next two days will be packed with CEOs and anti-public education governors, I give NBC credit for an outstanding student town hall today.
Melissa Harris-Perry interviewed four students who were selected for their activism: one from Philadelphia, who spoke out against Governor Corbett’s $1 billion budget cuts and explained how it stripped the Philadelphia schools of almost everything that makes for a good school; one from Chicago, who protested the closing of 49 elementary schools and explained that, while it didn’t affect his school, all students had to stand in solidarity against this outrageous decision; one from Washington, D.C. (Noa Rosinplotz, whose letters against testing were first published on this blog); and one from the Providence Student Union, who described his organization’s creative use of political theatre to protest the state’s decision to use a standardized test as a graduation requirement.
The students were wonderful. They spoke truth, not political rhetoric. They know what is really happening in the schools. It is their lives, their reality.
If only they had the chance to confront the CEOs and governors who can be counted on to say that we are spending too much, that we need more charters and vouchers, and that students today are way behind the times and unable to compete in the global economy. If the students were there, they could give the leaders a few lessons. The students (especially the Providence Student Union) might even challenge them to take the high-stakes tests that they think are so necessary for future success. And publish their scores.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
But Whynot NYC student activists? We have plenty here too.
They can’t be controlled and that’s worrisome for a propaganda network. Your kids may know too much.
They have to be sure to get some teacher bashing in.
NBC doesn’t want toooooo many students speaking truth-to-power. Just enough to say they were fair & balanced.
When I think of Education Nation, I think of a wonderful photo that adorns the cover of Edward Tufte’s brilliant “The Cognitive Style of Powerpoint.”
The photo shows a huge rally at Stalin Square, in Budapest, April 4, 1956. Hundreds of people are ranged in tight formation in front of a colossus of Stalin rising above an enormous fascist-style granite podium. Cartoon-like thought bubbles from the crowd say things like “There is no bullet list like Stalin’s bullet list,” while the colossus says, “Next slide, please.”
This is what passes for news programming in the U.S. today. One gets from it the report from the Common Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth.
The telescreens in Orwell’s 1984 carried such state of the nation reports too. I sure do hope that there are some folks standing by to do simultaneous translation from the reformer Newspeak.
Robert, I love your commentary on Diane’s blog. Speak truth to the powers that speak doublespeak.
Agreed! One of my favorite moments when the 8th grade girl urged David Coleman to “Answer the question” he had been dodging.
I couldn’t watch Coleman..should I try?
Go Noa…you could clearly tell by her expressions she wasn’t buying the Coleman BS….all he gave were broad generalizations.
He was there to cheerlead for the national standards and minimize the damage.
States have backed out of the testing, which will then lead to ignoring the corporate Coleman core.
Noa Rosinplotz helped this blog usher in 2013. She and Hannah Nguyen, among others, give me great hope for the future.
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2012/12/31/secretary-duncan-please-read-noa-rosinplotzs-letter/
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2012/12/31/noa-rosinplotz-speaks-for-herself/
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/09/07/michelle-rhees-teacher-town-hall-a-students-stands-up-and-disagrees/
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/09/09/the-student-who-spoke-up-at-michelle-rhees-teacher-town-hall-tells-her-story/
“Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is much higher and truer courage.” [Wendell Phillips]
🙂
My 9th grade daughter said that you don’t even get any points on the standardized test unless you echo the question to frame your answer. EG The question was “Why are states pulling out of the common core?” then the CC answer would have to start as “States are pulling out of the common core because…” otherwise 0 points.
The students are amazing. And now MSNBC can pretend that they have aired both sides. Note that the big, bold caption below the Student Forum video says, “Students Raise Their Voices for School Reform.” Yeah, well. . . . I guess that’s one way to put it.
Let’s hope that these students and the rest of the nation’s kids can survive the standards-and-testing juggernaut that is about to roll over them and for which we are going to get an infomercial in the coming Education Nation programs. The speakers MSNBC has lined up ensure that that will be so. Think of the coming program as political fantasy–sort of like Leni Riefenstahl directs Lord of the Rings, with Sauron as the hero.
One ring to rule them all!
Coleman was a joke, spouting his typical propaganda, although Eric Schmidt, I thought, said a number of useful things (which surprised me).
But the one thing that went through my mind as I was watching all these awesome students was “How are young students represented?” — besides at least one older student advocating for them.
