When I visited Finland, which is widely recognized as one of the top performing nations in the world, every educator spoke of their goals. They want their students to be happy, healthy, and enthusiastic learners. They did not care about test scores. The years from the beginning of school (at age 7) to high school graduation are considered a “standardized-testing-free zone,” as Pasi Sahlberg put it in his book “Finnish Lessons.”
In the U.S., our leaders want to turn schools into pressure cookers. They want to keep the students and teachers in a constant state of stress. Students worry if they will pass or fail. They worry if their performance on the test might cause their teacher to lose his or her job. Teachers worry that their students’ scores might ruin their chance of staying employed. They worry about keeping their job. They worry that their test-based evaluation might put them out of work, and they won’t be able to pay their mortgage or feed their family.
Corporate reformers think that stress is good. They think that teachers have a cushy job, and students are slackers. They want to see more stress.
But stress is not good for children or adults. Wendy Lecker wrote this article, summarizing the warnings of professional associations. She says that the current obsession with high-stakes testing has created an unhealthy climate in the schools. She calls it “state-sanctioned child abuse.” Fear breaks children. It does not make them joyful learners.
The current so-called reforms, she writes, “has created a school environment that is devastating to our children’s development and mental health.
“Our most vulnerable children often suffer “toxic stress:” prolonged activation of the body’s stress response system brought on by chronic traumatic experiences. Toxic stress disrupts the development of the areas of the brain associated with learning and can have lifelong consequences.”
How much longer must we endure the consequences of truly disastrous policies shaped by people who have no understanding of children, learning, or the conditions necessary for education to flourish?
I think the end is in sight. This house of cards will fall because it hurts children. And we are not a mean nation. Kindness and generosity will eventually prevail over harmful policies. The parents of this nation will demand an end to policies that not only hurt their children but ruin education.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Diane- I agree with your post up until your conclusions. In Finland the teachers are highly competent content experts with extensive training. And 40% of students receive individualized and specialized instruction. Americans have to value public education and that includes a demand and expectation that our nation’s teacher preparation programs will be overhauled to deliver consistent, research-based instruction that allows these students and future teachers to be as rigorously trained as those in Finland. Every child in America deserves a globally enviable Public Education. Further, the Common Core in its present roll-out is being decimated by you and a faction of educators and so called education reformers. This too is where we will have to agree to disagree. As a tireless education reformer I strongly believe in national standards. I believe that school age children are not the properties of their local communities or states, and must one day be prepared to compete for employment across the U.S. and every industrialized nation. The failure of Common Core is both its current design, corporate backing and ultimately the fact that teachers are not uniformly trained to deliver the same level of instruction to every child. I too urge every reader to read Finnish Lessons, along with Poverty is not a Learning Disability and You Love Me!! Don’t Accept me as I am. Every child in America matters, and so does their right to the 14th Amendment. Teachers must matter and be held in high esteem, but that means a national effort to raise their standards of teaching and then pay them in accord with their level of expertise and pride in teaching.
“Every child in America deserves a globally enviable Public Education.”
Then GIVE my children that education. Stop testing them to death. Stop treating them like nothing more than data points. Give them the arts. Give them reasonable class sizes. Don’t make them sit through math classes that are too far ahead (because 2nd-graders don’t really need to be starting on times tables) or too far behind (the THIRD YEAR on integers – REALLY?!?!) their classmates, but they must be taught lock-step because the Policymakers (whos kids don’t generally go to these kinds of schools says so!). Give them recess in school when they’re young, let them play inside and outside, give them playtime, give them time and tools to be creative, don’t make 5YO’s and 6YO’s sit in chairs for 5 hours a day practicing bubble sheets and learning how to use mice for the sole purpose of PARCC and MAP testing. Let the teachers TEACH – it’s what they went to college FOR!
I’m sorry, but what kids are getting thanks to Race to the Top is NOT a “globally enviable Public Education.” They’re getting stuff shoveled at them with little to no regard outside their teacher-student relationship (which has also been altered, and not for the better) as to their strengths – who in what country would envy THAT?
“The failure of Common Core is both its current design, corporate backing and ultimately the fact that teachers are not uniformly trained to deliver the same level of instruction to every child.”
State Education Inequity Real World Example — one of my relatives is in the Navy, and his family has moved every 2-3 years. His daughter has attended public K-12 schools in Connecticut, Virginia, California, Hawaii, and Illinois. He’s mentioned one of the great challenges has been his daughter’s adjustment to the differences in level of instruction between states. When they went to Hawaii she told her Dad she felt dumbed down, as the classes were way behind what she had come from. Two years later when they moved from Hawaii to Illinois, she felt way behind her Illinois classmates academically. His wife mentioned that it seemed there was nearly a 2 year difference in academic content at the same grade level between the best schools and the worst schools their kids had attended across different states.
