The most famous line ever written by John Dewey was this:
“What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.”
Our frequent commenter KrazyTA has been exploring what our leading reformers–who see themselves as our best and wisest educational visionaries–want for their own children. After Bill Gates spoke to the teachers at the annual conference of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards to explain why the Common Core was absolutely necessary and was the key to teachers’ creativity, KrazyTA inquired into the practices at the elite Lakeside School in Seattle, where Bill was a student and where his own children are enrolled.
This is what he found:
“Strangely, when I went to the Lakeside School website—you know, where Bill Gates and his children went/go to school—I found not a single mention of Common Core, standardization and electric plugs. Not to mention that they weren’t coupled with terms like “innovation” and “teaching.”
“Worse yet, not a single mention of how “college and career readiness” has been lacking there up until now either. Am I missing something? Anyway, let’s see what sort of institution crippled Mr. Bill Gates.
“Let’s start with “About Lakeside.”
First, their mission statement:
[start quote]
“The mission of Lakeside School is to develop in intellectually capable young people the creative minds, healthy bodies, and ethical spirits needed to contribute wisdom, compassion, and leadership to a global society. We provide a rigorous and dynamic academic program through which effective educators lead students to take responsibility for learning.
“We are committed to sustaining a school in which individuals representing diverse cultures and experiences instruct one another in the meaning and value of community and in the joy and importance of lifelong learning.
[end quote]
Second, “Mission Focus”:
[start quote]
“Lakeside School fosters the development of citizens capable of and committed to interacting compassionately, ethically, and successfully with diverse peoples and cultures to create a more humane, sustainable global society. This focus transforms our learning and our work together.
[end quote]
Link: http://www.lakesideschool.org/podium/default.aspx?t=120812
“Academics Overview” with the subtitle “A Commitment to Excellence”:
[start quote]
“Lakeside’s 5th- to 12th-grade student-centered academic program focuses on the relationships between talented students and capable and caring teachers. We develop and nurture students’ passions and abilities and ensure every student feels known.
“The cultural and economic diversity of our community, the teaching styles, and the approaches to learning are all essential to Lakeside academics. We believe that in today’s global world, our students need to know more than one culture, one history, and one language.
“Each student’s curiosities and capabilities lead them to unique academic challenges that are sustained through a culture of support and encouragement. All students will find opportunities to discover and develop a passion; to hone the skills of writing, thinking, and speaking; and to interact with the world both on and off campus. Lakeside trusts that each student has effective ideas about how to maximize his or her own education, and that they will positively contribute to our vibrant learning community.
[end quote]
Link: http://www.lakesideschool.org/podium/default.aspx?t=120814
“Let’s switch gears—or at least websites. Even more strangely, I found that stuff like class size matters:
[start quote]
“Finally, I had great relationships with my teachers here at Lakeside. Classes were small. You got to know the teachers. They got to know you. And the relationships that come from that really make a difference…
[end quote]
“More of this nonsense [?] can be found in the link below, like the fact that Lakeside School has a student/teacher ration of 9:1 and average class size of 16.
“Well, I could on and on but I fear we need to rescue the little tykes in the Gates family from such horrors as, well, feast your eyes on this bit of barbarity regarding the Study Year Abroad:
[start quote]
“Since 1964, School Year Abroad has sent high school juniors and seniors to study abroad in distinctive cities and towns throughout Europe and Asia where their safety and security is a priority. Widely considered the ‘gold standard’ of high school study abroad programs, SYA’s rigorous academic curriculum, paired with complementary educational travel and varied extracurricular activities, ensure students are in an optimal position to return to their home schools or proceed to college.
[end quote]
Link: http://www.sya.org/s/833/index.aspx?sid=833&gid=1&pgid=1001
“Nuff said. Will you be joining Eva M and the pro-charterite/privatizer commenters on this blog for the upcoming “Save the Children of the Poor Millionaires & Billionaires Rally: A New Civil Rights Movement For The Truly Downtrodden” — catered, don’t you worry, by Wolfgang Puck.
I hope the above will put you at ease.”
😎
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This point is perhaps the most important in this struggle. It makes clear the underlying anti-democratic and class-based nature of “education reform.” And it does so in a way that people who do not spend time following this conflict can understand immediately. It’s the parents who do not or cannot follow blogs like this one who must understand what is at stake. We’re a very long way from connecting with this very large group of potentially interested people. This message is so simple, powerful and vivid that it stands the best chance of making people “sit up” and focus on what is happening.
This is what de Blasio needs to be saying in public, everyday, once in the morning and again at night. He needs to be saying it on MSNBC, too.
Hmm, Lakeside’s mission is to help develop “creative” minds, “ethical spirits” who contribute “wisdom” and compassion.”
Fortunately, the readers of this blog know enough to see through the cant of the so-called reformers, when they spout off about how teachers are the most important aspect in a child’s education.
Otherwise we’d be obliged to say that the school really failed in Bill”s case.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
Thanks, Krazy TA for continuing to publicly reveal the Education Class System in practice and action.
AN EDUCATION MANIFESTO.
The most effective way to combat School Reform is to call those responsible out on it and ask why THEIR KIDS deserve so much better than MY KIDS. Why are THEIR KIDS getting all the GOOD PEDAGOGY and MY KIDS get their FACTORY DREARINESS?
Now is the time to throw everything back in their face.
The public is only starting to revolt against the Reformers tactics.
To Arne Duncan. To Ted Mitchell. To Michelle Rhee. To Bill Gates. To Eli Broad. To Sam Walton. To Jeb Bush. To Bobby Jindal. To Rick Scott. To Barack Obama. To John King. To John White. To John Deasy. To Jaime Lynn-Alter. To Mark Hite. To the entire Broad Academy of infiltrators in our School System. To Members of Congress who back this disgusting type of “School Reform” and whose own children never have to live under what they prescribe for other people’s kids.
Here’s our message to you:
YOU ALL MAKE LIFE MISERABLE FOR MY KIDS. YOU HATE MY KIDS despite your earnest claims of HOW MUCH YOU LOVE THEM and WANT THEM TO SUCCEED. YOU ARE THE WORST HYPOCRITES BECAUSE THEY FEEL YOUR DISGUST AND REVULSION.
Do you know why?
They see YOUR kids. They see what lengths YOU GO TO for YOUR KIDS. They see what you give yours and deny mine.
This is especially true of the “liberal” Democrats who have joined forces with the 1% Uberclass of this nation against poor kids of color.
Here’s the message. Our kids are better.
It’s time to call them the racists and classists that they are. It is time to ask them to their face why are they so selfish? It is time to demand why they hold OTHER PEOPLE in contempt and think their kids DESERVE some product so INFERIOR to the one they want for their kids.
Why don’t you MAKE SURE MY KIDS get FIELD TRIPS?
Why don’t you MAKE SURE MY KIDS get ENRICHMENT?
Why don’t you MAKE SURE MY KIDS get DRAMA, MUSIC, JOURNALISM, FILM, PHOTOGRAPHY, COMPUTER, PE and ASTRONOMY classes?
Why do you pack my classes with 40 and 50 kids and look me in the face saying “Class Size doesn’t matter.”
Why not? Simple.
They don’t want their own kids tested like rats every other month.
They don’t want THEIR teachers teaching to the test.
They want smaller classes for their kids because of individualized attention.
They want lots of enrichment opportunities for their kids.
They sensibly want the best quality education possible.
They purposely don’t address the Dickensian conditions many kids come to school with so they IGNORE them to focus on how to OCCUPY my students’ time while in these schools with a PEDAGOGY that is uncreative, unchallenging and punative. That is Bill Gates “gift” to all of us and that;s what all his millions of dollars into various organizations pays for.
He does nothing to change the conditions of society. He creates a structure of education that the worker bees of society must adhere to.
There is only one hope to combat this. Middle and upper class Whites and minorities whose kids attend public schools in the suburbs need to join forces with those in the city and rural areas who don’t have the resources, the wherewithal and the political clout to fight for EVERYONE’S kids.
To the Editorial boards of The LA Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Chicago Tribune (and everywhere else).
Where do YOUR kids go to school?
How many kids are in their class?
How economically diverse is the school they attend?
How racially diverse?
To the millionaires who back school reform
You are the AMERICAN RULING CLASS and wield tremendous power and you use it to actually HARM our kids’ future chances at life.
It is a lousy, BS education you offer them.
You have very little interest in listening to what parents want. You have very little interest in actually helping kids get out of poverty other than putting a number two pencil in their hands (or an iPad now to take your tests!!!! Gee THANKS!). Common Core is just that–“Common” not in an egalitarian way–but in a racist and classist way used to stifle teaching creativity and ensure EVERYONE is pointed in the direction of a SINGLE TEST.
And you believe THAT TEST is the measure of “true education.”