Especially for the sake of the K-3 set, who have been facing the developmentally inappropriate aspects of CCSS, we need to have a Parent Town Hall. Parents need to be given a voice to talk about how their young children are doing in today’s schools with all the corporate deform.
I agree. The elementary students are our most vulnerable. Self esteem comes from a sense of accomplishment. And sadly, our most impressionable are only feeling a sense of failure.
I just can’t watch Coleman. What utter nonsense. This guy has no clue whatsoever what he is talking about.
But try to get to they part where Noa, a thirteen year old, asks him to answer the question. Look at his face and hear the condenscension in his tone. What a putz.
Yep. His reply is really repulsive.
I found Coleman exhausting. He enunciated and waved his hands like he was talking to an auditorium filled with martians.
Coleman argued “high standards” are achievable (for all students) because 13-year-old Jewish boys can be taught to read and expound on a text in a colloquy with other readers.
I’m not staking out a low standards position. I’m saying there are factors that confound ‘success’ not contemplated in Coleman’s model for success.
Coleman doesn’t understand the standards he wrote. There is an astonishing disconnect between what he says about the CCSS in ELA and the actual document. It astonishes me that people think that this amateurish crap that Coleman produces can be called “high standards.” The CCSS in ELA were written by an amateur with no familiarity with best practices in English education and no knowledge, clearly, of the sciences of language acquisition.
Listening to Coleman try to talk about teaching English is like listening to Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church try to talk about quantum chromodynamics. He is completely in over his head. If there were a metric for correlation of ignorance and arrogance, it would be called the Coleman.
The retrograde, amateurish standards [sic] that Mr. Coleman wrote are grossly distorting U.S. pedagogy and curricula and will mean a) more test prep and b) and an end to curricular and pedagogical innovation. The standards [sic] are a list of random skills, and an extraordinarily poorly drawn list at that. And the curricula being produced in response to them are completely incoherent.
These standards are backward and uniformed. It’s as though someone handed David Coleman copies of Galen and of the 1858 edition of Gray’s Anatomy and send him to a cabin in the woods in Vermont to write new standards [sic] for the medical profession. These supposed standards [sic] will set back U.S. education in the English language arts a hundred years.
cx: sent, not send, of course
The backwardness of these standards–the complete lack of familiarity with the sciences of language acquisition evinced in them–is truly breathtaking. I have a litmus test for whether someone knows the first thing about teaching English. Does he or she support the implementation of the CCSS in ELA?
Don Marquis ends his poem “The Old Trouper” with these lines:
“both of our professions are being ruined
by amateurs.”
No, Bernie. What it shows is that the CCSS were not professionally vetted.
Robert:
Can you point me to a readable analysis of the CCSS in ELA, preferably one that points to what acceptable standards would be?
Bernie, I am going to write one. There is, to my knowledge, no such existing book or study, though one is sorely needed. For a discussion that implies what acceptable standards might look like, a good place to begin is E.D. Hirsch, Jr.’s The Knowledge Deficit, but this is mostly about why standards conceived as the CCSS in ELA are (as lists of abstract skills) should not be used.
Robert:
I am genuinely puzzled by this lack of a written substantive critique of CCSS and the formulation of a coherent alternative. This absence seriously weakens the argument against the CCSS. It means that many here are aligning with those who want a minimum role for central government. As I have said before, it is difficult, if not impossible, to beat something with nothing. There are 50 State curriculums. Are you saying that not one of them is worth highlighting and building on? How about Ontario’s?
No, Bernie. What is shows is that the CCSS were not professionally vetted. Where is the equivalent of the Failure Modes and Effects Analysis for the CCSS? There is none. These new standards [sic] were not subjected to highly public professional critique.
Robert:
“No” to what? Are there no acceptable ELA curricula in any of the 50 States or Canada?
Bernie, there are wonderful things that local teachers are doing in their classrooms. We DO NOT NEED national curricula, national standards, and national exams. We need competition among models voluntarily adopted by local districts. A free market.
Robert:
How does the IB rate as a curriculum? How different is it from your ideal?