Implementation is the key — how many government programs sounded like great ideas, only to see poor implementation cause massive unintended consequences: charter schools, social security, government backed mortgage lending policies, etc. Total deregulation of public education seems unsavory, but the currently scripted Common Core seems just as unsavory.
“. . . school age children are not the properties of their local communities or states, and must one day be prepared to compete for employment across the U.S. and every industrialized nation.”
Magnificent edudeformer speak!
Keep using the edudeformers words to reinforce those myths and ideologies.
Señor Swacker: if I interpret your comment accurately, thank you for pointing out that a public education for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN is not synonymous with a narrowly conceived focus on job training today for [mostly] subservient positions, some of which may not even exist in the not-too-distant future.
😕
So let’s use another definition for public education. Since the leading charterites/privatizers are [at least in their own minds] exemplary Connoisseurs of EduExcellence, how ‘bout we mandate [damn the torpedoes! full speed ahead! in Cagebusting EduLingo] that all parents have the choice of sending their children to public schools with the same resources, stability, and all-around EduExcellence as, say—
Harpeth Hall [re Michelle Rhee]. Cranbrook [re Mitt Romney]. U of Chicago Lab Schools [re Mayor Rahm Emanuel]. Sidwell Friends [President and Mrs. Obama]. Lakeside School [re Bill Gates]. *Add your own favorites.*
What’s good enough for THEIR OWN CHILDREN—literally, “globally enviable” education—should be just the ticket for everyone else. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that the edufrauds promised that charters and vouchers would give “poor” parents the same choices as “rich” parents.
As the owner of this blog reminded us a while ago, “A promise made is a debt unpaid.”
Let’s start cashing in those IOUs.
😎
Finland pays for the college preparation of their teachers through the master’s level. In the US, not only are teachers responsible for paying for higher education themselves, at both the bachelor’s and master’s levels, but when teacher candidates are required to participate in clinical experiences with children in schools, which is a minimum of 100 hours in my state– and when they must work full time for a semester as a student teacher, they are not paid. If they have jobs, they must leave them and rely on family and student loans for subsistence.
There are many obstacles which may cause a student to struggle but the most common causes are fear and maturity, two factors that greatly determine a person’s ability or inability to learn but are rarely ever considered as relevant to education. The effect of fear is even more evident when you have been in a classroom where fear has not been generated by adults and imposed upon children. You will really be able to see the contrast between a fear & punishment based system and one where children are free to learn.
Apparently Frank Bruni would disagree too, at least as far as what he has written in today’s New York Times Opinion section.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/opinion/sunday/bruni-are-kids-too-coddled.html?ref=opinion)
“It was an impolitic bit of profiling. Gratuitous, too. But if you follow the fevered lamentations over the Common Core, look hard at some of the complaints from parents and teachers, and factor in the modern cult of self-esteem, you can guess what set Duncan off: a concern, wholly justified, that tougher instruction not be rejected simply because it makes children feel inadequate, and that the impulse to coddle kids not eclipse the imperative to challenge them.”
“Aren’t aspects of school supposed to be relatively mirthless? Isn’t stress an acceptable byproduct of reaching higher and digging deeper? Aren’t certain fixed judgments inevitable? And isn’t mettle established through hard work?”
You’ve written that “Corporate reformers think that stress is good. They think that teachers have a cushy job, and students are slackers. They want to see more stress.” Bruni’s writing supports your claim!
One thing that occurred to me reading his column was that based on some of the specifics he cited, it seemed to me like he’s been reading your blog, though I don’t know that to be true . . .
In other words, “Blame the victims” (paraphrasing Bruni). I wonder what Bruni’s interest is in defending the status quo of reform?
Is he just a naive collaborator or does he stand to lose something if Duncan’s misguided reforms collapse?
I too read the Bruni column and wondered about his points and who he is listening to. I also read the Marc Tucker blog Bruni cited because Tucker is speaking in CO next month. I am going to the Tucker speech and am searching for a metaphor to express my distress at the fact that, in the name of rigor/CCSC, what we are doing (and I think he advocates) is turning up the heat on our most vulnerable children – children who, by the way, DO come to school “ready to learn” but don’t come to school “needing to fail.” The GAP cannot be closed by trying to make an ice cold pot of water boil in 2 seconds so all the pots of water (ice cold and already hot) reach the same temperature at the same time. We all want vulnerable children to “catch up” to children who come to school more ready to have the heat turned up – in other words, with the warmth of the experiences, opportunities, language, etc. they can put to immediate use to “meet” the heat of “rigorous” CCSS. I am SO glad we don’t have CCSS for skiing. I decided to learn to ski. I’m over 60, arrived at the slopes ready to learn but without much experience, was relieved to be on the bunny slope with a good teacher and not have to pass a test every 15 minutes that made me feel inadequate (and old!).