My kids say, “The hell with that and the hell with your icky ‘love’ of us. Give that kind of ‘love’ to your kids and see how much they love you back.
P.S. Wish these elite schools’ philosophies were championed by Bill Gates and Arne Duncan and Obama for what ALL schools should be doing and get the funding to give EVERY kid these opportunities that are held precious and privileged by the very ones who could do something to truly make a cool and just education system for all.
Here is Sidwell Friends statement of philosophy. This is the education that Sasha and Malia Obama get that Obama doesn’t believe my kids deserve:
Sidwell Friends School is an educational community inspired by the values of the Religious Society of Friends and guided by the Quaker belief in “That of God” in each person. We seek academically talented students of diverse cultural, racial, religious, and economic backgrounds. We offer these students a rich and rigorous interdisciplinary curriculum designed to stimulate creative inquiry, intellectual achievement and independent thinking in a world increasingly without borders. We encourage these students to test themselves in athletic competition and to give expression to their artistic abilities. We draw strength from silence—and from the power of individual and collective reflection. We cultivate in all members of our community high personal expectations and integrity, respect for consensus, and an understanding of how diversity enriches us, why stewardship of the natural world matters, and why service to others enhances life. Above all, we seek to be a school that nurtures a genuine love of learning and teaches students “to let their lives speak.”
Or the Lab School where Obama and Duncan sent his kids previously and Rahm Emanuel now sends his:
Our mission is focused on students. We are more than just test scores and college admissions statistics. We are about learning well and complementing the work of one of the world’s premier institutions of higher learning, the University of Chicago. Our academic program is rigorous, but we are as interested in the development of character as we are in scholastic achievement. Alumni from all over the world regularly attest that it was at Lab where they learned how to think deeply and thus learned how to learn. In short, we are among the leading independent schools in the nation and pride ourselves on creating conditions for a purposeful search for knowledge and truth.
And this of note:
SALON Magazine’s Thomas Frank recently did an interview with Political Philosopher Adolph Reed and asked about Obama’s commitment to progressive ideology and how it relates to education.
ADOLPH REED: I believe that Obama truly believes that this kind of self-help twaddle that he talks is a way to combat inequality. I also believe that he believes, in his heart of hearts, that public schools are for losers and that what you got to do is identify the bright kids from the ghetto and get them into the Lab School or the Lab School equivalent.
So in the ideological frame of reference that the dominant elites within the Democratic party operate now, this is the element that defines the center of gravity of political liberalism and also sort of has captured the imagination of those who want to think of themselves as being on the left. They, often enough, will invoke the same general principles at a high level of abstraction that we associate with the Democratic Party and its history back to FDR. But the content that they load into those lofty symbols is neoliberal and reinforces the logic of a regressive transfer.
If you cut public services and privatize and outsource, that hurts people at the bottom half of the income queue, or the bottom two-thirds of the income queue. There’s no way around that. You can only talk about equality and support that kind of agenda if you are fully committed to a neoliberal understanding of an equality of opportunity.”
Here, Here, Geronimo!!
Dear colleague…Geronimo…once again you speak truth. Thanks as always.
Tell it, brother!
Yes!
Hey, Geronimo. That’s a rant for the ages.
I’m interested in posting some of it on my blog: Betrayed.
http://betrayed-whyeducationisfailing.blogspot.com/
I’d cut the quotations from Sidwell Friends and the Lab schools — not because I don’t see the hypocrisy you’re pointing out, but just for length.
Can you let me know if that’s OK with you, and if so, how you would like to be referenced?
My email address is wlroge@comcast.net
Appreciatively, Laurie Rogers
“The mission of Lakeside School is to develop in intellectually capable young people the … ethical spirits needed to contribute wisdom, compassion, and leadership to a global society.”
Many of these elite schools make this kind of statement. I think we should measure the “effectiveness” of these teachers by measuring how many of their students go out in the world and use their “ethical spirits” in a compassionate way. Pres, George W. Bush, Arne Duncan, President Obama, Bill Gate, etc. attended elite private schools and I don’t think anyone would describe them as having “ethical spirits” (at least when it comes to education policies).
Concerned Mom,
Let’s put together several rubrics for “effectiveness” and have at it with the measurement!!!! Great post!! Thank you!!
Sure thing and then we’ll hire graders off of Craig’s List!
Thanks for looking at the contrast between Lakeside and Melinda and Bill Gates’ plan for public education. Message received. Their plan reflects the desire for a banana republic. The profession of teaching is their target, because they think teachers, predominantly women, deserve neither professional pay nor respect.
It’ll take more than the vestiges of the John Birch Society, a billionaire technocrat, and a millionaire huckster to defeat the success of public education.
Jonathan Kozal has been speaking and writing passionately and eloquently about the effects of economic deprivation and the funding inadequacies and inequality for decades. There is no question that money can make a huge difference in schooling, whether it is money possessed by families, or public money made available for school administration. But, things are the way they are for a reason. Realigning the given order of things means subverting power and offending the gods. Wealth knows how to protect its domain.
Two things make the issue of unequal distribution of resources less relevant than it appears, however. First, the superior experience had by students in the upper income districts where ample resources are readily available and where the environment is more hospitable and students excel on tests and appear better equipped for “higher education” says nothing meaningful about education. It says that those privileged students have had a better school experience and they have skills and advantages that are generally applicable in a competitive academic or capitalistic milieu. Some of them may not be thoroughly anti-intellectual and some of them may have enjoyed great literature or developed some familiarity with science or with some special interest or avocation. However, whether or not they are educated is an open question.
Secondly, the students who have all the advantages would do well, or at least do better just about anywhere because they typically have the richer home environment from birth and parents who are more interactive and available by virtue of more leisure or more resources and support. Their schools are nearly always “better” with respect to autonomy and teaching “quality” or responsiveness. However, giving the schools the credit for any actual education presumes (falsely) that education equates with success in our perverse society.
It is no accident that the gross inequalities exist. We have a framework that is specially designed to sort out the fortunate few from the many and to keep a clearly demarcated wall of separation. It is hard to imagine how one could set out to design a better system for maintaining a status quo and a social structure that is nearly impervious to alteration than compulsory school attendance, given the political and economic systems we have had in place since our founding. The original elitist and religious proponents knew precisely what they were doing.
The message is in the structure. The message is on the blackboard, in the text, and in the curriculum. The message is that capitulation, submission, and “attention” are indispensable for survival. The wretched poor must be saved from their plight and the good (usually white, Christian) teachers are there to perform the mission (as missionaries to the lost heathens). The deal is that the wretched poor must comply and acquiesce, and above all, they MUST attend. Common Core and charters are just the billionaires’ naked attempts to call the shots and mold society in their own image more overtly. It’s never pretty.
It seems a bit peculiar that the same people who have previously been vocal about the stultifying climate of traditional schools and who have opted for alternative schools for years are now talking as if the only problems are the disparities between the rich and poor districts. Far be it from me to suggest hypocrisy, but I do have to wonder if there is some illogic or rationalizing involved. The “best” schools within the traditional framework always bore the same essential characteristics of a factory, or tendencies toward producing conformity, mediocrity, triviality, a sense of exclusivity, and apathy. Education was always accidental, or due to defiant subversion.
Yes, it is the economy. It’s the economy that works for the powerful and influential thanks primarily to the laws that control the population and keep them in their proper places. It’s the laws, and then the economy. (This was a response to an article titled, “It’s the Economy, Stupid” on another education blog. It has not been altered to fit the current post, but I believe it is an appropriate response to the Gates controversy).
For use on Twitter: Just copy, paste and ReTweet often. The short link was created through Bitly and leads to this post.
Bill Gates has spent $2+ Billion forcing Common Core on public schools
Discover his & his children’s private school
http://bit.ly/1pb5z8E
Where is Krazy TA’s list of the trade-offs that he is willing to accept in order to provide a luxury education for every child in America?
Teachers at elite private schools like Lakeside are highly qualified, and the hiring process is extraordinarily selective. Teachers pay into a defined contribution retirement plan rather than receive a defined benefit. They are at-will employees who may be removed from the classroom at any time for any reason–no appeals, no due process (they are, of course, protected by federal and state employment laws).
Elite private schools have brutally competitive admissions. 75%+ of the students who attend come from families who can pay $30-45 thousand in cash, per student, per year. The students who do require financial aid are rigorously screened for academic ability. There’s no such thing as an ELL. A very small number of kids may have the least serious types of disabilities.
Lakeside and the elite private schools are extraordinarily lean, with no bureaucracy or cumbersome district structures. While much is expected of families and students with respect to student conduct and performance, there is also no doubt that student needs always come first–teachers eat lunch with their classes, take them out for recess, arrive early and stay late to help with homework, and respond quickly and thoroughly to parent concerns.
