Joseph Featherstone has been writing about education for decades. He was a progressive back when I was infatuated with accountability and other useless ideas.
In the current issue of the Nation, Featherstone has an interesting and provocative review of my latest book “Reign of Error.”
What was especially gratifying to me is that he understands the dangers of privatization, he sees the larger context of what is happening in our society, and he recognizes the importance of building a movement to reclaim the promise of American public education.
He asks the crucial question: Once the phony reformers have moved on to some other hobby, once they recognize that they have wasted their time and the nation’s money, once they realize that their efforts to demolish the teaching profession is harming children and our society, what then? How will we improve our schools? How can we get the schools we want and the schools our children need?
What comes after freedom from oppression?
That’s a great question, and I hope readers will comment.
I have my ideas but I need to hear from the experienced readers and teachers and parents and students who read this blog.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is where I hope or wish these blogs would be talking about. We consume all of our energy railing against policies and individuals, that yes, are injurious to children, but at the end of the day will fall on the weight of a model designed to enrich, not to educate. When the Arnie Duncan/Pearson/Rhee smoke clears do educators have a model of schooling that with transcend the present “egg-crate” model of instruction/school design that has not changed much for a century. If I could suggest a beginning, we all need to sit down a re-read John Dewey and formulate a model of schooling that focuses on the individual talents, abilities, and interests of students rather than the goals of institutional schooling (credits, diplomas, grades). Such a model would require a radically different teacher training regime, a radically different governing structure, and radically different approach to curriculum and instruction. In my graduate classes, when I have taught Dewey, at some point in semester, students in the class will say something like: “great ideas and theories, but how could a teacher possibility arrange a curriculum and activity structures that could both respond to a child’s interest and at the same time guide these interests into disciplined ways of knowing the world.” Dewey never caught on in schools because his model of schooling begins each day in the uncertain world of a child’s talents and interest and somehow must end the day in the certain world of a disciplinary framework. There are many other progressive educators that could provide direction for a post-Duncan rebirth of schooling, but it will require that all of us in the profession understand that knowledge and skills many of us have developed over the years are obsolete in world where textbooks, whiteboards, and classrooms no longer (they really never did) educate.
Alan, I don’t know where you teach graduate classes, but it’s flat wrong to claim that “Dewey never caught on in schools” in this country. There was a 30 year era during which his was the dominant paradigm, and teachers did indeed feel secure in a model that “begins each day in the uncertain world of a child’s talents and interest”, and ends it there, too. It educated our “Greatest Generation”, in fact.
The need to discredit progressivism during the McCarthy era was driven by political doctrine. Here’s one unsympathetic reference, attacking the Progressive Education Society, but at least it describes the child-centered philosophy that raised my own working class mother, and so many others.
Click to access graham.pdf
You must have missed this in your grossly uninformed, headlong dash to reinvent everything.
You might also want to reexamine this arrogant assertion:
“There are many other progressive educators that could provide direction for a post-Duncan rebirth of schooling, but it will require that all of us in the profession understand that knowledge and skills many of us have developed over the years are obsolete in world where textbooks, whiteboards, and classrooms no longer (they really never did) educate.”
I think perhaps you’re selling untried technodisruptors that require the destruction of the “failed” public system we do have left.
“Flat wrong” is a strong assertion —I will admit that there were pockets of progressive schooling in America (e.g. Waldorf, Chicago Lab School, etc.), but the institutional model of schooling documented by every educational historian from Ratvich to Cremin to Cuban to Labaree to Tyack, is the pervasive model of schooling in America — 25 + students, seated in classrooms, with a teacher standing in front of the room delivering a lot of information that will replicated on Friday’s test —-The ethnographic studies conducted by Lortie, Jackson, Tharp, Stein, Elmore would dispute your flat wrong assertion. I always begin my graduate class with a re-reading of A Place Called School by John Goodlad, which remains the best description of the present model of schooling in America.
Is it an accident of history that progressive schooling survives in schools that families choose for their students?
TE, those progressive schools do not use standardized tests.
I am not sure why that is relevant to the point of the post about heterodox approaches to education surviving in choice schools. Perhaps you could elaborate.