Take a look at Marc Tucker’s Dear Hillary letter and you’ll get an idea about where he’s coming from: http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/marc_tucker/
JustCaresAlot, I couldn’t finish reading the Tucker Manifesto; I just got this creepy feeling that he was designing a system for turning out economic production units. I didn’t see much that struck a “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” note. There has got to be some happy medium that prepares people to lead productive, fulfilling lives that feed the soul as well as the body.
The toxic stress pointed out by Wendy is also being experienced by those of us adults who are daily fighting the Common Core, teacher and union bashing, school funding inadequacies, the privatization of our schools via charters and vouchers, and all the other “reform” shtick, whether we’re on the firing line inside a classroom, parenting school-age children, or just focusing on the corporate agenda as concerned citizens and informed activists. It’s making us anxiety-ridden, affecting our work lives and interactions with others who don’t share our views, interrupting our sleep and relaxation, etc. What’s more, it’s all going to get worse as the new assessments begin to come online.
At some point in the not-too-distant future — maybe spring or early summer 2014, before full implementation of the Common Core and use of its assessments becomes mandatory in most states — aren’t we all going to have to take to the streets of our state capitals just to get the attention of our legislators, who have the power to stop all this and fire the bums who occupy our state depts. of education? Taking to the streets of the nation’s capital, of course, would make not one iota of difference. And we need to really, really step up the media campaign across this nation!
I could not agree more with this assessment of chronic testing practices within the U.S. It causes undo stress for both children, parents, and teachers. As a tutor I see this everytime I go out to assist a child with reading, writing, and mathematics. It’s difficult to get the student to sit for long as they desperately need multiple breaks. Oftentimes I spoon feed the information because there just isn’t enough time to allow the child to think about the assignment in front of them. I hope we see changes soon. It’s disheartening as an educator to see this happening before my eyes. I’m not teaching anymore, I’m programming.
Thank you for this post, Diane. I hope that you are right. But I have my doubts. A great deal of money is riding on the current deforms. Our wack-job plutocrats and pundits have found plenty of collaborators among the educrats. I suspect that we shall have to wait until the new tests utterly fail (which they will) for people to start seeing what is wrong with the deformer approach. And these people will probably be savvy enough to delay that until after the roll-out of their computer-adaptive curricula based on the new, egregiously backward “standards.”
But clearly, with everything that we do in school, we are teaching one of two things: the love or hatred of learning, and the standards-and-testing regime teaches the latter.
Whatever happens, I am pretty confident that several cohorts of children will only know this kind of education. It probably will self-destruct at some point but certainly not in time for my children. It is just utter bullsh*** that on top of every other thing I have to do as a parent I now have to protect my children from a DOE that doesn’t understand that children are not simply mini-adults, that children learn best by doing and that in order to learn deeply, students have to feel free enough to risk failure. And they need to do it over and over again.
Also, this “no excuses” stuff is racist. Extending this managerial ideology to all schools is just an attempt to avoid confronting the fact that low-achieving children need more supports. Test-based anxiety is the last thing in the world they need as learners or growing human beings.
Yes, it’s a national tragedy, Emmy. I think of the Common Core and of these high-stakes tests and this line comes to mind: “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.” It’s all very, very evil. So many kids subjected to such extensive harm. To mandated child abuse.
If “they know not what they do,” it’s not because nobody’s told them but because they refuse to consider that they might be wrong.
It’s to the point where I’m not sure I’ll live long enough to forgive them for the changes in my children just this school year alone. 😦
Reblogged this on Roy F. McCampbell's Blog.
I think this post goes to the heart of the argument that caring for the “whole child” should be the purpose of a quality public education; an over-reliance on “selecting and sorting” kids and teachers based on standardized tests results flies in the face of that laudable goal.
The embedding of stress in and outside the workplace goes under the name of Labor Discipline, which serves to expand the political, economic and social reach of the Overclass.
Including things like structural unemployment, increased temporary, part time and contract labor, fiscal austerity, privatization, deregulation and union busting, Labor Discipline – euphemized as “flexible labor markets” – is an explicit goal of the neoliberal project.
In the schools, this serves a twofold purpose. It weakens the autonomy, morale and longevity of teachers, while training young people to tolerate stress, obedience to authority (no matter how incompetent, absurd or venal) and tedium.
Since that’s what the overwhelming majority of today’s young people can expect to face during their working lives – at least for those fortunate enough to have a job – that’s what the so-called reformers really mean when they talk about being “career ready.”
