Valerie Strauss received an odd April Fool’s column, allegedly written by her, announcing that Peter Cunningham, known as Arne Duncan’s mouthpiece or his brain, had had a conversion experience, has turned against the Race to the Top policies, and plans to go on tour with me to explain why we now are on the same page.
Valerie checked with him, and he is game. Now, I admit I like Peter even though I don’t agree with the things he used to say.
But I want to debate Arne or Bill.
No insult, Peter, but I don’t want to take a victory lap with you. I am delighted to know you have joined our side (how about joining the Network for Public Education?).
I want to go to the source. If I can persuade Arne or Bill to stop tormenting children and teachers, well, game over, a new day in America.
Then I will meet you for a few Bailey’s, and I will even pick up the check.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
After three days of proctoring the ELA tests for a group of 3rd graders who have either an IEP or a 504 plan, I can attest to the fact that we are tormenting children.
This blog post put a smile on my face…..
I think we’re tormenting teachers also…
http://davidrtayloreducation.wordpress.com/2014/04/01/april-fools-day-2014/
The tormenting of teachers and students is intentional, serving somewhat overlapping purposes.
For teachers, the tormenting/harassment is intended to intimidate, control and get them out, hopefully before they become vested in the pension system. For students, it’s about socializing them to a command and control system, and inculcating the “grit” (a deformer euphemism for the ability to take and eat s&@+) that so-called reformers insist upon for the Worthy Poor.
As for the Unworthy Poor, well, that’s what our huge, increasingly for-profit prison system for…
I can’t disagree…you’re correct.
The long-term game plan, Michael, is the dramatic reduction of the teacher force. Most of the cost of education is in teachers’ salaries and benefits. And, Open Source textbooks had the potential of completely undermining the educational materials monopolists’ business model.
Answer to both: Replace teachers and textbooks with computer-adaptive software accessing databases of standards-keyed student responses–databases controlled by the monopolists. With those in place, you can have 300 kids in a room working on tablets and a single low-level “aide” walking around to make sure that the tablets are working and that the students are being sufficiently gritful.
Good enough for a training program for the children of the proles. And much cheaper than what we are currently doing.
Ironically, the teachers’ unions have played into this by acting as propaganda ministries for the Common Core Curriculum Commissariat. They didn’t understand that national standards were the essential component of the plan to replace, in the long term, most of their members with software.
That will be followed by the elimination of all brick and mortar structures. All education will become virtual. Just think about the profit possibilitie?
My only quibble with you, Bob, is your statement that the union leaders don’t know what the standards actually entail.
I don’t know enough about Dennis Van Roekal and the NEA, but I’ve been an observer of randi Weingarten for a long time, and know her to be a very intelligent person.
She knows exactly what’s going on and what it entails; it’s just that, for reasons of her own, she has decided to enable it.
Oh very interesting.
Diane…how about a more appropriate counter offer? You will go on tour with Obama and get equal time and equal billing to explain why and how he and Arne Duncan are destroying American education by toadie-ing to Wall Steet..
I think Arne and Gates need to publicly apologize to America’s teachers. Arne, I know of a teacher in Detroit’s EAA who got beat-up by a male student. Did you know this student received ten days of suspension but will be right back in the classroom? The teacher is terrified to teach again with this student in the classroom. How does a building maintain order if this behavior is allowed to continue? She needs to keep working because she can’t afford to quit. I want America to know what teachers deal with day in and day out, especially in tough urban areas. Shame on the Obama administration for encouraging the trashing of teachers. Why isn’t this told to the public rather than the ridiculous idea that poverty is caused by teachers.
It was rich to hear Duncan on the radio recently decrying the high-suspension rates for minority students. His beloved charters are the worst in this regard! This didn’t stop him from using the issue as another stick with which to beat the public schools.
I had a student once threaten my baby while I was pregnant. The baby later died (not because of the student, but still). I was forced to teach that student for two more years.
Meet the PR guy…. just to see how long he stays in his position if he publicly endorses your ideas… and to see how much coverage the mainstream media give to the meeting… and to see how long he stays on the billionaire’s banquet list…
I want to hear your voice out there more than on Stewart or Moyers. Someone has to be the voice of education, and it cannot be Randi; her choices are hers alone, and I am not sure what is going on in her head.