Alan, you are censoring history. I’m assuming you felt no need to even open the link, because you’ve read already a couple of secondary commentaries? I’ll try again.
“Typically such schools had twelve grades in a three-story red brick building with electricity, running water, toilets, central heating system, and a daily janitorial service. The main building was augmented by an annexed manual training shops, gymnasium, an auditorium used by the community, and a garage for the busing fleet. Moving picture machines and separate public library facilities were also commonly available. In the above case, the original one-room building (far left) is literally eclipsed in terms of both size and also in its functional relationship with the community. Not only did a greater proportion of school-aged children now participate in formal education, but they were also schooled in a decidedly different manner. The lower panel, for instance, shows pupils actively working on the units of measurement in an age-graded consolidated school classroom. The predominant teaching techniques were a pragmatic admixture of both traditional assimilative indoctrination and more progressive child-centered pedagogical approaches (photos from O’shea, 1924).”
http://www.igs.net/~pballan/C3P1.htm
There is a photo on the page, if you still deny it. I’ve visited old school buildings across the country, and seen the child-sized kitchens and workrooms. But I got the story directly from my Mom (who attended Yerba Buena elementary in SF) and my Daddy, who learned geography with plays, dances, costumes and stories in rural Florida.
All of us who are trying to build the Maker Movement in modern schools already have a rich national tradition to recover and defend, and I (among many others) have a lifetime of experience which is by no means “obsolete”.
You are correct in saying that I don’t buy Chapter 3 in a history of ed. book as a representative sample of schooling in America . Even if I was to concede the point that our school system was dominated by progressive approaches to teaching and learning, the paradigm of schooling we live in now is clearly an assign and assess model —the America High School/Middle school and child centered is a oxymoron. In Dewey’s later works he observes how his progressive approaches to schooling were defeated by the “machinery of school administration.” Very early on in the 1900’s the Managers of Virtue (Tyack) squeezed whatever progressive tendencies existed in schools into the institutional model our children now experience. I would recommend reading Bullough’s reexamination of the Eight-Year study which chronicles the last gasp of progressive schooling in our country.
“Dewey was defeated” is a far cry from “Dewey never caught on”.
Yes, “progressive” education was driven underground, and its practitioners were hunted down during the fifties. Buncha commies, huh? The real history of working class consciousness in the US is tied up in our education and labor struggles, and its history is still buried and denied.
The new fashion is for corporate shills to decry the “status quo” in American education as though American teachers are following the prescriptions of 1959 reactionaries. Consultants have invaded my district, who claim that iPads are a “progressive, student-centered reform. At the same time, they impose their test-based accountability and data-driven evaluation “tools”, and attack the teachers colleges where progressive practices are still shared. The aim, I think, is just to further degrade classroom practice in the “failed” brick and mortar real estate they covet.
Alan C. Jones:
John Dewey’s ideas must have made enough inroads by the 1930s that Harper Lee saw fit to ridicule them (or a version of them) in To Kill A Mockingbird:
From Chapter 2, To Kill a Mockingbird
“Don’t worry, Scout,” Jem comforted me. “Our teacher says Miss Caroline’s introducing a new way of teaching. She learned about it in college. It’ll be in all the grades soon. You don’t have to learn much out of books that way–it’s like if you wanta learn about cows, you go milk one, see?”
“Yeah Jem, but I don’t wanta study cows, I-”
“Sure you do. You hafta know about cows, they’re a big part of life in Maycomb County.”
I contented myself with asking Jem if he’d lost his mind.
“I’m just trying to tell you the new way they’re teachin‘ the first grade, stubborn. It’s the Dewey Decimal System.”
From Chapter 4
The remainder of my schooldays were no more auspicious than the first. Indeed, they were an endless Project that slowly evolved into a Unit, in which miles of construction paper and wax crayon were expended by the State of Alabama in its well-meaning but fruitless efforts to teach me Group Dynamics. What Jem called the Dewey Decimal System was school-wide by the end of my first year, so I had no chance to compare it with other teaching techniques.
Back to your concluding sentence…
“There are many other progressive educators that could provide direction for a post-Duncan rebirth of schooling, but it will require that all of us in the profession understand that knowledge and skills many of us have developed over the years are obsolete in world where textbooks, whiteboards, and classrooms no longer (they really never did) educate.”