^^thumbs way up^^
Yes, the standards-and-testing regime is excellent obedience training for the proles. But the monsters and idiots engineering this stuff don’t really understand what they are creating. I say to them, “Be careful what you wish for.”
Michael,
All that you state is reflected in our absence of manufacturing here, even if it did involve robotics. It is also reflected in the absence of a true living wage, pensions, union strength and bargaining power, our tax inequities, scrambling around for a real system of guarantees with regard to healthcare, a paltry 2 weeks off per year when you begin a job and a slow climb toward increased vacation time, and an attack against social security.
We have a system where our elected officials favor the “overclass” more than the people who put them in office and pay their salaries . . . . . . .
One need look no further than Western Europe, which even in its worst times of austerity, is light years ahead in civilization than the teenage-istic, self absorbed United States.
We have many lessons to be learned, we Americans.
“In the U.S., our leaders want to turn schools into pressure cookers. They want to keep the students and teachers in a constant state of stress. Students worry if they will pass or fail. They worry if their performance on the test might cause their teacher to lose his or her job. Teachers worry that their students’ scores might ruin their chance of staying employed. They worry about keeping their job. They worry that their test-based evaluation might put them out of work, and they won’t be able to pay their mortgage or feed their family.”
I happen to believe in assessments as a tool for teachers and students, not one for employment decisions ever!
I also believe in academic rigor when it is delightful and engaging and involves creativity and critical thought as major and dominant lenses, rather than mainly test scores.
I believe most in teacher-created assessment because it tells the most and is the most organic, accurate gauge of learning because the teacher knows the student with the most depth.
However, I realize that as teachers are more and more pressured to get scores up in order to keep their jobs, they too will knowlingly or unknowingly subject their students to horrendous and stress producing pressures while students generally don’t question such pressures.
Oppression without questioning is fast becoming a theme in Americian cultural psyche.
Our students, having acclimated to such conditions for 13 years, will enter the work force with the same outlook. . . . always increasing productivity without really seeing any substantive gains in their own capacity to build wealth and mobility. Always working harder and spending more money just to meet basic needs rather than forming unions and thinking as collectivists.
This is one of the ultimate pernicious dangers of our education system as it has evolved to date.
Whose interests does this gestalt serve?
correction:
” . . . the teacher knows with the most depth his/her students, more than Pearson, for example . . . . . .”
I wish the opponents of the current reforms (or “‘reforms'” or “deforms” or “rheeforms” or “reform$” or “rheedeform$” depending on what tired permutation you prefer) would spend more time giving detailed step by step explanations of an alternative model for closing the achievement gap. Then, they could get some billionaires in their corner and start funding initiatives that might actually work.
The opponents do a much better job explaining how and why the current reforms don’t work than they do offering a viable alternative. Their alternative often ends up just being a sort of wish list (“respect teachers!” “end poverty!” “provide a wonderful safe nurturing learning environment for all children!”) than an actual alternative.
What I’d love to see is a comprehensive plan for reforming the teaching profession, starting with the teachers colleges. Right now its more difficult to get a certificate to be a bartender than it is to get a master’s degree in education from most teachers colleges.
Thank you so much for bashing teachers in one of the few safe places we have these days.
I’d really like to see proof of your argument that it’s harder to be a bartender than a teacher. Common Core requires proof for argumentative essays, after all.
As for alternatives, read Diane Ravitch’s most recent book, Reign of Error. She has a lot of alternatives to what we do now.
I’m not bashing teachers, I’m bashing the teachers colleges. I mentioned masters degrees but this is doubly true at the undergraduate level.
Ask anybody in higher education what they think of education majors when there aren’t any in the room. Everybody knows that education is one of the least serious academic majors there is.
Diane Ravitch actually seems acutely aware of this. She has stated that she is against the idea of an undergraduate major in education.
Everyone also knows that an education masters degree is one of the least serious masters’ degrees out there. Everyone except people with education masters’ degrees, that is.
It goes right on up the line. Few people in higher education respect the EdD degree either.
Whats annoying is that in teacher circles you’re not allowed to criticize the teachers’ colleges because doing so gets you branded as an ANTI-TEACHER GOON WHO PROBABLY SUPPORTS ALL THE CORPORATE RHEEDEFORM$$$$!!!!
As for Reign of Error, I certainly agree with some of Ravitch’s proposed solutions, I just think that that section of the book was under-argued compared to her razor-sharp critique of the current wave of reforms.
How could it possibly be harder to get a bartenders license than a Masters in education? For starters, doesn’t only one of them entail about 5-6 years of post secondary coursework and practicum time?
A while back someone wrote about the stress her son with autism was undergoing at school. Maybe this will help slightly. I hope that at the very least, it can relieve the pressure that some special education teachers are under because they are receiving erroneous information and directives that go against logic and the laws.