BUT YOU are the credible voice that is out there and you need to debate those whose policies are at the crux of the destruction of public education… those who spin their anti-learning policies as the solution ,and those who pay for it so that media and legislation NEVER HEAR MY voice, the voice of those who speak not merely FOR teachers…about what it takes to teach, but those how speak as teachers about WHAT IT TAKES TO TEACH — WIIT is my shorthand for what I talk about.
Good luck, and if you ever need my voice by your side, let me know, because I WAS THERE!
Diane, I hope you live for another 100 years, but just in case I hope you anoint a successor. This movement could easily disintegrate if you go.
Ponderosa, I anoint you. Join the Network for Public Education. We will all pitch in.
Ha, that will insure disintegration! Among other qualities, the anointee must be, like you, very well-versed in the history of education and all sides of the pedagogy battles.
We must ALL become the Diane Ravitches of the future. That’s one of the purposes of this whole blog.
Can we please not get into the mortality thing? I know I am being a big baby about that, but let none of us be in any sort of rush, Diane included.
Diane, a couple weeks ago I contacted Peter Cunningham because I too thought he had experienced a change of heart, given his apparent support of Congressional hearings on testing. He replied and even remembered when we had met in Detroit, which was nice, but I was not at all convinced by his reply that he has had a change of heart. He said that eliminating high-stakes testing wouldn’t help students learn more– so he still must not accept the notion that when teachers are compelled to teach to the test it narrows the curriculum and decreases learning (and alienates children further). He also said that the only thing that would increase student learning is better teaching. While I’m all for better teaching (who could possibly argue against that), it is a clear indication that he does not understand that poor test scores are largely an indication of the impact of poverty on students lives, and that the success of more affluent kids in their districts is less an indication of “better teaching” and more an indication of our society valuing their childhood more. Cunningham apparently still believes that poor test results in impoverished districts are simply an indication of low quality teaching. In other words, he would still brand teachers who teach in urban districts as failures and would still give teachers in more affluent districts a free pass.
“He also said that the only thing that would increase student learning is better teaching.”
Because it’s easy. It’s an easy answer. It passes the buck from government and business leaders. They’re not at all responsible for income equality and a declining middle class and a “working class” that is racing to the bottom and a huge group of poor people.
We have found the guilty party, America, and it’s middle class teachers!
How wonderfully convenient for them. I’m amazed anyone at all buys this shameless responsibility-dodge from adults. I wouldn’t accept it from a 5th grader.
I read the Bill Gates interview in Rolling Stone. He blithely identifies all of the problems in the US, and NONE of them are attributable to the US business community. How does that happen, that we’re lectured constantly by really powerful people who take absolutely no responsibility for their role in anything?
We found a punching bag and it’s public schools. It’s great for government and business leaders, because it takes the onus off them. No wonder it’s so popular.
hear hear…
Well said, Chiara!
Brilliant, Chiara !!!!!
The nail has been hit on the head.
Bill Gates. Seer of the obvious. We need better teachers.
And then the “obvious” goes through a transmogrification:
Fewer, better teachers. Larger class sizes under those fewer, better teachers. Teachers made better by their use in their classes of computer-adaptive educational software and Big Data. 300 kids in a room with an aide walking around to make sure that the kids’ tablets are all working and that they can get access to the software that is their “better teacher.”
Well, I hope you go with him but I’ve watched and listened to the the Obama Administration for years now and the fact is they don’t seem to be big supporters of K-12 public schools.
They’re doing a big PR push on RttT right now, and it’s the first time they’ve done anything but bash public schools. Miraculously, the only public schools in the country worthy of mention by Obama’s DOE are the public schools that followed Duncan’s directives on “reform”. Funny how that works.
I don’t have any confidence in any of them regarding public schools, and I feel I gave them more than enough time to prove themselves.
If they’d spend less time listening to Thomas Friedman and Bill Gates and the NYTimes editorial board and more time listening to the people in the public schools they’re supposed to be serving, they’d do a better job, and if they truly supported public schools public schools would be doing better than when they came in. They’re not. They’re taking hits in state after state, and it’s been going on for years. When do we get to the part where they “improve public schools”? I don’t remember signing on to replace public schools. That’s because I didn’t. None of us did.