If we are proposing an elite private school-style education for all, these details and trade-offs need to be hammered out–it’s not enough to simply say that all public schools should get small classes and highly qualified teachers. Are we going to change the way we fund our schools, and ask the vast majority of the population who don’t have school-aged children or work for a school system to spend two or three times what we spend on education already? Are we going to be as choosy with selecting teachers as the elite private schools? Are we going to get rid of the right to due process and most work rules? Are we going to do away with the traditional school district bureaucracy and administrative bloat?
These aren’t questions to slough off–the private schools will tell you that the conditions I’ve outlined here are essential to the quality of the education they provide. So what will it be?
Can’t we just say “every child deserves an education like the one that Bill Gates provides for his children” and go home?
No.! Tuition at Lakeside is $28,500 annually.
http://www.lakesideschool.org/podium/default.aspx?t=142934&rc=0
Total expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools in the United States amounted to $638 billion in 2009-10, or about $12,743 per public school student.
But what about the highest and lowest states?
In 2011, New York, the highest, spent $19,076 per pupil but Utah, the lowest, spent $6,212.
And what about Washington State where his kids attend Lakeside: The public schools in Washington spend $9,483 per pupil.
http://www.governing.com/gov-data/education-data/state-education-spending-per-pupil-data.html
Yep. The prompt for Mr. Gates should always have been scale up Lakeside school – GO! Well, that and revisit Voc Ed in this country. NPR had a great piece on that this morning.
http://www.npr.org/2014/03/19/291312101/to-fill-skills-gap-in-u-s-schools-look-abroad
They make the interesting point that Germany’s successful apprenticeship program requires the attention and investment of the Chamber of Commerce. In this country, our Chamber of Commerce has done nothing but set marching orders for everybody when actually cultivating the talents of individual young people and cooperating with unions is what was needed.
FLERP!
Yes. It’s a matter of what we decide we want to pay for. The Bush and Obama administrations spent 6 TRILLION dollars on their adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq.
There’s always money for the government work and welfare program for military-industrial complex C-level managers.
“It’s a matter of what we decide we want to pay for. The Bush and Obama administrations spent 6 TRILLION dollars on their adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
Exactly. We have decided that we don’t want to provide every child with a Lakeside-style education. It’s not just Bill Gates or Bush or Obama who’s decided that. It’s us, too. I don’t recall *anyone* of with any stature in education policy ever proposing rules or laws that would quadruple or quintuple the amount of money we spend on education, whether funded by new taxes, new borrowing, or a reallocation of the nation’s entire war budget.
If that’s the kind of education policy that we have *really* wanted all these years, then we have to accept that we are either (1) responsible for our current policy or (2) completely and hopelessly powerless. And if we’re completely and hopelessly powerless, then nobody should take us seriously anyway.
Or maybe that’s not the kind of education policy that we actually want. Maybe when we say that “all children should have the right to the same education Bill Gates provides for his children,” what we really mean is “Bill Gates is a hypocrite” or “the government should spend more money on education, but not THAT much more.” If that’s the case, then fine, let’s decide what we want to pay for.
I teach in Utah, the lowest per pupil expenditure state. Ironically, we are also one of the most equitable in funding. We have no money, but ALL of our districts have no money.
I have 256 students. That equals out to over 30 for each class but two (out of nine total). HOURS spent grading, calling parents, etc. In my district, we’ve just been told that if a student fails, it is the teacher’s fault. So more and more paperwork and calling to drag kids to passing.
I wish Bill Gates would come and substitute in my 8th and 9th grade classes for a week, and then, like my lovely state legislature, tell me that money doesn’t matter. Gates, and my legislators for that matter, wouldn’t last a day. Maybe not even a class period.
Tim, thanks for this. You definitely bring up very good points that are truly challenging.
Now, imagine Barack Obama reading every word you wrote in a nationwide speech to the American public on education.
How do you think it would go over? Would there be even a hint of embarrassment or blush on Obama’s part as he reiterates your points. What does it say about our country if this is the unvarnished truth. If it is, then we are such public hypocrites if the leaders of the country don’t say the words you have laid out here.
My guess is you will never hear your words uttered from the people in power.
Your words admit that there is an Education for those who can afford it and then there’s an education for the rest of the kids. Obama, Duncan and Gates have pretty well defined what sort of education is best for the rest of the country.
And we see it. My kids see it.
This is how much we are valued. This is how we should treat teachers. This is how we should treat students. This is how we should teach the kids who we claim will inherit the country.
This is how American education works.
This country really is for the wealthy, defined by the wealthy and the children of the wealthy are the ones who truly get to inherit it. The rest of us…well, Gates and Duncan and Obama have a plan for us that completely separates their children from mine.
My kids can see Sasha and Malia only as cartoon figures because, truly, what in the world do they have in common with them?
Thanks you Tim for shining a spotlight with your troubling questions on a country that does not make me particularly proud.
For starters we could transfer what we spend on testing and test prep to spending on real education.
And don’t get me started on transferring what we spend on blowing up and spying on people around the world.
Dienne: you may start a new trend called “critical thinking.”
😏
Ok, ok, an old dead French guy beat you to it:
“No problem can withstand the assault of sustained thinking.” [Voltaire]
In all seriousness, much said in few words.
😎
NO TIM
The point is that Gates is promoting an educational reform system that he and Melinda wouldnt let Rory, Phoebe, and Jennifer touch with a ten foot pole.
That’s because it’s an educational reform system for public schools. Bill Gates wouldn’t send his kids go to public school no matter what. That’s a given.
“here is also no doubt that student needs always come first–teachers eat lunch with their classes, take them out for recess, arrive early and stay late to help with homework, and respond quickly and thoroughly to parent concerns.”
And this is different form public schools how?
We are required to do all of these things, my friend.
My friends at very expensive private schools do not do some of these things.
They have aids, room mommies, teaching assistants, para professionals, what ever to take care of lunch duty, bus duty, etc.
“They are at-will employees who may be removed from the classroom at any time for any reason–no appeals, no due process (they are, of course, protected by federal and state employment laws).”
Nope, they have yearly contracts. And non renewal is very rare.
We’ve gone through this discussion before: yes, I acknowledge that there are regional differences in the duties/quality/expectation of private vs. public school employees. And I happen to live in a district where the gap between parent engagement at privates and publics could not be wider.
Whether it is a one-year contract or at-will employment, the point is the same: a teacher can be removed from the school for any reason the school sees fit.
Tim,
I teach in Middle School in a public school. In addition to my BS in Elementary Ed and my Master’s in Special Ed, I am a National Board Certified Teacher. Therefore, I am highly qualified. In my school we eat lunch with the kids, tutor (for free) before and after school, provide gym class everyday along with music, art, band, foreign language, and STEMs related arts classes. Every teacher in my district maintains a personal classroom website, and we have a guaranteed 24-hour turn around on all parent messages and emails which we receive.
So your whole argument about how elite private school teachers are better qualified is not valid. As for working in one of those schools – I assure you that the #1 reason it is so hard to get a teaching job there is due to profiling. The admin will only hire the teachers who will drink the elitist “we’re the best of the best of the best” Kool-aid.
Economics are the best indicator of school success. By the way – if I were paying $40,000 a year to attend a private school, you better believe I would expect my child to get straight A’s. That’s what I’m paying for, right?
That sounds tremendous. In my district, New York City, some teachers do maintain that level of communication, but it is strictly voluntary. Here elementary school teachers are required to perform one and only one “professional or adminstrative activity” per day, which might include bus duty, tutoring, lunch monitoring, etc. They are also guaranteed a 50-minute duty-free lunch period and a 50-minute student-free prep period during the 6 hours, 57.5 minutes schools are open to students (6 hours, 20 min on Fridays).
I support collective bargaining, and the contract is what it is. But I’m not willing to pretend that every single thing it stipulates is good for kids, and in New York City, at least, it contributes a great deal to the “customer service” gap between public schools and privates (and, increasingly, many charters).
To your last point, people are paying $40,000/year to get their kid into a high-end college, and they’ve chosen these schools because of their track record with college admissions. I think grade inflation would be very risky for each individual kid (the SAT/ACT is a pretty big reality check) and massively risky for the elite private schools (who risk their reputation as a reliable source of wealthy kids who are capable of doing the work).
Grade inflation is a concern at many colleges so I don’t think it is unreasonable to assume grade inflation exists in high schools (and not just elite private schools, but I do believe parents expect certain grades if they are paying a high tuition).
As a NBCT in a non-union state, I must say that your job requirements sound ridiculous. A teacher should be a teacher – period! This does not include lunch duty, unpaid tutoring or specials instruction. If you are going to do it all, my friend, you might want to investigate starting your own school and get the autonomy and remuneration you deserve.