Several weeks ago, I attended a compliance law refresher seminar sponsored by the WEA. I emailed the presenter and asked her the following question. Is there anything in IDEA or the WACs about special education teachers being required to write IEP goals to grade level standards? She got back to me this week, and here was her answer.
I (she) consulted on the answer just to make sure:
As for the IEP goal question – we still follow WAC 392-172A-03090 (1) (b) for annual goal development and it does not require IEP goals writing to grade level standards. If required to write IEP goals to grade level standards – well – how would that be ‘specially designed instruction?’
In her own words: Remember we write goals on specific skills a student needs that are not provided to him/her in their general education world. We write for the unique needs that are not being met. What skill needed that is not being provided? Prescriptive to the student: one size does not fit all: individualized!
Here we go again! The editorial writer thoroughly believes that school isn’t supposed to be mirthful all the time (or, probably at all). You asked how much longer we will have this negative frame of mind and expressed hope that parents won’t put up with stressful conditions much longer. I’m afraid that certain beliefs and memes that have become a national hypnosis can only be changed by angry and organized students in revolt. The following is my analysis of how we got here.
School is as American as Mom, apple pie and baseball. We love our schools. Yet, complaining about school is as common as GIs griping about military life or taxpayers bellyaching about the waste of their hard-earned money. It’s permissible for us to criticize them and admit their faults up to a point, but only up to a point. After that, everyone gets incredibly offended and defensive. We love school, and we love to hate school. It’s a classic love/hate relationship. One might call us all quite ‘schizo’ in this regard.
The first day of school doesn’t have to be traumatic for children who are enrolled for the first time, but separation anxiety is very common. Some children adjust better than others, whether it is a consequence of adequate preparation by parents beforehand, simply a matter of a child having achieved greater independence and personal security through varied experience, or a child’s more adventurous and bold disposition as a result of innate qualities and characteristics. Some kindergartners take months to begin to feel comfortable despite the best efforts of harried and welcoming teachers. Others endeavor to take over on the first day. Even the most caring and qualified teachers can’t always totally fulfill the “in loco parentis” role, but rather are required to divide their attention among one or two dozen anxious kids, or more.
Part of the whole effort to dispel fears and to minimize the trauma of starting school and developing a regular pattern of attendance is to reassure very young children as regularly and emphatically as possible that school is a fantastic place to make friends and participate in activities designed especially for them. Most parents and teachers also place a great deal of emphasis on the benefits of learning, and it never hurts to rave about how much fun it is to learn new things and to grow to become like them, or like an older relative or acquaintance.
Some parents do a much better job of paving the way and helping their kids adjust than others, just as some teachers are much better than others at recognizing signs of distress and quelling fears and reducing apprehension. Some schools seem to have a more inviting and enthusiastic atmosphere. In virtually all cases however, the messages that reassure and praise the school experience are more or less relentless for the duration. They are neither subliminal, nor subtle messages. They are overt, direct, and public and they persist right up to one’s senior year.
Fast forward twelve years, for those kids who have endured for the prescribed period. Graduation is enveloped in a series of traditions, rituals, reflections, transformations, and rationalizations that are typically dramatized and imbued with massive amounts of effusive emotion, along with thrilling sensations of accomplishment and relief. The whole phenomenon is absolutely astounding.
Some few of the more fortunate and talented have never had any significant struggles during the entire twelve years, although they may feel as if their journey was exceptionally difficult if they had teachers who pushed them to their limits or did homework when they would have rather have been otherwise occupied.
For the majority however, years of uncertainty, anxiety, and trepidation are suddenly relegated to the dustbin of forgotten traumas, or even glorified and spoken of as if they were a survival of trial by fire. The crises and conflicts, humiliations and anger, and the hours of boredom, confusion, and frustration are better seen as a necessary initiation into the travails and tribulations certain to follow in adult life. The speeches and congratulations at graduation ceremonies give one a sense of purpose and pride that are unmatched by anything except possibly testimonials at weddings and funerals.
Except for a tiny minority, school is a mixed bag with positive and rewarding experiences part of the time, although not necessarily as a consequence of meaningful learning. There are typically good relationships with caring teachers, regardless of a student’s ability or level of engagement, and classmates with whom one has connections and identifies. Both the kid who loves a difficult challenge with the satisfaction of rising to meet it, and the kid who struggles and seldom seems to experience the ecstasy of new knowledge and understanding are likely to believe that it is all worth the effort in the end. Who of us didn’t hear that narrative repeated hundreds – no, thousands of times in classes? The popular theme became a widespread meme, and the end result is now mass hypnosis from which almost no one is immune.