Never really did? You’re making some categorical statements that won’t stand up to scrutiny. Expertise in any field is always subject to revision, but the wholesale discounting of what teachers have learned through experience (not to mention the discounting of innovations individual teachers have made on their own) is a really bad idea.
Don’t forget, they’ve also vilified compassion and made it admirable to “stay the course,” while framing apologies and taking responsibility for one’s failures as displays of weakness.
The power of the purse. Use a Mozilla or other open browser, sign up for your own web hosting and install WordPress yourself—get your students to help using a PBL! Move away from Microsoft products (install Open Office, never look back!). Ubuntu is for educators. Share resources.
Community engagement beyond the bake sale. Critical discernment of options: e.g., the Harvard Graduate School of Education has some good ideas, while the Harvard Business School is the source of “Disrupting Class,” the 2008 handbook for dismantling public education. So pay attention to Harvard’s GSE, and stop listening to the BS!
What happened after the Dark Ages? Exploration, Renaissance and Enlightenment.
I think we need to rally around James Meredith’s American Child’s Education Bill of Rights. There’s plenty that can be done for each of the 12 points. We need a system where teachers and students are empowered, not diminished. We need the courage to speak out and organize a coherent grassroots movement. That’s the only way rights have ever been secured for minorities, for workers, and even for child welfare.
YES! to everything posted by Alan C. Jones and here is a thirty year old film of a classroom in process that is well worth viewing.
“We All Know Why We’re Here”
► 29:30► 29:30
vimeo.com/13993087
Vimeo
Deborah Meier has generously shared this 1980 documentary about Central Park East Elementary School.
Please understand corporate America never gets tired of profits. Gates, Pearson and others have turned educational reform into big business. They see our children as a renewable resource. All they have to do is change the standards which will generate a new curriculum. A new currcum will require new textbooks, new test and more staff development. Plus the technology educational future is in the hands of Bill Gates. Looks like the perfect circle of $$$$$$$$$$!!!!
In addition to the many models of rich practices that can be assembled (such as the film Kathy Irwin provides above), the field needs empirically grounded analyses capable of explaining where the pedagogical power of such models comes from and linking that power back both to John Dewey (and his many successors in the field of democratic educational philosophy) and to contemporary learning theory. I have found that a close consideration of the ways in which teachers and students talk together offers one promising direction in this regard.
There are many examples of successful schools. Why not examine what has worked where and why. Successes may work better in some milieus than others, but we have a lot of successful experiments out there that are not buried in false deformer narrative. We have already seen the destructiveness of scorched earth policies. There is no reason to continue them.
Isn’t one of the central claims in Reign of Error against the corporate reform movement that America’s schools as currently structured are NOT failing. That the problems being manifested as low standardized test scores in urban and rural areas are most directly linked to the harm physical, emotional, and psychological harm caused by generational poverty. Is there really a need to re-invent a wheel that works well for most students not derailed by generational poverty?
NY teacher, I’m an original “education reformer” and agent of change (UCSC 1984). Corporate reform stole and corrupted the label. Schools have problems, yes, and there are systemic ways to improve the institutions through democratic involvement, philosophical realignment, and conscious social justice policy.
We don’t need to destroy our educatioal system to do that, though, and it was actually working its way toward greater social justice in the seventies, when we did narrow the gap.
The “rising tide of mediocrity” that threatened the Reaganites so badly was economic opportunity. They stamped that out in the economic sphere first, and now the schools are our last battlefield for our working class kids’ future. We need help, as you are aware. Our supply lines have been cut, and the administration is infiltrated.
Listening to an old Lou Reed tune the other day; this line referencing the Viet Nam War caught my attention and ties in nicely to your accurate use of the word battlefield.
“Those gooks were fierce and fearless, that’s the price you pay when you invade,”
Our public schools have been invaded by powerful people intent on profit. Stay fierce and fearless.