Tim,
Why do you assume that other teachers, not employed at Lakeside are not highly qualified?
“Lakeside and the elite private schools are extraordinarily lean, with no bureaucracy or cumbersome district structures.” CPS, where I teach, is nothing but bureaucracy, where everyone in charge gets in our way.
“While much is expected of families and students with respect to student conduct and performance,” As a teacher, I am not ‘allowed’ to expect much from families. There is no accountability except for teachers. Not saying that families don’t care, but there are no consequences for students or families.
“there is also no doubt that student needs always come first” students needs come first for regular old public school teachers as well.
“teachers eat lunch with their classes,” I have had to or have chosen to eat with my students for lunch everyday as many of my colleagues have.
“take them out for recess,” yep, take them for recess outside or now inside because of no playground. Not so unusual.
“arrive early and stay late to help with homework,” Most teachers come early and stay late. I arrived to school at 6:30 a.m. today. Sometimes earlier. Can be tricky though due to the high crime and gang problems in the neighborhood. Oh, and I should mention that many of us have to park throughout the neighborhood sometimes two to three blocks away in a crime-ridden neighborhood because there is no parking for teachers. Not unusual.
” and respond quickly and thoroughly to parent concerns.” Interesting because I have tried throughout the week to get in touch with many of my parents. I ran into some problems however because I had to try to find an interpreter to make the phone calls. Then, I had to try and find phone numbers that work as the phone numbers that were provided as recently as last week are not working. I have also attempted to contact parents who have dropped vomiting children, children with high fevers, etc., off at school. I call from a school phone where the number can be seen on caller id and no answer. I call a moment later from my cell and they pick up right away. Problem is, parents are now angry because I have bothered them with their sick child and they now have my cell phone number. Most never come to pick up their child.
“Are we going to change the way we fund our schools” We shouldn’t have to. You are missing the point. The powers that be are throwing our money away on investments and business loans and under the table deals and always asking for more, yet, strangely enough, teachers are to blame. The question should be, are we going to respect our chidren more to not focus on the money aspect more than the quality aspect. Money is critical of course, but so is accountability. I find it strange that teachers in the classroom all day are responsible for…well…everything. Absurd! How do people not realize that we aren’t spending the money, we have very little choice about the curriculum, we can’t make books appear in our classrooms. I could go on and on.
” the vast majority of the population who don’t have school-aged children or work for a school system to spend two or three times what we spend on education already?” Craziness, absolute craziness. To ask for one sector of community members to support another sector of community members. Isn’t that what being part of a community is? We support things for the good of the community, the people. For God’s sake, it is not a question of whether to have a 7-11 or White Hen Pantry. We are talking about children here. Ya know, our future? Why are people so disinterested in spending money on somethng as valuable as education? I will never understand that!
“Are we going to be as choosy with selecting teachers as the elite private schools?” Why would you assume, Tim, that principals at public schools are choosing the bottom of the barrel? I have gone on 2-4 hour interviews and three day interviews to try and earn a position at public schools.
“Are we going to get rid of the right to due process and most work rules?” Most ‘work rules’ as you call them are in place to also protect the student. Anything that happens to a teacher, directly effects students. Tenure and union rights were not created to protect bad teachers, these were created to protect good teachers and help to provide a stable environment for children to learn.
“Are we going to do away with the traditional school district bureaucracy and administrative bloat” Let’s hope so. Once again, many of these people need to get out of our way and let us do our job!
Here’s my take on this:
Gates believes what almost all people who send their kids to schools like Lakeside believe: that his kids are smarter and have more potential than the vast majority of kids in public schools. So it makes sense to them to devote resources like this to their kids. It’s a safe investment, and he can afford it. Plus they like that these schools aren’t union shops. Especially the ones like Bill Gates who don’t like unions in the first place.
By contrast, the consensus is that, by and large, the public schools are mainly populated by mediocre to stupid kids with limited potential. These are the “other people’s kids” to the elites.
Also, whereas Bill Gates and even much less wealthy people can afford to pay for schools like Lakeside, the consensus is that America cannot afford to pay for schools like Lakeside for everyone. Have you ever heard an elite argue that the state should spend $60,000 per year on the education of each public school student? I have not. (Frankly, I almost never hear non-elites argue that.) My conclusion is that elites don’t believe it can or should be done. Or, possibly, they believe it can and should be done but believe actually saying that out loud would destroy their reputation.
As a result, for as long as I’ve been alive, elites have been proposing various ways to improve the education of the proles that do NOT involve immense increases in spending. Most of the proposals involved some form of privatization, because privatization didn’t require additional spending, just re-directed spending. Privatization also made schools more like Lakeside: no unions, more accountability to the check-cutters, more streamlined administration, less red tape. If it meant sending public funds to religious schools, that’s fine. If there wasn’t much evidence of how it would all work out, that’s fine, it was an experiment. It was worth rolling the dice because public education — at least public education for *inner city minorities* — was so terrible that disruption was better than the status quo.
This used to be mainly the province of intellectual elites working for conservative think tanks funded by pro-privatization corporations or foundations. At some point, they had won the argument, they were making education policy, and they had the backing of the new breed of super-elites, the Truly Extraordinarily Rich Men that appeared in the mid-1990s.
Gates is unusually powerful, and unusual in a lot of other ways, but the tension between what he does for his own children and what he believes should be done for our children is utterly typical of education reformers, at least for as long as I remember them existing (mid-1980s).
This is very, very well said, FLERP!
Addressing weaknesses in public education–and they are many and persistent–by eliminating the very idea of public education–would be similar to addressing unemployment by re-instituting slavery. And, by the way, there are people who are moving in such a direction to address our economic problems. I bet they send their kids to private schools!
“Addressing weaknesses in public education–and they are many and persistent–by eliminating the very idea of public education–would be similar to addressing unemployment by re-instituting slavery.”
As you wisely note, your comparison is not so farcical as it might seem at first glance. I would not have much worth as a slave; the cost benefit ratio would be skewed if they fed and housed me adequately. Of course…that’s a big “if.”
Please excuse the length of this comment.
When discussing trade-offs one shouldn’t assume one has proven one’s points before one has, er, proven them.
I’ll go with two very direct and easy to understand ideas: a “better education for all” and “every parent should have the choice of a well-resourced accessible public school.”
These are not givens. Nor is the present two-tiered education system that I pointed to. They are the result of a wide variety of decisions and actions—most especially political and economic —that affect education. It’s up to us to make, or at least influence, what sorts of decisions are made.
My point was, and is, very simple: what the leading charterites/privatizers and their educrat enablers and edubully enforcers propose and mandate for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN (the vast majority) is stunningly different from what they provide and ensure for THEIR OWN CHILDREN. And it flies in the face of their own pr and slogans.
So the real—not Rheeal—question is: how could those who promote and benefit from charters and vouchers and privatization get away so long with the mantra that “poor parents should have the same educational choices as rich parents” when their actions and words are diametrically opposed?
If this is not clear enough, let me reprint below a comment posted yesterday by Louisiana Purchase to which I responded in part “your comments cut through all the lies and hype”:
[start quote]
I am in Utah, a “right to work” state. Three years ago, my husband was teaching at a charter school. It was September, and school had been in session for three or four weeks. He discovered that a 7th grade student, who he had just gotten at the beginning of the school year, had been accessing pornography on the school’s computers, and had been since the previous March. Remember, my husband had only had the student in class for three or four weeks. Within two days, the school fired my husband. Their excuse is that he had not “adequately supervised” the student. No other teacher, including the teacher the student had the previous year when this student began accessing the porn in the first place, was disciplined. We think that the school had hired too many teacher for the year, and this was an excuse to get rid of one of the more highly-paid teachers in the building, without having to pay severance or unemployment. Our family is still recovering from the year my husband was unemployed as a result of this fiasco.
THAT is what will happen to all of us if Vergara wins. THAT will be the future of teaching. NO TEACHER will be safe.
[end quote]
Who better to end this with than an old dead Greek guy?
“As a vessel is known by the sound, whether it be cracked or not; so men are proved, by their speeches, whether they be wise or foolish.” [Demosthenes]
Here’s hoping I’m on the wise side of this one and not the foolish…
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In response to this:
You wrote this:
I don’t understand what that means. Do you think there are no “trade-offs” that would be required to provide a Lakeside-quality education (as you described in your initial post) to every American child? If you do think this would require trade-offs, what are they? You write that the “present two-tiered education system” is “the result of a wide variety of decisions and actions–most especially political and economic–that affect education.” Assuming you believe that every child should have a Lakeside-quality education, then what political and economic decisions should we make to ensure that happens? If you don’t believe that every child should have a Lakeside-quality education, why not?
On the whole, I take your comment to mean: all this is complicated stuff, but all I really meant is that Bill Gates is a hypocrite, and in addition, we should do what we can to fight his policies and influence.