Homeschooling has become popular, but is still schooling, and there is supposed to be a rigid adherence to the regular curriculum with testing at various junctures to verify that particular milestones have been reached. People talk about “de-schooling” and “un-schooling”, but proponents don’t get a lot of traction. It’s a bit crazy to imagine that society can ever function without schools. Kids need to study and learn. Education is the key to a good life. Everybody agrees. That’s why attendance in school was made mandatory generations ago.
Still, we hear those voices. Complainers, complaining. They are a nuisance. They probably just don’t appreciate the small miracles that have been accomplished and the benefits schools have provided to so many. We shouldn’t ignore them. However, their only valid purpose is in nudging us to find formulae and techniques and methods by which we can narrow the margins of error. A few problems and a few failures are no reason to give up on schools as an institution! This is just a technical problem, or a series of technical problems. We can fix it. This is America, isn’t it? Look on the bright side.
Obviously, we have to find ways to involve parents more and motivate them to support this important work. More money would help for sure, and ways will surely be found to generate more funding and to distribute it equitably and efficiently. We MUST reduce the emphases on standardized tests, since the science that evaluates the evaluations tells us that our focus should be elsewhere. We MUST perfect the curriculum and most certainly, local officials and local teachers should have more input and influence. False hope reigns. Keep telling yourself these things. Who’s kidding whom?
A look at the history of schooling, if one is honest and willing to face cold hard facts, is that failure has been a much bigger factor than anyone believes. Our need to accept what we were told so often and so decisively makes it extremely difficult to process the significance of the numbers and the flood of stories behind them. Real lives and real people point specifically to school experiences that served them poorly. Blaming students isn’t any more rational or realistic than blaming parents or teachers when large percentages are represented. If high numbers of students drop out, flunk, or fail to graduate with the essential skills for life and work, the schools are indeed squarely responsible for those inadequacies. The number of kids that can’t learn to read, think, or meet minimal intellectual and academic goals in twelve years is miniscule.
If we want to increase the levels of education for our youth, it is imperative that we stop thinking of schools as sacred; that we stop expecting or demanding miracles and concentrate on the relationships children have with the adults with whom they interact; that we stop defending schools based on mythology or irrational fealty and patriotism, and that we stop treating children as ignorant and reluctant learners who won’t ever become educated if we don’t coerce them and rush them into preparations for adulthood a decade before they are in the mood. Education IS sacred; School is NOT education.
Education should be encouraged for every child. Yet, education is different for every child and no one can prescribe, engineer, or force it upon anyone. This may come as a shock and may appear to be bad news or a falsehood, but schools cannot educate, and for many young people, that is not where they primarily become educated. Society needs schools where children can be safe and supervised when parents aren’t able to be with them. Schools should offer opportunities for learning all sorts of things and for socialization. Parents should be encouraged to participate and choose the things their children focus on, or even the sort of values to be promoted, as long as no religion or creed is discriminated against and none is favored. Education will happen occasionally, if the climate is hospitable, and engaged and capable teachers are paid adequately and left alone to inspire and instruct.
Innumerable practical realities and rigorous human behavioral science over the last century prove beyond a scintilla of doubt that education cannot be legislated, any more than morality or beliefs and attitudes can be legislated. Laws that compel school attendance are like a heavy poisonous chlorine cloud over schools, making it impossible to breathe without special protections. Such laws cannot exist without authoritarianism, bureaucracy, regimentation, formulaic policies, and attempts to achieve and enforce uniformity. They represent the lowest common denominator. These conclusions are inescapable and young people are making the connection.
Recently, I overheard a conversation in which a straight “A” student admitted that he hates school. This is the reality for millions. Denial and dissembling and pretending that changing the wallpaper will correct endemic problems only postpones the inevitable. We know on some level that more is needed than school reform. Getting that poisonous gas out of the air will make a world of difference literally overnight. What in hell are we waiting for?
The title of the article, BTW, is “THE IRREPRESSIBLE NEED TO BELIEVE IN THE EFFICACY OF SCHOOLING”.
Yes. School is not education. The sooner we understand this the sooner we will be able to use the time set aside in the school day for transformative experiences that over time will result in the ability to think.
Emmy,
Your comment brings to mind a great book. It is: Kline, P. (2002). Why America’s Children Can’t Think: Creating Independent Minds for the Twenty-first Century. Makawao, Maui, HI: Inner Ocean. Another source from my bibliography that I think might click with you is: Matthews, J. (1998). Somatic Knowing and Education. The Educational Forum, 62. A third is: Simons, M. (1985). Learning to Experience. Educational Philosophy and Theory. 17, 1, 8. (I found this by Googling the title and author’s name. the entire article is copied at the first entry). Lastly, I can’t praise too highly the book:Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh. New York, NY: Basic Books. It’s a very lengthy read but so enlightening and revolutionary that you will never regret taking the time to read it.