Watching MSNBC Education Nation’s Student Town Hall this morning. The students are amazing and get what is happening to them because of the deformers. They have discussed how high stakes testing is doing real harm to their education. A student from the Providence Student Union talked about their “zombie” protest against high-stakes testing. Melissa Harris Perry brought up the iPad debacle in LA. Then they brought in David Coleman to discuss Common Core Standards. He was asked why some states are dropping out of adopting CCS. He didn’t answer the question and an incredibly brave student on the panel challenged him to answer. He actually lied to the students and nation and said there are no states dropping CCS! He also talked down to the students when explaining how CCS would be implemented. He asked the students (paraphrasing) wouldn’t you like to learn fewer things better? Wouldn’t you like to have lighter textbooks? No discussion about the big corporate money behind CCS. No discussion of how states were forced to accept CCS to get Race to the Top money. No discussion on how CCS have never been field tested. I think Melissa Harris Perry is knowledgeable about what education reform is doing to the country. My hope is MHP will invite Diane on her show in the near future to have an indepth discussion.
BTW, it was very sad to see NEA ads supporting CCS-shame on them!
NEA has received a lot of Gates Foundation money. This organization, which is supposed to represent teachers, is shilling for the Common Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth.
I am now going to say a couple of positive things about the CCSS in ELA. It’s difficult to find anything positive to say about work this amateurish, but buried in the material ANCILLARY TO THE STANDARDS [sic] THEMSELVES, are a couple of major truths:
The appendices to the CCSS and the Publishers’ Criteria both stress the importance of sustained work within a few knowledge domains. This is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. Acquisition of knowledge builds exponentially upon acquisition of knowledge. That’s a function of the networked nature of memory. The incoherent “and now for something completely different” CCSS-aligned curricula now being produced by the big box publishers almost completely ignores this.
Close reading is extraordinarily valuable, and this really good idea should not be tossed because of the predictably crude, counterproductive implementations of close reading now being foisted upon people around the country in the form of canned lesson plans. A great vehicle for close reading, BTW, is the Socratic seminar. But it’s very important that one do this well into a unit so that kids have a knowledge base to draw upon. Close reading is one tool in the toolkit. It has its place among pedagogical approaches. But it has become the “reform” summa theologica. Big mistake.
Unfortunately, the CCSS themselves, the actual “standards,” which are lists of abstract skills (and poorly drawn lists at that) ensure that these great ideas will not be instantiated in new pedagogy and curricula. The CCSS in ELA were not thought through. The author(s) clearly did not understand what would happen to these good ideas, buried in the material ancillary to the standards [sic] when people started created lesson plans and curricula based on those skills lists.
And the skills lists themselves, well, where does one begin? They don’t evince any understanding of the domains that they cover or of how learning takes place in those domains. There is a lot of real science related to each. If we had standards in physics like these standards in ELA, then those physics standards would be setting kids up to be tested on their knowledge of the ether and of phlogiston and of the inherent energy that an object uses up as it moves or exerts in order to remain at rest.
cx: The incoherent “and now for something completely different” CCSS-aligned curricula now being produced by the big box publishers almost completely IGNORE this.
Comments here make sense to us because we are living what is going on. Robert’s analogy gives me an idea. Diane has given us the lengthy detailed information we need, but what phrases and analogies and short stories can we develop to use to hammer home our message and break through to those not paying attention as closely. Our own propaganda campaign but based on the truth of what children, teachers, schools and families need.
Mike is on the mark. The real campaign begins with the stories of what children, teachers, schools and families now need and what they have endured under this two decade-long assault.
Education Nation adverts proudly announce “Sponsored by PEARSON”. That says it all.
We understand Coleman and the garbage he spouts, but the public watching probably bought into his ideas and reasons. Did you notice he still did not answer the question from the student. I want to see burned out students, those who are failing in the system, those who are turned off by school, those not going to college, maybe some of the inner city students who can’t afford to leave neighborhoods. These are the students for which schools are failing. Put them on a show. Just like in my high school, when a mayor or congressman comes to visit they always go to AC classes or A level classes never the C level. or special ed. These student come from taxpayers families and will be taxpayers and voters in the future also.
The schools are not failing. The communities are in despair. The schools are doing the best they can for the kids with great needs.
Coleman was on the show, but what about Diane Ravitch?
Inner city schools are failing. If we keep doing the same thing we will get the same results. Reformers are calling for charters, vouchers, E-Schools, etc. They are calling for somthing different. What are we asking for? I know poverty needs to be addressed, but families in the inner cities are crying for change. What can we do with the schools we have to make a difference? I don’t read about any plans or ideas to make the existing schools different. That is one reason why reformers are winning the people over. A new charter opens and families flock to it looking for change. How can we make them look at the public schools the same way?