FLERP: fair enough.
Yes, my main point was about the blistering hypocrisy of the self-styled “education reformers.” I am only pointing out how they employ, not just shameless double standards, but their blather easily turns into outright lies and deception—and I take little credit for skewering them; they are doing all the heavy lifting.
Just one further point: by lying and deceiving they empty out the discussion that we should be having about teaching and learning.
However, as for “trade-offs” and such: whatever it takes to ensure a “better education for all” and for “all parents to have the choice of a well-resourced local public school.”
It’s about time that “whatever it takes” was applied to public education and democracy and such, rather than to such foreseeable disasters as 2008, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Just my dos centavitos worth…
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I teach at a public school and my husband teaches at an elite private school. So we are pretty familiar with the differences. It’s isn’t really anything at all like Tim here says, at least here in the midwest. Job conditions matter — due process is a good protection for public school teachers. But on the other hand, that goes with “public accountability”, meaning — we don’t want public schools to become “jobs programs” for the families of school board members. And we don’t want private schools to become “jobs programs” for the families of the members of the board of trustees — but the protection as to the latter comes from the fact that the members of the board of trustees are generally wealthier and their family members are not seeking $40,000 / year jobs. A group of persons that IS seeking such jobs are “retired public school teachers” — or those who have left public education because they are exhausted from dealing with all the students with severe needs that we have no ability to help with — examples: children who need eyeglasses but who just don’t have them — surely Mr. Gates would not suggest that my husband and I just put out the $800 for glasses for our students that need them (maybe the Gates’s would like to start eye clinics in the public school where I teach — that would be a benefit, not a harm like the rest of his initiatives) — or children who sleep in filthy homes and wear the same filthy clothes each day (don’t say “report it” — we already have, and do,and nothing ever changes). If these kinds of needs in kids were addressed through other means (it’s the poverty, folks) — then schools would have enough. Private school teachers usually do NOT make more money than public school teachers, although many of these teachers do consider themselves to have better working conditions than public school teachers. I love my students and have no desire to leave them, but it is a complete falsehood to say that “wealthy” children don’t need caring teachers (“wealthy” children all have glasses if they need them, clean clothes and etc. but they certainly don’t all have balanced, loving families and the feelings of security and wellness that go with them — so there is a place for teachers to provide balance, stability, security, etc. for those students, as well as a love of academics). Many of those who pay for private schools do so not because they wish to escape poor quality “one size fits all” academics such as common core or even “large computerized classes” (which have not made much headway here in the midwest in any event), but because they want to put their children in a peer group that they perceive to be higher — they want their kids to become part of the group they knows people with power. We think that is a misconception — that there is true value in being raised with the “commoners” as it were — but with that said, there are public schools with breathtakingly high rates of poverty (90% +) — it would be hard to put your own children in a school like that, but wraparound services (medical, dental, vision, as well as food, shelter, clothing) for those children would make all the difference. And — addressing these issues would reduce the need for private schools (also get rid of common core and get back to locally controlled standards and curriculum). I haven’t addressed all of the ways in which Tim misses the reality of public v. private schools, but I will end by noting that although private schools do have admissions tests and so forth — only the most naive of persons would think that a well placed donation cannot get around this — there ARE kids who struggle with academics in these private schools and yet they stay, because — their families have money to give. That sort of corruption is considerably less prevalent in public schools. And at the private school we are “super familiar with” (grades K-12), the employees may technically not be renewed from year to year (they’re not “at will” like Tim says because they do have contracts) — in point of fact, in 20 plus years, only once has someone not been — and there are surely one or two others who should have been. My public school has a stronger history with not renewing people than the elite private schools around here. The reason ? Simple — first, teachers who do a reasonably good job with kids and also talk well with parents are not that easy to find (most really good teachers prefer public schools, at least until they retire), and second, firing teachers leads to instability, demoralizes teachers (who then are more likely to leave), all of which makes the admin look bad and the school look unstable. Long time teachers make for good marketing material . . . . as do experienced teachers. Because everyone — almost everyone! — knows that experienced teachers and small class sizes are the only magic available, when it comes to good education for kids. One other thing, Tim (and this one is personal): I, and my colleagues in the public schools, arrive early (7 am), stay late (4:30 pm), work at least an hour each night at home, and several hours on the weekends, at the least. We get 25 minutes for lunch and a single plan period (which is sometimes only half an hour during the day, sometimes none) — my husband’s school gets TWO, teaches one class less, has smaller classes and the English / writing teachers get THREE planning times! So — who works the hardest ? WE DO — that’s why private school teachers are willing to — and do — work for less.
Julie: thank you for your comments.
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We can thank Bill Clinton for doing in the 90s what Reagan wanted but thought could happen only in his wildest dreams, blowing off progressives and liberals and turning the Democratic party “centrist,” providing increased opportunities for corporate welfare, such as by signing off on NAFTA and repealing Glass-Steagall. That gave corporations many more occasions to exploit workers and increase profits, and it gave the rest of us the choice of Right and Right Lite on virtually all economic issues.
In education, we’ve got a choice of GOP Tea, with vouchers, and GOP Decaffeinated –without vouchers but with no concerted effort to oppose them. No wonder wealthy conservatives now contribute heavily to both parties. And the Dems will probably be offering up yet another Clinton to seal the one party corporate deal in 2016.
If middle income and lower income people don’t get labor unions to stop contributing to Democrats and either expand the Working Families party or organize a new Labor party, the masses will be condemned to many more decades of plutocratic tyrannical rule by the wealthy overlords who’ve been running our country ever since Clinton made Reagan’s dreams come true. That’s because, in reality, today, “There is no meritocracy: It’s just the 1 percent, and the game is rigged” http://www.salon.com/2014/03/16/there_is_no_meritocracy_its_just_the_1_percent_and_the_game_is_rigged/
Thomas Frank says what needs to be said as well as anyone ever has. Thank you for that great article. Everyone who is embroiled in this insane war should read every word. There it is. Read it and weep. The truth & nothing but the truth. The game isn’t just rigged. It isn’t even a game. These people are serious sociopaths. There is no beating them at their own “game”. If there is any hope, it is in changing how young people are inducted into society & starting the revolution by freeing minds from the earliest stage & inculcating a set of values that don’t include the self-deception & acquiescence. As I tried to say in my earlier response, the deck remains stacked because the wealthy have figured our how to keep the masses down where they think they belong. Compulsory attendance is the perfect mechanism. The people who fail are taught to blame themselves (ressentiment, in Edgar Z. Freidenberg’s terms) & to surrender without a fight. The law makes it clear that the less fortunate must be trained to obey & comply & attend for twelve of the formative years, or pay the price. The indoctrination is nearly total & universal. Common Core is merely one more symptom of a fatal condition. Would someone please tell Ms. Ravitch?
A new study of the consequences of economic inequality:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/14/nasa-civilisation-irreversible-collapse-study-scientists
The Common Core and the associated Common Core College and Career Ready Assessment Program (C.C.R.A.P., aka P.A.R.C.C. and S.B.A.C.) is “good enough” training (as opposed to education) for the children of the proles. That’s the theory.
The elites believe that it would be a breathtaking waste of resources to try to give the children of proles the same opportunities that the children of elites are given because they don’t think that such children would have the ability to take advantage of them. They are followers of the the racist, unscientific faith espoused in the bible of the education deform movement, The Bell Curve. To disabuse yourself of the criminal determinism of that book, read the real science reported in Richard Nisbett’s Intelligence and How to Get It. Or have a look at this report on studies that have been replicated again and again:
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2012/09/how_children_succeed_book_excerpt_what_the_most_boring_test_in_the_world_tells_us_about_motivation_and_iq_.htm
The achievement gap will never be erased until we provide compensatory environments for the children of the poor that provide for them the opportunities that the children of the rich have. By the age of FOUR, low SES kids have heard 30 million fewer words than have middle-class kids–this at the critical time when the neural pathways for language parameters are being formed. We know this. It’s a matter of scientific fact.
And this should be obvious:
No amount of weighing the cow will make the cow heftier.
Children deserve equivalent opportunity. Children are born into savage inequality, and by the decisions that we make about where we are going to spend out money, we say, de facto, that that’s OK with us.
I am embarrassed to admit that when I was younger, I enrolled my child in a Lakeside-style elite preschool in the Washington, DC, area. The school had an arboretum, canoes on a lake, a vast library, a great auditorium and gym and art facilities. It had tree-lined walks and ponies in a stable. And it had very, very low student-to-teacher ratios. Meanwhile, in LA, kids go to school in buildings where there is duct tape over the holes in the walls, where bathrooms are closed, where there isn’t adequate air conditioning.