Diane, my father was a WW2 US Navy vet. He, through example, taught us to be tough. There was no abuse….just high standards, no whining, tell the truth, stand up for what’s right, help where help is needed, speak out, be a leader.
Well, to me, and to my dad if he were here, that’s what you are. Tough.
You would have their heads (Arne and Bill, et al) spinning in any “conversation”.
Thanks for your leadership and every single thing you do…(and it is a lot)….for the cause.
One day, we shall emerge from the other side of the madness that is education deform. We shall look back upon this era
of the relentless drive toward centralization and standardization;
of amateurish, hackneyed, ignorant Common [sic] Core [sic] State [sic] Standards [sic];
of the abuse of students via standardized testing and test prep;
of the breathtakingly poorly conceived PARCC (spell that backward) and SBAC exams;
of the numerology that is VAM;
of the backroom deals between educational materials monopolists and charter providers and our elected officials;
of philistine, technocratic plans to replace teachers with computer-adaptive software;
of Orwellian databases of student responses and scores;
of the replacement of books by inane, dumbed-down software with preprogrammed, invariant outcomes hawked, ironically, as vehicles of personalization;
of the attempt to turn the ecological system of our schools into a monoculture;
of the enforcement of a backward, motivation-destroying mandatory extrinsic punishment and reward system on our nation’s teachers and students;
of the creation of an unaccountable, all-powerful Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth;
of rampant grift on the part of education charlatans running for-profit virtual and online charters and doing “consulting” on the implementation of education deforms;
of the creation of national “standards” guaranteed to enable educational materials monopolists;
of violation of the public trust by our highest education officials;
of the push to eliminate one of the greatest fores for improving the human condition that the planet has ever seen, our public education system;
and we shall say,
Diane Ravitch, in her seventies, was the one who had the energy and courage and wisdom to fight it all, the one who stood up against the oligarchs and their toadies and sycophants in support
of the autonomy of teachers and independent curriculum developers,
of diverse learners,
of poor kids,
of freedom of thought,
of rich curricula in literature, philosophy, music, art, history, foreign languages, science, and mathematics.
Thank you, Diane Ravitch.
Conserve your strength. Don’t waste it engaging with the venal, low-level enablers of education deform.
With boundless admiration,
Bob Shepherd
Thank you, Bob. I can’t decide whether your beautiful words make me want to work harder or take a nap!
Actually I am on a milk train. From Philadelphia to Néw York, having been on a panel with the dynamic, eloquent Helen Gym, parent leader, then gave the John Dewey Society lecture. I will definitely take a nap.
HA! Good call!
You’re on a roll Bob. Keep going.
Bob Shepherd: what you said.
😎
Or, as Marx once said,
“Testing is tyranny. I will not read your tests and test prep when I could be reading a book. After all, outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read.”
I am quoting from memory there, so I might have embellished a bit. 🙂
So well said Bob…agree with every word.
Thanks, Ellen, and warm regards to you!
I second that!
The nation is indebted to Diane. Thank you Bob for saying it so well.
In a perfect world, there would be more reason to praise the AFT President (she did confront Dan Loeb and refuse to take more Gates Innovation money) and a (singular) reason to praise the NEA hierarchy.
4 days ago in an Ohio newspaper:
More than $900 million in state and local tax dollars, some of it approved by local voters, will be transferred this school year from local schools to nonprofit, publicly funded Ohio charter schools that did not exist 20 years ago.
Who is watching how all of that money is spent?
While each charter school is required to have a board, it appears that at least some boards have little say in how a lot of that money is spent. In some cases, those decisions are left to for-profit companies that run the schools. But the IRS says there should be a bright line between a nonprofit school board and a for-profit company operating it.
And Ohio law provides for little direct oversight by the state. It even allows private companies to throw out nonprofit boards. As a board member of four public charter schools in Akron and Cleveland, Charlotte Burrell will watch this year as $5.3 million in taxpayer money passes through her financial reports.
She knows most of it will go to White Hat Management, a private, for-profit, Akron-based company that runs 32 charter schools in Ohio. But unlike an elected school board member who can obtain details about spending, what White Hat does with the money, she says, is beyond her control.”