I am a recently retired classroom teacher. I don’t think we will see an end to this current corporate reform movement anytime soon. $$$$ will rule the day as they continue to try and steal an education from our children while filling their special interest pockets. That being said, pondering the correct direction is still important for “someday down the road.” One of the things that has happened in Philadelphia, with each successive Superintendent/CEO came a new set of principles, new restructuring, new lingo. So much time, energy and resources were wasted on this new ego driven plan. I was amazed no one every questioned the practice of every few years starting over. I would suggest that school districts develop a plan for their district and hire superintendents to implement it. The plan should be fluid and open for change when and where necessary. The plan should be developed by the local school board with real input from educators, parents and stakeholders in the neighborhood and with no outside money aloud to participate or influence. Evidence and research should guide decisions in the plan making. Transparency should be key. With limited resources…safety of students, clean structurally sound buildings and basics such as adequate counselors,nurses, support staff and libraries with librarians in every building should be the minimum that is in place with long range goals to implement additional needed changes like reducing class size (which is so stinking important), adding computers and technology, and increasing course choices. Fair funding formulas should be implemented in each state as well. So much to do and so little will to do it.
I think a lot of these problems are caused by a lack of democracy. In Philadelphia, we don’t have a school board. Instead, we have the SRC. The people of Philadelphia and people in cities that find themselves in similar situations must demand school boards that are accountable to the people and not to the politicians appointing board membership. School boards must then appoint superintendents that are beholden to the students and their parents, not to corporate money. Again, in Philadelphia we have not had a superintendent from the city in several years. Once a competent superintendent who is student-centered and who recognizes the importance of establishing a constructive and collaborative working relationship with teachers is found, it’s then time to put into place a curriculum that is designed to get students to think critically and which develops the entire student. A curriculum that enriches through the arts, develops the body via daily physical education and movement, and stimulates thought via reading, writing and mathematics. Also, where necessary, we must provide our students and their families with some of the social supports that they may need because of the scourge of poverty in our country. Successful community schools are doing this well, particularly in Cincinnatti. We know what works people, but first our voices have to be heard. Right now they are not. Let’s get school boards back working for the people and their kids. Public education is an investment in our communities and the society they form.
It’s obvious.
If the billionaire profiteering and/or idealistic (conservatives and liberals) are not stopped and public education is destroyed, the US will slide quickly into an authoritarian state ruled through puppet politicians who receive their marching orders from a collective corporate board of CEOs from the biggest corporations in the United States. Elected politicians and activists who do not comply will either disappear or be audited by the IRS annually until they go crazy and kill themselves.
For Instance—to name a few of the candidates who will rule the United States through proxy politicians:
Wal-Mart stores
Exxon Mobil
Chevron
Phillips 66
Berkshire Hathaway
Apple
General Motors
General Electric
Valero Energy
Ford Motor
At&T
J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.
IBM
Bank of America
Costco
Wells Fargo
Home Depot
Microsoft
Target
Koch Industries
Then—within a decade—the United States with the 3rd largest population on the planet will slide into the status of a third-world country with poverty and illiteracy to equal India today; labor will have no representation because labor unions will have been deleted. 99% of the people will only have a voice when they take it to the streets and then the most modern, lethal military in the world will use the NSA and drones to track down and slaughter them and they will do this under the claim that to maintain stability and peace. They will use slogans and jargon to justify the horrors that take place just like the Nazis did under Hitler.
For instance, under Mao during the Cultural Revolution, the schools were turned over to teenage bullies who persecuted and tortured teachers and school administrators, and a decade later when Mao died in 1976, literacy had plunged to 20%. My wife, who was born in China and is Chinese and lived through that era in China before coming to the US to become a citizen in the 1980s says what is happening to the public schools in America is similar to what happened in China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
Denouncing teachers and administrators who dare to fight back.
Howard Davidowitz claims that poverty is America’s “Only Growth Sector”..
That may be partially true, because there are other growth sectors and one is the weapons indstury. No matter what’s happening in the economy, the U.S. private sector weapons industry continues to grow and increase profits.
The private sector in the Untied States sold more than $28 billion in weapons in 2013. Second place went to Russia at $10 billion. France is in 3rd place; the UK is 4th and Germany is 5th at $3 billion. The US private sector weapons industry controls about half of the world market.