Every child deserves the former, deserves a school that is THE MOST VALUED, MOST LAVISH, MOST SACRED PLACE in the community. We have megachurches and schools that are falling down. We have breathtakingly swank corporate offices and schools that are falling down. We can afford bombs but we can’t afford books. What does that say about what we value?
Take the prince and the pauper and switch them in the cradle and see what happens. The pauper grows up to sit on boards of directors and run for Senator.
It’s time to be very, very clear about this. The elites in the United States have come up with a training system (the Common Core) for children of proles. This is distinct from the education systems for their own children, and that is BY DESIGN.
It was ever thus with societies nearing collapse. The elites seize all the resources, and wealth and income inequality soar, just before it all falls down:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/mar/14/nasa-civilisation-irreversible-collapse-study-scientists
Or, just before it all falls down, we merge with technology, upload ourselves, colonize the universe, and become God.
Or the elites do that and the rest of us scurry around, half-merged with outdated technology, on a dying planet.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1535108/
Bob Shepherd: pardon the impertinence, but shouldn’t we start using the full name of CC? Perhaps it could be “unpacked” [howzabout we start using the term “unzipped”?] in your delightful Reformish Dictionary.
[start]
Common Core—shortened form of Commoners Core. Refers to the drill-and-kill docility training of the vast majority of students aka OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN aka hewers of wood and drawers of water in training; see also “college and career readiness.” Hence the summative statement of the entire Commoners Core as being “hewing and drawing.” *The last phrase not to be confused with the oft-repeated “hemming and hawing” experienced among edupreneurs and educrats and edubullies when they are pressed to provide the same sort of genuine education they ensure for THEIR OWN CHILDREN to the children of hewers of wood and drawers of water.*
[finish]
Of course, if you’ve got a copyright on the Reformish Dictionary and only allow minor adjustments to—at most—15%, I withdraw my suggestion. I don’t want to get into any trouble…
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The amusing thing about the CCSSO/NGA “copyright” is that what they have copyrighted and what they are treating as HOLY WRIT is a set of thoroughly cliched, inane, backward, unimaginative, hackneyed, uninformed, often unscientific, received ideas about what matters in each of the ELA domains. It’s as thought the CCSSO/NGA gathered together a bunch of real-estate salespeople and asked them to make a list of “stuff to teach in English class” based on what they half remembered from their experiences back in the day.
Years ago, a bunch of novelists who were sick of only junk fiction being published by the big trade book houses got together and PURPOSEFULLY wrote a novel that contained every cliche they could think of. They called this purposefully gawdawful piece of received, unimaginative, cliched crap Naked Came the Stranger, and, predictably, it made the bestseller list.
Well, the bullet list that makes up the Commoners’ Core in ELA is the Naked Came the Stranger of learning progressions. It’s just about as hackneyed and unimaginative as such a list can get. If I had gathered some experienced curriculum developers and scholars together and we had set out to put together a list of received misconceptions and halftruths, of backward, unexamined, half-baked, and prescientific ideas about the teaching of English, the result would look a lot like this crap that the CCSSO/NGA is treating as though David Coleman carried it down from the mountaintop.
Perhaps they think that a mediocrity like the CC$$ in ELA is “good enough” for prole training. I have given up trying to imagine what they could have been thinking, if you can call what they were doing thinking.
The math “standards” are marginally better than the ELA “standards” are, of course, though arguably, the previous math standards of number of states were better than these are. All these “standards” were prepared based on the lowest-common-denominator groupthink of the state “standards” that preceded them, but at least the state math “standards” that the amateur authors of the CC$$ worked from were based on the NCTM standards, which had had a lot of teacher and researcher input. Those state math standards were remarkably uniform, and the CC$$ in math isn’t much of a departure from them, and so it’s amusing that ed deformers think that doing what’s always been done is going to change anything.
To the groupthink ELA bullet list of the “standards” proper, the CCSSO/NGA’s hired amateurs appended some generalities about reading substantive, grade-appropriate texts closely, as though no one had ever done that before. And those GREAT REVELATIONS are all they ever talk about when they tout the “standards” because, of course, the ELA bullet list won’t stand up to the slightest learned scrutiny. It’s infuriating, of course, when an amateur like Coleman tells teachers that they have to have students ask text dependent questions, read closely, and so on, of course. It’s like having someone say, “Hey, you physicians. Here’s a break-through idea: sterilization!” LOL.
It would be amusing to hear the hackneyed CC$$ ELA bullet list referred to as “higher,” more “rigorous” standards if there weren’t so many semi-educated folks taking that PR seriously. What shocks me is that the people touting these “standards” haven’t long since been hooted off the national stage.
“at least the state math “standards” that the amateur authors of the CC$$ worked from were based on the NCTM standards, which had had a lot of teacher and researcher input.”
Does anybody wonder how they can copyright something that draws so heavily on the work of another organization? Does that mean that NCTM might eventually have to have CCSSO and NGA approve their work?
““The cultural and economic diversity of our community….” Check out what they consider diversity in their demographics:
http://www.movoto.com/public-schools/wa/seattle/elementary/a0702401-lakeside-school-middle-school/13510-1st-ave-ne.htm
An outstanding post, Krazy.
“Lakeside School fosters the development of citizens capable of and committed to interacting compassionately, ethically, and successfully with diverse peoples and cultures to create a more humane, sustainable global society. This focus transforms our learning and our work together…”
They need to walk the talk now.
Lakeside students and parents need to volunteer in public title schools if so they so much cared about interacting with diverse peoples and cultures to create a humane sustainable global society.
I find their mission statement full of hypocrisy, if they can’t start with the needs in the country they live in. Bunch of elites rhetoric which is exclusive. This is the kind of “hidden code” taught to a select few, so that others remain subordinate and inferior. They really have defined where the starting line begins for their kids.
Jeff Goodell, 3/13/2014: Bill Gates: The Rolling Stone Interview
The richest man in the world explains how to save the planet
This is a little off topic but this is the scarriest thing I’ve ever seen
http://www.classcharts.com/
Seating charts based on behavior. I can’t imagine Bill wouldn’t love this (or is involved in this). This is a data nightmare just waiting to happen. Someday some poor sap will be trying to get a job and HR will ask for his seating chart placement from grade school to see if they will be a good fit…the possibilities for misuse are endless!
I wouldn’t have minded an in-house system that allowed me to plan seating with IEP accommodations and goals in mind. I do not like the idea of all this data floating around in the datasphere.
I have read with interest many personal experiences of the American education system. I’d like to add a few thoughts and observations.
First of all, I was born and educated in Canada – in the public school system – -, moved to the US after college and live in Memphis TN, where education and education reform is on the front pages of the local paper everyday. My wife is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the private school system – lower, middle, high school and college. She currently teaches middle school english at a private school. She began her teaching career at the local university as a “TA” when she went back later in life to get her MFA. Both of our children attended the school she teaches at, and then moved on to private high schools, and then attended and graduated from state universities. So much for the bona fides.
My first obsevation is this, money does matter. In fact it is the most important factor there is in obtaining a good education.
The options 20 years ago for my children in Memphis were this:
1. attend the designated public school for my inner city disctrict. I won’t bore you with the prospects for children from this school, but needless to say, 20 years later it has been closed for under performance by the State regulators.
2. apply for one of a limited number of better out-of-my-district public school slots for “gifted students” on a first come, first serve basis. Which in Memphis means people literally camp outdoors for at least a week at the school board offices in winter time. Barbaric
3. attend a private school
We could afford it and chose option 3. As do thousands of other Memphians. Can you blame us? It chills me to the bone, however to consider what would happen in Memphis if every Memphian with children in private school suddenly chose to send their children to the public school that their taxes pay for.
The money to support high quality public education doesn’t exist.within our local tax base. MAJOR PROBLEM NO. 1
I was educated in the public school system in Canada, which is always rated as one of the best in the world. Why? It is a priority to the people of Canada. If any politician in Canada ever stated that we can no longer guarantee a good public education for our children they would be voted out immediately. School teachers in Canada are very highly trained and very highly thought of. A public school teacher in Canada earns about 50% more per year that they do in the US, in other words, a living wage.
American teachers are woefully underpaid; MAJOR PROBLEM NO. 2
In Canada, you must graduate from Teachers College to teach in the public school system. They are one of the hardest colleges to get into in the country. You usually need at least a years experience teaching at a private school and/or an advanced degree, My sister teaches in the Canadian public school system. She graduated Cum Laude from the University of Toronto with a BA (honors) in English with a minor in Semiotics. She couldn’t get into the Teachers College untill she had worked for two years teaching English as a second language in a private school.