The corporate reformers are winning no one over. They have no popular base. They sing the same old rightwing song that was previously sung by Milton Friedman and George Wallace. Choice does not produce better education or equity. It produces segregation. If there were a convention of these corporate reformers across the nation, excluding paid staff and PR people, they couldn’t fill a small stadium. Millions of Americans know they are selling bunk. That is why the American people have never once passed a referendum for vouchers. The online industry are vultures who make profit while producing inferior education. Charters are deregulated, and have both the advantages and disadvantages of deregulation: they range from good to awful. Why would we want to re-create a dual school system? One that gets to pick and choose their students (charters), the other that is required to take everyone, including the ones pushed out of the charters.
For readers of this blog interested in an expose of Milton Friedman’s Chicago School influence, I recommend Naomi Klein’s “The Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism”. The following passage was typical of those that caught my attention.
“All these incarnations share a commitment to the policy trinity – the elimination of the public sphere, total liberation for corporations and skeletal social spending – but none of the various names for the ideology seem quite adequate. . . . In every country where Chicago School policies have been applied over the past three decades, what has emerged is a powerful ruling alliance between a few very large corporations and a class of mostly wealthy politicians – with hazy and ever-shifting lines between the two groups. . . . Far from freeing the market from the state, these political and corporate elites have simply merged, trading favors to secure the right to appropriate precious resources previously held in the public domain. [GE2L2R note: I would contend that as it is now being applied to education, it is our most precious resource that is at risk – our children!] . . . A more accurate term for a system that erases the boundaries between Big Government and Big Business in not liberal, conservative or capitalist but corporatist. (p18)
Diane, I agree with you all the way about charters, e-schools, and vouchers. I watch the city of Trenton open a charter and frustrated parents put their names in to place their children. They are looking for answers and solutions for education. I once asked for positive blogs and was directed to Mission Hill school. They are working on finding solutions, not making excuses. I am a retired special ed teacher and my wife still teaches 5th grade. Discussing this the other day she remarked that “If we continue to do the same thing we will continue to get the same results”. Public education needs to come up with ideas to improve schools not just continue to say “cure” poverty. Poverty will always be here. We need some kind of change in how we educate, if that means a movement of jobs so be it. The unions and districts need to cooperate. Government needs to relax regulations on public schools to allow changes. I would like to see more positive blogs and links to see what public education is doing. I read your site everyday and recently bought your book.
Can someone help me find the experience(s) that would have provided the background and knowledge to know how children learn at various stages in their development (read Piaget!) or what needs to be done to improve the process?
http://about.collegeboard.org/leadership
David Coleman
David grew up in a family of educators and followed them into the field. He went to public school in New York City before enrolling at Yale University. At Yale, he taught reading to high school students from low-income families and started Branch, an innovative community service program for inner-city students in New Haven, Conn. Based on the success of Branch, David received a Rhodes Scholarship, which he used to study English literature at the University of Oxford and classical educational philosophy at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. He returned to the U.S. to work at McKinsey & Company for five years, where he led much of the firm’s pro bono work in education.
With a team of educators, David founded the Grow Network, an organization committed to making assessment results truly useful for teachers, parents and students. The Grow Network delivered breakthrough-quality reports for parents and teachers as well as individualized learning guides for students. McGraw-Hill acquired the Grow Network in 2005.
In 2007, David left McGraw-Hill and cofounded Student Achievement Partners, a nonprofit that assembles educators and researchers to design actions based on evidence to improve student outcomes. Student Achievement Partners played a leading role in developing the Common Core State Standards in math and literacy. David left Student Achievement Partners in the fall of 2012 to become president of the College Board.
David was named to the 2013 Time 100, the magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. He has been recognized as one of Time magazine’s “11 Education Activists for 2011” and was one of the NewSchools Venture Fund Change Agents of the Year for 2012.
Quite a resume! And yet the proof is in the work. People in the software industry say, “it doesn’t matter what school you attended. It matters whether you can write the code.” Well, Mr. Coleman wrote the CCSS in ELA, and these are amateurish, and not, alas in the root sense of that word (from the French amateur, “lover of”).
Student voice is exceedingly powerful – school is, as you say their reality. Sam Levin was 16 when he founded a student-run school in his public high school (Monument Mountain High, Great Barrington MA). I think it says an incredible amount about Sam and the admin at the school that this program, The Independent Project, is now in its fourth successful year of student-driven high school education. http://bit.ly/15NGCae Imagine the speed at which empowered students and individual schools could make a difference.