Another growth sector is pornography. The United States is the top video porn producer in the world. Second place is Brazil. The US also hosts 89% of the pornographic web pages in the world: 244,661,900 compares to second place Germany that has 10 million.
Weapons and pornography. What a great legacy to leave our kids. So sad. We must keep fighting for our democracy till we take our last breath.
I agree with Alan’s point, that we can’t keep criticizing what’s wrong with Common Core without providiview he alternative. Where Alan is, perhaps, misinformed is that there are public school districts all around the country doing some incredibly innovative things…particularly with urban populations.
I think it’s time to publicize those efforts, especially where data has been kept on how students benefitted over the years from these programs. I’m thinking about districts that partner with their communities to provide wrap-around services. Districts that offer programs that support students of color, immigrant students, and students of poverty a chance to pursue higher level coursework and support in applying to college. I’m especially thinking about the district in which I teach, which has a public Pre-K program AND a program for 3 year olds and their families. As a K ESL teacher I’ve witnessed the transformation in families. There could be testimonials from students and their families.
These are the successes our union should be highlighting and contrasting against the narrowed-down, scripted Common Core curriculum. The AFt and the NEA should be using pur VOTE-COPE contributions toward television advertising that showcases these efforts in action. I can imagine a tagline to the effect, “Our public school teachers know what works. Let’s support them NOT fire them.”
It enrages me that our union has left us out to dry. They sold us to the deformers when Weingarten AND Van Roekel sold out to Gates money. Are there any documentarians out there willing to put their talents to work for this cause? Any former advertising writers who could pull this together? I would be willing to double my usual VOTE-COPE contribution that I DID NOT PROVIDE THIS YEAR (and it was already 2x the suggested contribution) and offer it toward this project. I’m sure we could mobilize other public school teachers to do the same. Perhaps some Parent groups would also get on board financially.
I wish I was savvy enough, and politically-connected enough to spearhead such a project myself, but I know that in the talented readership of this blog there must be those of you out there.
LET’S TAKE BACK PUBLIC EDUCATION! LET’S SHOW THE PUBLIC WE KNOW WHAT WORKS! LET’S SHOW THE UNIONS THAT WE WILL UNITE AGAINST THEM WHEN THEY DO NOT SUPPORT US!
“There could be testimonials from students and their families.”
Maybe the Network for Public Education or a similar group could set up a YouTube channel or other online platform (maybe a blog or wiki or social media page) to share these success stories. Maybe your school district could do this as part of its public outreach effort. Students could get involved in the process.
Success stories can and do go viral. In any case, stories are more important than data!
Concerned parent,
Common Core will collapse because of the undemocratic way it was written (without educators, without feedback, without field trials) and the undemocratic way it was financed (by one big foundation ) and imposed (by bribing states where no one knew what the Common Core was).
It is not necessary to have an alternative to a bad set of ideas.
It is necessary to recognize the real problems in our society, which are not in our schools but in our society, our politics, our legislatures, and in a culture that does not value learning or children.
“It is necessary to recognize the real problems in our society, which are not in our schools but in our society, our politics, our legislatures, and in a culture that does not value learning or children.”
Agree 110%
We must unite and fight against the evil, antidemocratic forces allied against us. This fight reminds me of the civil libertarians fighting against the Patriot Act. Giving up freedom for security. Giving up children’s education for some corporatists’ idea of employability is equally dangerous to the future of our society.
Thank you Diane.
My neighbor plays really loud music all night long keeping my young children awake and too tired to function in school. I call my neighbor and ask him to please stop playing that music. His response can’t be, “Not until you have a better alternative.”
Agree that there are pockets of innovation throughout the country. I can testify to my own personal experience is working with teachers to create pockets of innovation in the school where I was a principal. Having said that, these pockets of innovation were extremely difficult to sustain under the yearly increase of accountability driven reforms and quite honestly, the public’s perception of how schools should look and run —anytime you deviate from a subject-centered, grade controlled, credit-outcome system, believe me, you are in for some very difficult board meetings. Initially, I thought that the charter school movement would offer an alternative pathway for creating more progressive approaches to curriculum and instruction. I even began filling out a charter school proposal in my state, before it became clear to me that instructional innovation was not their goal. I would add that my best memories of school teaching and school administration is when all the work you put into an innovation really worked, you really observed first-hand students get excited about a subject –again, very difficult to development and maintain.