Teachers are of inestimable importance and I support public schooling (if that wasn’t made clear in my dissertation), however we should be fighting for voluntary attendance so that kids can be freed to grow and develop with guidance and supervision, which will allow them to seek out educational opportunities wherever they present themselves. Indoctrination and socialization are legitimate functions and school is the place for them, but they must be distinguished clearly from education. That will never be the case as long as attendance laws are in effect.
The US public schools are simply a reflection of mental illness that has become common in our society. Do the words “narcissistic”, “obsessive”, “delusional”, and “gelotophobic” characterize what we see in our politicians and school administrators? Do you know anyone who is not eligible for a diagnosis from the DSM V?
The US “bullying” system has now become a meme in public education. Our only hope is to rescue our young children who are still salvageable, put yellow crime scene tape around all elementary schools, and paint a skull and cross bones on the front doors. Do not reopen the schools until we can follow either the Montessori method or the Finnish method. Otherwise, we are looking into the eyes of the destruction of our future.
Here is a video about the Finnish public schools that is worth watching. There are a lot of similarities between their practices and what we do in Montessori and Waldorf schools in the U.S. The narrator states that this is what happens when you have relaxed schools free from politicians where nobody gets left behind. http://youtu.be/rlYHWpRR4yc
Thank you Diane and Friends of Public Education,
In Ohio, we are engaged in action steps that hits at the epicenter of this post, the mental health and well being of not only our children, but our teachers in this high stakes testing era of corporate education “reform.” The obsession with data for ranking children, schools and merit pay scaffolding has “driven out” discovery, inquiry, creativity as authentic teaching and learning in our classrooms is continually compromised by test driven curriculum.
Our grassroots public education advocacy groups in Ohio are pushing back, one of which is Central Ohio Friends of Public Education, under the umbrella of “Ohio Friends of Public Education.” Our statewide and regional groups developed as action plans from our 2 four-state regional conferences we planned in conjunction with Parents Across America in February and July of 2013 (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan).
Central Ohio Friends of Public Education (https://www.facebook.com/COFPE?ref=hl) is in the process of planning our first public forum with a panel of experts tentatively titled, “Join Us in Protecting our Kids from Testing Abuse.”
We are in the midst of organizing a panel comprised of an educational psychologist, child psychologist, pediatrician, parent/grandparent, students, teacher, superintendent, and school district treasurer.
We have had 4 meetings since September with a core group of 40 active members, plus a steering committee. Our steering committee has solidified plans and logistics for our public forum on high stakes testing and its impact on the mental health and physical well being of our children and teachers. We are strategically timing the public forum to take place just as test prep ramps up in February of 2014 for state standardized testing in the spring.
We also are planning a follow-up workshop which we will advertise at our public forum for parents who want to explore opt out options. The intent of the hands on workshop is to engage and educate parents to use their legal recourse to exercise their civil rights in choosing to opt their children out of high stakes standardized testing and test prep materials as well.
We started our statewide group, Ohio Friends of Public Education, in July, with parents, teachers, superintendents, former First Lady of Ohio, Frances Strickland who is an educational psychologist, school district treasurers and students. Our goal was to develop 5 regional groups under the umbrella of Ohio Friends of Public Education, we currently have 3 active groups, Northwest Ohio Friends of Public Education, Northeast Ohio Friends of Public Education and Central Ohio Friends of Public Education.
We are organized, we are on the move and we are growing every day as a citizen-driven, non-partisan movement to inform and engage Ohioans, at the community level, to support and strengthen public schools.
Diane, you are correct, the tide is turning, the smokescreen is lifting, the truth is emerging, our voices are joining together; parents, grandparents, educators, superintendents, school board members, psychologists, doctors, university professors, concerned citizens… our children are not commodities to be traded in a hedge fund marketplace monetizing public education for corporate gain. We will not only continue to educate our children, we will guide, inspire and motivate them to be the best human beings and students they can possibly be.
The force of truth, knowledge and love cannot be driven away by data driven profiteering, the house of cards is coming down.
Maureen Reedy
Columbus, Ohio
Maureen,
This is amazing! More power to you. You are a prime example of citizen activism. . . . it’s growing, it’s contagious, it’s critical.
Keep it up.
My children have found that exams that determine their actual grades create stress, while exams that have no impact on Thierry grades are ignored. Dr. Ravitch confirmed this when she spoke of the difficulty in getting 17 year olds to take the NAEP exams seriously (that is to be stressed about it). Teachers are able to create stress in the earlier grades, much to the benefit of the folks that write the NAEP exams.