Compare that to Arne Duncan’s glowing review of his own performance in this state with the Ohio RttT section on the DOE website, and the credibility gap in ed reform becomes a gaping divide.
They either have absolutely no clue what’s going on in these states, or they’re hoping people in Ohio don’t read the newspaper AND the DOE website.
http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/03/31/oversight-of-charters-often-not-by-boards.html
Isn’t It amazing how the money just keeps flowing into these charlatans? The saddest part is that the charters keep shafting these poor urban areas. Unreal. I’m glad it is finally being exposed.
LONG overdue. Did you see Kasich’s response? There should be transparency, in his “judgment”.
I love the complete abdication of duty.
“Someone should really regulate those charter schools I promote and fund”
If not lawmakers, who? Local districts and government have absolutely no authority over these schools. Does Kasich think the tooth fairy is coming to do his job for him?
They’re scared to risk the ire of the charter lobby, is the truth. They aren’t going to do squat to regulate these schools.
I’d buy tickets for this one!!
If anyone has not seen this video – this is a must see.
http://pioneerinstitute.org/featured/watch-building-the-machine-new-common-core-movie/
Tom
Is the Pioneer Institute part of of the Tea Party ilk?
If so, as they say, “from the frying pan into the fire”.
Pioneer Institute is conservative think tank in Boston.
Really good and very interesting. It’s amazing how a few people could bully everyone. I saw Bill Gates speaking and just could only wonder why he thinks he knows it all. It is such a joke that people listen to him.
DeeDee, if Bill were worth $60,000, not $60 billion, who would listen?
Retweeted by Chris Barbic
Education Next @EducationNext Mar 31
While many people think school boards are irrelevant, study finds, school boards can work for kids: http://ednxt.co/1e489rW
Expand
The hubris is just stunning. “While many people in our narrow little circle of paid hack pundits and self-proclaimed (and unelected) leaders ‘think’ school boards are irrelevant…”
I think everyone in the country should go tell their local school board members that this think tank has declared them “irrelevant”
I can’t even imagine writing this stuff. In what world do these people live, where this dismissive and disrespectful behavior towards tens of thousands of people is acceptable?
Diane….my nephew is the person who introduced me to reading what you have to say, and I have been so thankful. Never mind about him having four columns in the Washington Post last week, offering documentation about how policy change is achieved….his wife, Sarah Reckhow, is every bit as brilliant as he is….I would ask you and others to see if she is up to the challenge she faces this weekend, as she conducts sessions related to her being awarded an honor for her book “Follow the Money” from the American Educational Research Association: Invited Session
Abstract
Dr. Reckhow’s acclaimed book, which focuses on how major foundations seek to change education policy in urban school districts, will provide the platform for our exploration of issues of responses of graduate schools of education to foundation politics: the graduate schools compelling need for resources in the context of their traditional value of maximum independence. Representative of foundations and deans of education will reflect on the implications of Reckhow’s research.
She will have to deal with college deans and Foundation people, making them confront the balance of need for resources which can conflict with maximum independence….I have a feeling she might be able to help you somewhere along the line….she has a civilized and effective disdain for BS. If you need her, give her a call.
After the Common Core…Then What? Time for a Renaissance: Classical Education for All
Hopefully, the Common Core will be thrown out soon because it will become obvious that these so called standards are not rigorous and are inferior to what each state had in place previously. When this happens people will not want to simply return to old state standards not because they are awful but because it would look like an utter defeat for the reformers and anyone who was looking for a change. So this moment would create a vacuum that should be filled with something we know will work because it has worked in the past and it is presently working in excellent private schools. I am referring to Classical Education. No one can really argue against classical education because it provides a system of proven and excellent standards and curriculum that does not require the reinvention of the wheel. It already exits. It works. And it won’t cost more money.
Classical education does not rely on technology for its implementation or testing so it can be implemented immediately without much expense. Purchasing paperback versions of classical literature would be much easier than buying a computer for every child, server capacity for all technology to function at one time, interactive software upgraded every year, tech support to keep everything running, data collection and storage services, and assessments that are delivered on a computer to every student several times a year. Classical education would offer a welcome relief to taxpayers.