Correction to the first sentence, “without providing the alternative”.
Let’s stop waiting…let’s initiate.
I don’t think much will change until people stop thinking that schools are corporations and teachers are just expendable middle managers who can come and go. A long time ago Bill Moyers had a round table of corporation types and one teacher to talk about the state of education today. Everyone of them approached education as a product and the teacher as the assembly line worker, except of course Bill Moyers and the one teacher. They never stopped to consider that their product, the student is only with the teacher at the most 6 hours a day. That the parents, the peers, the media, the society, the genetics the socio economic status etc. influence the outcome of the product for the other 18 hours. How would they like if their lightbulb or car or whatever they are making was only in their control for 6 hours out of 18. And worse now, they are bringing in the common core to take even more control and influence away from the person who is closest to them educationally, the teacher. The utter stupidity of these corporate types in not seeing that you can’t run a school like a corporation just like you can’t run a home like a corporation or raise your kids like a corporation. In fact, corporations shouldn’t be run like corporations but that is another story for a higher spiritual age than the one we currently live. in. Rabindagrath Tagore, the Indian Poet and winner of the noble prize, had kids outdoors for the first 10 years of their lives, exploring nature, discovering beauty, and learning from the inside out. When they were ready to learn to read at 10 or so they absorbed knowledge for the love of it and his students were highly successful and well rounded. Kids are not things, They are not products and unless and until this difference is acknowledged, and understood by politicians and powers that be and unless and until educators are treated with respect for the understanding of kids and teaching methods that work we will continue to have this unholy mess.
Here’s another way to see this:
Children spend about 900 hours a year with teachers. Often that time is divided between five to six teachers—11,700 hours by age 18 if they attend everyday. USA today reported that 7.5 million students miss a month of school each year. “New research suggests that as many as 7.5 million students miss a month of school each year, raising the likelihood that they’ll fail academically and eventually drop out of high school.”
And a report by Learning First.com says, “did you know that nationally, one in ten kindergarten and first grade students miss the equivalent of a month of school each year? In some districts, it is more than one in four. Why don’t we talk more about these shocking statistics?”
But there are only 8,760 hours in a year; teachers spend 10.3% to 12.4% of each calender year with the kids they teach.
Studies show that the average parent in America spends 3.5 minutes a week in meaningful conversation with their children. That means by age 18, the average American parent has meaningfully talked to their child only 3,276 minutes or 54.6 hours.
In addition, the average child in America watches 1,480 minutes of television a week—that’s 1,282.6 hours annually or 230,087 hours by age 18.
By age 18, the average child sees 150,000 violent acts on TV and sees 16,000 commercials a year or 288,000 by the age of 18.
A nationally representative study found that the average American 8-to-18 years old play video games for 13.2 hours per week—that’s almost 7,000 hours by age 18
According to Sugar Shock, the average kid under 12 consumes 49 pounds of sugar per year, and according to other studies reported by the CDC, sugar consumption increases between age 12 to 19.
Do you know what too much sugar does to the brain and memory function?
A study at the University of California in Los Angeles discovered that a diet on steady amounts of high fructose is hampering for both memory and learning.
“Insulin is important in the body for controlling blood sugar, but it may play a different role in the brain, where insulin appears to disturb memory and learning,” he said. “Our study shows that a high-fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body. This is something new.”
Psychology Today.com says, “Overeating, poor memory formation, learning disorders, depression—all have been linked in recent research to the over-consumption of sugar. And these linkages point to a problem that is only beginning to be better understood: what our chronic intake of added sugar is doing to our brains.”
And when kids do not perform well on standardized multiple choice tests, who gets blamed?
public school teachers and teacher unions
Does anyone believe the habits of these children and their families change when they end up in a private sector Charter school?
I believe our schools should be looked on two levels. The first level is to consider pedagogy and the classroom. The second level is to consider how our schools are managed or how everything fits together for the public good.
The first level, in my experience, is doing pretty well.
The second level, in my opinion, is not doing well. What do I mean or what changes would I make to have our school systems function efficiently both in student outcomes and fiscal handling?