American teachers are not always well qualified nor certified. MAJOR PROBLEM NO. 3
The University of Toronto, ranked last year by the Times of London as one of the 20th best universities in the world (I may be off by a few!). For Canadians it costs about $8K per year to attend – before any scholarships are factored in. There are ample low interest loans and grants available as well. Foreign students can attend for less than twice that. It is a true meritocracy. Standardized application tests are given and – THERE ARE STANDARDIZED CURRICULUMS across the country. So everyone’s grades are “apples to apples”. I was a very good student, but the traditional path didn’t call me. I ended up going to a “small c” college and studied Graphic and Industrial Design for $500 per semester. Its not a whole lot more than that now. Higher eduation in Canada is very affordable.
A higher education in the United States in no longer affordable for the majority of families. MAJOR PROBLEM NO. 4
As other teachers on this blog have mentioned before, in Memphis, private school teachers make considerably less than public school teachers. They do it because the student population is for the most part well behaved, well fed and prepared to learn. The horror stories from fellow teachers that volunteer in the public school system are incredulous. All public high schools have on-site police presence and metal detectors at each entrance.
In the inner city, teachers are unable to teach because of a lack of discipline, malnutrition and a perception that an education is worthless amongst their students. MAJOR PROBLEM NO.5
As mentioned above, my wife taught freshman comp while a TA at the local public university. Her first class couldn’t write at all. These kids were the elite of the Memphis public school system. The best of them were writing at the 6th grade level. She related to me their utter shock and anger when she graded their first papers. They had been “4.0” students in high school. My wife, a very special lady, knew they weren’t stupid. They were just ignorant. Because they were bright and they weren’t disciplinary problems they had been pushed through the system with very little actual instruction. She made a promise to them that if they were willing to work hard, she would get them to grade level by the end of their semester. Which of course she did for many of them. It changed her life. She decided to become a teacher instead of writiing the next great (southern) american novel.
We are no longer teaching to any standards – in fact we keep dropping them instead of raising up our children. MAJOR PROBLEM NO. 6
In closing I would say this: funding is everything. All children deserve a chance to succeed, but in this country, the deck is stacked against many of them. Untill we make the decision to elect politiicians that consider education a better use of our tax dollars than the pentagon, this will never change.
“American teachers are not always well qualified nor certified.”
“Until we make the decision to elect politicians that consider education a better use of our tax dollars than the pentagon, this will never change.
Yes and yes. Our politicians want to get improvement in educational outcomes on the cheap. They want to believe that all they have to do is set “higher standards” and get tougher via various accountability schemes. Ten years ago, they went full bore based on exactly the same plan–federally approved standards and standardized tests in every state. And that was supposed to “leave no child behind,” was supposed to get us to 100 percent proficiency in reading and math by the year 2014.
Well, guess what? It’s now 2014. And we are exactly where we were. And this same group of idiots, having not learned their lesson, there, want us to do more of the same, have given us Son of NCLB, or NCLB Fright Night II: The Nightmare Is Nationalized. The only difference is that they have substituted national standards and national tests for the state standards and state tests that they required under NCLB.
They think that weighing the cow is going to make it fatter. They remind me of cultists. They are committed to their philosopher’s stone, their universal cure-all, deformy magic, standards and testing. Insane. Only an utter fool looks at what isn’t working and says, “Gee, we need to do a lot more of that.”
And then there all the education deformers who don’t actually think any of this will work but who don’t care, the ones for whom the standards are simply the first step in a business plan for creating markets at a scale at which only their monopolies can compete.
I entirely agree that teaching should be become a high-status, high-paying profession and that barriers to entry should be correspondingly high. But let’s not forget that if one corrects for socioeconomic status, the students prepared by our teachers in our public school systems come out at or very near the top on the international standardized exams.
We have a lot of low-SES kids. 26 percent of our children live below the poverty line. 43 percent of African-American children. They live in neighborhoods and attend schools that make make a cruel joke of the promise of equal opportunity for all. But fixing THAT problem is expensive, and we can’t do that AND spend trillions on foreign military misadventures.
We’re going to get what we are willing pay for, and what we are willing to pay for shows where our values lie.
We spent 6 trillion dollars in Afghanistan and Iraq. That’s an unfathomably large amount of money. A trillion is the number of seconds in over 31,000 years! And to what ends?
Meanwhile, our kids go hungry. Their schools are falling down. Our teachers are paid poorly. And we are doing next to nothing to create compensatory environments for low-SES children who hear 30 million fewer words by age 4 than middle-class kids do, who deal with stresses that middle-class kids could never imagine.
I’m a little confused. If our schools are performing at the top of the world when corrected for SES, what is the reason for raising the bar for entry into the teaching profession so that many of the teachers we now have successfully teaching our students would no longer be qualified to enter the teaching profession? We know that we do not do a good job of correcting for cultural bias on our tests. We could do a good job of eliminating teachers who have not had access to a background or education that mirrors the values of high SES. We have a lot of teachers now who have graduated from “run of the mill” educational programs who have been quite successful as teachers. If high barriers to entry into the teaching profession are not leading to higher performance in other countries, we had better be very careful about how we define the necessary qualifications and what we mean by high standards. Can you imagine how many inspiring teachers we could lose if entry into teaching programs required a stellar high school career? I’m thinking that with evidence that our brains do not fully mature until on average around 24, we would be cutting out a lot of people who took longer before their ability to make good judgements kicked in. There is a reason why boys under 24 pay more for car insurance, and the insurance industry didn’t need brain research to tell them that! I would like some kind of on the job apprenticeship program beyond a BA that did not keep you in the starving student category and that led to (a masters and) a fully certified teaching position. I would like people who would never be able to compete to enter a program with high barriers to entry to have avenues to pursue a teaching career. I’m not saying your intentions are any different, Robert, just that we have to be very careful in deciding what we want and how we achieve it without eliminating candidates who have potential that may not meet our criteria.
Dear never2old. I do understand what you are saying here.
One of the best teachers I ever worked alongside was an elementary school teacher who was NOT, by any stretch of the imagination, a scholar. What she lacked in intellectual gifts and scholarship was more than made up for by her personal warmth and good cheer, her care and concern, her capacity for hard work, her awareness, her energy, and her creativity. The kids loved her and worked very hard for her, and her classroom was always an exciting, engaging place.
There are many ways in which to be a great teacher, and great intellect and subject-matter knowledge are just a couple of these. However, it would be nice if the person teaching Algebra knew a bit more math than can be found in the Algebra I textbook, if the one teaching French could read and write French and had some command of French literature and culture, and I’ve taught alongside ones who didn’t. I’m not saying that that’s common or the norm, but it happens. I want to see teachers REVERED and RESPECTED. I would like to see a lot more of them revered and respected for their scholarship. We’re moving in the other direction. ALEC is pushing legislation, based on Gates studies, that would eliminate pay for advanced degrees. That seems, to me, a terrible mistake.
You’re right, Bob. We want teachers who are trained to teach the content of their classes. We also want teachers who are trained to teach kids and who know how to foster lifelong learning.
Being someone who teaches kids, who has empathy for and understand of them, is first. Knowing a lot more of the content than is in the book is second. Both, essential.
Oh, and the Michelle Rhee requirement: having no pity and access to a big roll of masking tape. LOL
Bill Gates is a member of a family with a LONG history in Eugenics. He was a millionaire, thanks to the wealth of his family, long before he created Microsoft by buying up the software of others for pennies, before presenting it as Microsoft’s own work.
Gates is the driving force behind Common Core, but he also created the ‘inBloom’ database that Obama himself mandates is used to track every child across every aspect of their life in the USA. While Gates laughably paints himself as an enlightened left-leaning ‘liberal’, his major partner on ‘inBlloom’ is Rupert Murdoch- yes the same Murdoch who owns Fox News and the Fox Network (as well as other major media networks all over the planet).
And again, it was Gates who demanded Microsoft ruin the commercial prospects of their new gaming console, the Xbox One, by designing every aspect of it to bring NSA spying into the home of ordinary Americans.
One of the key tenants of Common Core is the insistence that parents must “BUTT OUT”. Only yesterday, ‘Slashdot.Com’ (a neo-liberal site favoured to appeal to “nerds”) was pushing the line that parent who help with ‘Common Core’ homework lower the scores of their children. What wasn’t pointed out was that Common Core is DESIGNED to lower the test scores and confidence of middle ability pupils, leaving the scores of the best and least able mostly unchanged. Then, when the parents of the majority complain, one stated tactic in the Common Core guidelines is to “blame the parents for any perceived interference”.
Such a tactic demoralises the parents (by intent), and thus intentionally damages the whole family unit- creating tensions between the parent and child.
Common Core specialises in the massive use of nonsensical buzzwords, and convoluted methodology, creating a dense alien world that is perceived as the pupil’s ‘secret’ place. When a parent is aware that their child is doing poorly, the parent is unable to make their own assessment of the reasons for failure, and is thus likely to place a general disapproval on the child, accelerating the critical loss of confidence.