I am confused. What is the point exactly?
The point is that the “toxic stress” for high school students, at least, is created by teacher written and graded exams. The MAP exams in my state are not on a high school students radar screen.
How do you know? Do you have any data showing and measuring student stress from teacher created exams?
I am really confused. . . . genuinely.
I would have thought this was evident to anyone who has raised a teenager, but perhaps I am more sensitive as finals approach for my son in the fall semester.
Perhaps Dr. Ravitch’s experiences could be taken as evidence. I reproduce her post from a thread some time ago, with my capitalization to emphasise important sections:
dianerav
October 29, 2013 at 6:05 pm
Bernie, while I was a member of the NAGB board, we devoted an entire meeting to the problem of 12th grade/17-year-old motivation. Frankly, Bernie, THEY KNOW THE NAEP TESTS DON”T COUNT, AND THEY ARE NOT MOTIVATED TO DO THEIR BEST. We discussed giving pizza, prizes, anything that might make them care. They doodled on the answer sheets; some kids answered all A or B or C or D, or made patterns. I sorry to say that WE NEVER FIGURED OUT HOW TO MOTIVATE 17-YEAR-OLDS TO CARE ABOUT THEIR SCORES ON A NO-STAKES TEST.
Here is the link for your convenience: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/10/28/providence-journal-analysis-of-a-hatchet-job-on-me/comment-page-1/#comment-346339
Later, Dr. Ravitch posts
dianerav
October 29, 2013 at 8:54 pm
Bernie, I don’t know the answer to your question. All I know is that the youngest children–in fourth grade–take the no-stakes assessment seriously. As kids get older, they ask, “Does it count?”
Is a no stakes exam likely to cause stress to students who will not even be motivated to do their best during the exam? Why would students have sleepless nights before an exam they will answer all A or B or C or D?
Depends on the student, TE. My younger son couldn’t sleep for several nights before the state-mandated writing test two years ago, but doesn’t have that problem with teacher created tests.
And what about the teachers who make the state test scores part of students’ grades? Some of the teachers at my son’s school do that.
LP,
Was your sleepless student a high school student? I have no doubt that pressure can be created on younger students.
One of the main complaints about these exams is that they can not be used as formative assessments because the results are not available until the following year. This also prevents these exams, at least, from being a part of the grade.
TE: My son was a 5th grader at the time. Since CCSS wants to test tiny babies as young as 5 (or even younger!), these concerns about stresses really apply here. By the time the kids are middle school and higher, they couldn’t care less about the tests, which makes the fact that we teachers are now going to be evaluated by those scores all the more asinine!
My post (and Dr. Ravitch’s post as well) was about high school students.
So you agree with me that once a student hits high school, these standardized tests creat no stress at all, and any toxic stress is created by what students see as high stakes tests like the teacher created finals that are coming up for all high school students in the next three weeks or so?
I forgot to add: In Utah, the scores are available towards the end of the year. They’re still no good for remediation, because the scores come too late for that, but they come in before school gets out and the science and math teachers at my son’s school (grades 7-9) count the standardized state test score as a full test score. I’ve complained about it for several years. The reasoning they give is that the test needs to count so that the kids take the test seriously. I strenuously disagree, but that’s what it is.
This blog started as a comment about Finland where schools are “widely recognized as one of the top performing nations of the world.” Dr Ravitch indicated that she had seen a focus on goals by the teacher with less stress on students than is largely true in the U.S. Comments on this blog about stress in U.S. schools have gone far afield.
Amanda Riply, a widely recognized investigative reporter by trade, recently published a book mostly in narrative about following three U.S. teenagers as exchange students in Finland, Poland and Korea. In casual, innocent comment she dropped a “bomb” about Finish school comparisons. She said, “Finland’s teen agers could also choose to go to job training high schools, and about half of them did. The Finnish government had recently lavished vocational schools with funding and performance bonuses “so regular academic high schools had to work even harder to keep their students.” There is no reference to source of the data but even marginally true it would have enormous impact if these “other” students not enrolled in “regular academic high schools”, where not being included in the nation’s internationally reported academic testing. It could also make the teaching dramatically easier and less stressful.
It seems like you may be assuming that the vocational Ed students can’t hack it in the more academic schools. However, assuming that these schools are of good quality, these students might be even more adept in STEM than the more academic schools. They just want something more career oriented than book larnin’ for book larnin’ sake. Anyway, wouldn’t they all be taking PISA?
It’s time to end the child abuse. ENOUGH. It’s time for teachers to take back their profession and to kick these goons, these abusers, out of their classrooms. Time to say no to their backward, amateurish “standards,” to their abusive tests, to their insane evaluation systems. ENOUGH!!!