I would like to see teachers, in the form of teacher boards or committees, take over our school buildings. Teachers are well trained, motivated and are in place. And for those who say that teachers cannot police themselves–well, you have never been a teacher because we definitely will hold each others feet to the fire. For those who are wedded to the industrial revolution factory model of manager and worker–well, kids are not widgets and schools are not private companies pandering to the bottom line. Schools are engaged in providing for the general welfare of our society and a bottom up cooperative model will, in my opinion, be far more efficient. For proof, I offer the thought that 6 figure salaries by public school administrative bureaucrats are a perverse incentive that causes more wasted tax dollars and wrecked teacher’s lives all which add up to the achievement gap in our urban schools that everyone talks about. (No one talks about how great our public schools do in communities of higher socio-economic status.)
To sum up, let’s invert the management model of our public schools and truly utilize our more than adequate and well trained teaching force. The dead weight is the top-down management model. The bottom-up collaborative model is new and will likely take us much further down the road most seem to want to go.
I think that building autonomy is only possible if accompanied by student choice of buildings. If school boards tell students which school building they must attend based on street address, the political pressure is all on the side of uniformity across buildings.
Check out the DVD “A Touch of Greatness.” Perhaps we need to look back to the past to find a pedagogy that will engage and enlighten our children.
I think we need to look to our experienced educators to help make decisions for what is best for the students in each state and district. In my district, when common core was first released, our Early Learning Office hired experienced pre-k and kindergarten teachers to write a curriculum. Using the standards, they wrote an extensive literacy and math curriculum that was written with the needs of our district’s students in mind. Going from Open Court to this new curriculum was difficult for some teachers, but by the end of the first year of implementation we knew it was a win! This curriculum was developmentally appropriate, yet still rigorous, and offered teachers flexibility and guidelines rather than a script to follow. The two years that we used this curriculum our district saw huge gains in our pre-k and kindergarten achievement. Many first grade teachers said this was the most prepared for 1st grade their students had ever been! We were hoping that other grades would adopt our model and write their own teacher-created curriculum, but before that could happen, TPTB in our district decided to purchase a new scripted curriculum for all K-5th grade classrooms in the district. It was terribly sad to see our fabulous curriculum taken down and to see our students bored with more scripted nonsense. So much for flexibility, meeting students’ needs, and teacher creativity. No matter what standards we use (though obviously good standards are important), I think that the way our Early Learning Office did things should be a model for districts everywhere. Write high quality curriculum that meets the specific needs of the students in your district. Utilize your experienced educators. Give teachers guidelines and recommendations while allowing them flexibility and freedom to be creative. I can tell you from experience, it worked.
What comes after freedom of oppression? Am I naive to think that we can’t be a society that is driven by principles? When I take a look at what ails us as a society, I can always point back to education and true learning as both the remedy and the source of the problem. If you look at all successful businesses, sports teams, families, relationships, the one thing they all have in common is mutual respect, communication, and people whose actions are driven by universal principles such as work ethic, loyalty, integrity, humility, empathy, perspective, embracing failure as critical to success, goal oriented, innovative, responsible, altruistic, ethical, physically and emotionally healthy, and civic minded. What if our curriculum was driven by these set of principles? We would raise a generation of people who embody these traits and thus, through people, we address any and all social justice and environmental issues. As a teacher for 14 years, I find that I have to find creative ways to infuse these core values into my classroom as the curriculum is driven by the mastering of a set of skills and concepts, but rarely does curriculum take the time to set the foundation of principles as a spring board for learning these skills. What if our curriculum was driven by these core values? If it was that means we have committed to starting where our children are. If we start with policy and structure we will perpetuate the top down approach that we all abhor. Principles drive learning. Principles empower people. Engagement and rigor are natural byproducts of empowerment.
It is always about the people. Principle driven people in any context will make just about any system work and be flexible enough to make the necessary changes in the system to adjust to the times. Principles transcend time. Systems don’t.
What comes after freedom of oppression? Let us agree on a set of principles that we all can value and raise our children to be driven by it. Then align our curriculum to those principles. In the meantime, I will continue my guerrilla curriculum to assure I have done my best to help raise a new generation that embodies these principles.