If this sounds like a sophisticated psychological war on the majority of children and families in the USA, then you are starting to understand how Bill Gates operates.
Sounds like those making the new rules in education figured the 21st century world can utilize 20% of the most creative brightest minds leaving 80% to work a job or volunteer community services.
The same thing is true of Obama also. His daughters learn Singapore math. I was floored when I read the math curriculum at their school. If every DC kid learn Singapore math, I assure you they would be lot better.
This is a desperate attempt to create worker bees. Teachers unions openly admit in a diverse society our goal is teach for a goal of achieving B grade.
I am following the Asians, Lefty Caucasians are screwed in their head. Imagine teaching for B grade in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. Minorities should know they will be short changed by educational establishment.
Shame on Gates, Obama and the Chamber of Commerce.
Bill Gates is a grade-A hypocrite. I live in Seattle, I’ve toured Lakeside (which looks, visually, like a small liberal arts college) – it’s a great school. They have a very certain kind of kid in mind so they choose carefully (of course, Gates’ kids get in, no problem).
I actually have no problem with him buying a smaller class size for his kids. He has the money.
But to push Common Core on everyone else while his own children (and Duncan’s and Obama’s) get something completely different is appalling.
But his own little House of Cards – CC – is really starting to crumbling.
Seattle is becoming more and more a tale of two cities. It’s wealthy, hip, and progressive for some, yet increasingly unaffordable, scary, and violent for others. Schools in wealthier neighborhoods going one way and poorer ones struggling to keep up. The gifted program there is growing leaps and bound and reflects this gap as well. Between 25-30% of Seattle area students are in private schools. Lakeside is an expensive school and 30% of the students receive financial packages and the other 30% are from the area’s elite wealth and power brokers. The remaining bunch are two income householders who are paying full fare. Some families skip out on the Global Service Learning to save money and the children work during the summer to earn money. Like Seattle public high schoolers, Lakeside and other private school students are required to meet their community service hours to graduate. For many, the local food banks and youth shelters work just as well as exotic, expensive oversea locales.
Our family went from public to private school. There’s guilty feeling involved with such a move since we are public school products and came from families of public school teachers. We were quite active in our old public school with PTA fund raising, Science/Math Fair, and tutoring in the classrooms. We left because of poor curriculum, increased standardized testings + teacher eval = teaching to the tests. We left because Seattle school district keeps going through Superintendents every 2 years or so and our school went through 4 principals in 3 years. We also left looking for academic rigor, small class size, nimbler, more responsive admin staff, and teachers who because they know their subjects and craft well have academic freedom in the classrooms (we had wonderful teachers in public schools who were constrained by what they must teach, how they must teach it, pacing, and large class size even with many parent volunteers helping).
It’s probably easier to stereotype for good vs. bad. But after straddling both worlds, I’m not sure bashing Lakeside, while satisfying, will answer the quest for better public education. I find many parents in private and public schools who care about children’s education want similar things: smaller class size, teachers who enjoy what they do, better PD and teacher collaboration, in depth and challenging curriculum, responsive administrators, less standardized testing, and a culture which respects and loves learning.
There are many more factors besides the usual ‘ed reformers’ and Wall Street types. It’s far more complex. Just look at 60 years after Brown. We are many more tiers and splintering factions than simply the 1% vs. the world.
Wow, that’s a lot of anger… and largely misplaced, I think. If I were Bill Gates, I’d send my kids to my alma mater too. But kudos for him for trying to improve a system that isn’t working, even though he has the luxury of not being affected by it. This is a guy who spent millions on mosquito nets that are saving lives in Africa… he doesn’t live in a pest-ridden hut so are we going to give him a hard time about that too? Is that his choice? Move to muddy village somewhere with a mosquito net and hope to avoid malaria or keep your money in your pocket? Seriously, people, get a grip and before you leap on the bandwagon to criticize an earnest effort, come up with a better plan. I’m not a common core advocate by any stretch, but our educational system is unequal and it needs to be fixed and Bill Gates did not cause that nor is he attempting to perpetuate it.
Wow. This goes back a couple of months. There is indeed an inordinate amout of anger directed at Bill Gates in particular, which seems a bit irrational on the surface. I’ve always had the hope that he has good intentions. However, he has been too dismissive of teachers and their struggles and sacrifices on behalf of students and he has advocated for policies that make the job more difficult and less rewarding. He has been a tad paternalistic in presuming that he should be making recommendations merely because he has more money than he knows how to spend. In addition, he favors a use of technology that will surely benefit his bottom line causing suspicion and that reveals a basic ignorance relative to the educational process that is sad. The truly sad thing is that so many teachers cling to the idea that they could work miracles in a “system” that is designed to annihilate miracles, along with identity, creativity, spirit, and initiative if they were just left alone to teach and that people such as Ms. Ravitch continue to deny that the paradigm that Gates and others are seeking to replace does more harm than good. They call my approach throwing the baby out with the bathwater, but that isn’t bathwater baby, and the baby died in stillbirth. The two sides are fighting over a ship that sank a long time ago, instead of recognizing that the thing that sunk it is the law and the torpedos called coercion and bureaucracy that are so essential to the legalization of schooling. Privatization of services that are more appropriately public and believing that education can ever be a profitable enterprise (except on a broad social and long-term basis) is ludicrous and dangerous. The teachers are spot-on about this. Nevertheless, a century or two of bungling doesn’t speak well of anyone trying to preserve this debacle.
Robert Fuhlghum (All I Really Needed To Know I Learned In Kindergarten, 1988) was the art teacher at Lakeside when Gates was a student there: “Lakeside…tended to look very, very carefully at individual students, especially ones who stood out in any one direction….and it would give those students lots and lots of privilege and rope and space to do whatever they could do, even if it was far out of the usual constraints of school.” That doesn’t sound like a common curriculum! That sounds like a learner centered curriculum where discovery learning and experimentation are allowed so children will develop though their personal interests! http://books.google.com/books?id=XdYOGBhp0SAC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Hard+drive,+bill+gates+and+the+making+of+microsoft+,+biography&hl=en&sa=X&ei=HPCoU7HaC8WayASu8oHICw&ved=0CB4Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Hard%20drive%2C%20bill%20gates%20and%20the%20making%20of%20microsoft%20%2C%20biography&f=false
This type of academic freedom must be earned by students.
In schools with high rates of poverty, there is usually a HUGE difference between an honors and/or AP student and a hard core gang banger who doesn’t read books, do classwork or homework or cooperate with teachers. On the weekend, the gang banger is out on the streets at all hours spraying walls, selling drugs, fighting with rival gangs and/or killing rival gang members, etc.
The honors and/or AP student is hanging out with other academic students, reading books, doing constructive projects, doing homework, studying, etc.
And in between these two types of students, there is a wide spread of engagement, maturity and cooperation.
I taught in schools with a 70 percent or higher poverty rate in a community dominated by violent street gangs, but we still had honors and AP classes and incredible kids who earned great academic freedom and trust on campus.
But the higher the poverty rate, the lower the average score was on the annual standardized tests. The small ratio of honors or AP students at a school with a high rate of poverty is not enough to raise that average.
The author blames Bill Gates’ children that they have high level of education not in рubliс schools and it costs $28,500 annually. But didn’t say a word that Bill Gates donates billions dollars for education. He have given $8 billion to improve global health and only in 2015, he gave $1 billion to a clean energy projects.
Yeah, Mike, because that wasn’t the point of the article, was it? Try reading it again for context.
Mike,
There are two sides to where Bill Gates money goes.
I suggest you read “The flip side to Bill Gates’ charity billions”
Carlos Slim, the Mexican multi-billionaire who replaced Gates at the top the world’s richlist (due to Gates’ charity), likened philanthropy to owning an orchard: ‘You have to give away the fruit, but not the trees.’ He and Gates are products of an economic system that has produced monopolies and redistributed wealth upwards for 30 years. Parallels may be drawn between the inequalities of today and the Victorian era, when health provision for the poor depended on the largesse of the rich. Oscar Wilde observed of the philanthropists of that era: ‘They seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task of remedying the evils that they see in poverty, but their remedies do not cure the disease: they merely prolong it.’ Then and now, as Wilde said, ‘the proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.’ – See more at: http://newint.org/features/2012/04/01/bill-gates-charitable-giving-ethics/#sthash.eiQs8CDg.dpuf
http://newint.org/features/2012/04/01/bill-gates-charitable-giving-ethics/
ALL schools and teachers used to do what Lakeside does (except for “the year abroad) until Common Core. Teachers nurtured students to be the best that they could be based on their individual needs, etc. But not anymore. I wonder if Lakeside provides education in the Arts? I’d love to see Lakeside’s library. Is it just us lowly regular people who have to do without?