Technology has its place. The internet offers a variety of virtual tours including magnificent art museums from around the world that would prove very useful for students pursuing a classical education. If a school district has already purchased smart boards for every classroom, that resource would not go to waste. However, technology would always serve the curriculum as opposed to the curriculum bending and changing to adjust to a technological delivery and assessment system as the Common Core requires. Computers would not be used for assessments which would eliminate the adaptive testing and put an end to the manipulative nature of the Common Core aligned assessments presently proposed. The teacher would be the most important requirement for classical education, not a working computer. Teachers inspire students. Computers do not.
What is Classical Education? I will quote Susan Wise Bauer who has been writing and speaking about the benefits of classical education for years. “Classical education depends on a three-part process of training the mind. The early years of school are spent in absorbing facts, systematically laying the foundations for advanced study. In the middle grades, students learn to think through arguments. In the high school years, they learn to express themselves. This classical pattern is called the trivium. A classical education is more than simply a pattern of learning, though. Classical education is language-focused; learning is accomplished through words, written and spoken, rather than through images (pictures, videos, and television). Why is this important? Language-learning and image-learning require very different habits of thought. Language requires the mind to work harder; in reading, the brain is forced to translate a symbol (words on the page) into a concept. Images, such as those on videos and television, allow the mind to be passive. In front of a video screen, the brain can “sit back” and relax; faced with the written page, the mind is required to roll its sleeves up and get back to work. A classical education, then, has two important aspects. It is language-focused. And it follows a specific three-part pattern: the mind must be first supplied with facts and images, then given the logical tools for organization of facts, and finally equipped to express conclusions.
But that isn’t all. To the classical mind, all knowledge is interrelated. Astronomy (for example) isn’t studied in isolation; it’s learned along with the history of scientific discovery, which leads into the church’s relationship to science and from there to the intricacies of medieval church history. The reading of the Odyssey leads the student into the consideration of Greek history, the nature of heroism, the development of the epic, and man’s understanding of the divine. This is easier said than done. The world is full of knowledge, and finding the links between fields of study can be a mind-twisting task. A classical education meets this challenge by taking history as its organizing outline — beginning with the ancients and progressing forward to the moderns in history, science, literature, art and music.”
Are our teachers trained to teach classical education? Could elementary teachers focus on a phonics based approach to teaching reading? Absolutely. Do today’s teachers have the foundations of classical education in their own educational backgrounds? Older teachers would be at an advantage here. We would immediately need to address this change in teacher preparation courses in colleges. There would be a different set of courses required for graduating a well-trained teacher ready to lead a classically oriented classroom. Teachers already in the classroom have been adjusting to new initiatives almost every year and they would have a much easier time adjusting to the sensible system of classical education than anything else that has been proposed in the last 30 years. I have complete confidence our teachers are up to this task.
When public education began in this country, it offered a classical education. That continued right up to the 20th century when Rockefeller and Carnegie began meddling in education. So called “progressive” education reduced the concept of man to nothing more than a lab rat who must receive the proper stimulus to achieve the desired result. People are not mere animals and must be educated in a manner that acknowledges their ability to respond to truth, beauty and goodness. Some schools were able to continue the classical education model into the 21st century. A universal revival of classical education could be the antidote to the unevenness of our public school system. It is time for a Renaissance. Let it begin.
Arne and Bill can’t handle the truth.
Because they would have to admit they were wrong in order to even see the truth. Don’t see that happening in my lifetime……
Why not go on tour with Peter? That might help you to get a debate with Arne?
no no no no no
Reason 1:
To do so would be to play the following game: You have a choice. Peter’s way or Diane’s way. As though those were both viable options. Chocolate or vanilla.
Diane’s agreeing to go on a debate tour with this fellow would be like Alan Guth of MIT agreeing to debate the late Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church on the subject of cosmology. Her doing that would lend credence to ridiculousness.
Reason 2:
Diane is astonishing–she seems indefatigable. But no one really is. She can speak for herself (clearly!!!), but I, for one, want to see her avoid overcommitment. A national tour like this would be grueling and possibly dangerous.
Reason 3:
If the deformers want to debate someone of her stature, then let them bring on the ones who are actually pulling the strings. Let them make it worth her while. There is no one of her intellectual stature on the Education Deform side, but at least they could put up someone who is well known and powerful.
They are too afraid to debate you…