Politico reports this morning:
“WATCH OUT FOR TEACHERS: Harvard professor Paul E. Peterson is out with a new book urging Americans not to be lulled into thinking of teachers as regular folk. On the contrary, he writes in “Teachers versus the Public,” they’re part of a large and powerful special interest group — and their interests often diverge from the public’s. “We tend to think of teachers as sort of like our second cousins or our neighbors and not as another group that has its own interests as an occupation,” Peterson told Morning Education. His book, co-written with Michael Henderson and Martin R. West, is crammed with poll data showing that teachers are far less likely than the public to support reform strategies such as banning tenure or introducing merit pay. They’re also far less likely to back school choice options such as vouchers and charter schools. The group Teach Plus has found that younger teachers are more likely to back reforms than veterans, but Peterson has not seen such a split in years of polling. “Their results are flatly wrong,” he said.
— The book’s findings will be aired at a forum Tuesday featuring former New Jersey Education Commissioner Chris Cerf and the incoming president of the National Education Association, Lily Eskelsen Garcia, among others. The noon event will be aired live on the Hoover Institution’s Facebook page: http://on.fb.me/1tKLNG2”
Imagine that! Teachers are opposed to vouchers! They don’t think they should abandon due process rights!
Please note that the book was written by professors who have not just due process, but LIFETIME tenure. I have no idea what Paul Peterson’s salary is, but I am willing to bet that it is at least TRIPLE the salary of the average teacher. His junior authors undoubtedly also have lifetime tenure and are paid more than teachers while carrying a burdensome nine hours a week of teaching.
Peterson of Harvard is one of the nation’s academic proponents of vouchers.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
““We tend to think of Jews as sort of like our second cousins or our neighbors and not as another group that has its own interests….”
Ominous.
First they came for the K through 12 teachers …
Watch out Perfessors …
The “perfessors” are definitely on the Gates hit list. That’s the point of the little experiment going on at Arizona State. The “Executive Vice Provost” there says that in 3 years, 80 percent of classes at the school will be online. Great numbers of students will meet in a room to work on these will some adjunct walks around to deal with any issues they are having. This, Gates says, is his answer to the high cost of college.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Having not needed it himself, it apparently gives Gates no pause to dumb down & depersonalize college for everyone else.
Bob, it would be interesting to see what the expectations and passing rate are for those online college classes. Learning online has its place, but not for education. I think Gates needs to put his magic wand away.
Oy! You may think the prof is out of line, but a Nazi/holocaust reference? Sheesh!
None are so blind as those who won’t see. The Holocaust started by “otherizing” the Jews, exactly as Peterson is doing here with teachers. No, we’re certainly not at a point of throwing teachers in the ovens. I, for one, would rather we not get there. It’s time to wake up and see what the politics of demagoguery are turning this country into.
SC Math Teacher: As Dienne points out, we haven’t yet reached the point where teachers are systematically murdered, but that is a real possibility if we don’t wake up.
Still…”otherizing”is one thing, but the Holocaust? That is an insult to the Jews (and others) who suffered and died. Another analogy is called for.
No, SC, no other analogy is called for. “Never again” means jack if we can’t ever talk about the Holocaust. Making an analogy is not the same as saying something is just like the Holocaust. Again, if we don’t want another Holocaust, we need to wake up to the way all kinds of “others” are being demonized – not only teachers, but Musliims, blacks, poor people, etc., etc.
Chew on this for a while: http://www.salon.com/2010/07/01/godwin
Dienne’s holocaust reference doesn’t mean the US will start executing teachers like Nazi Germany mass executed the Jewish population. What it does indicate is how easily depersonalization leads to propagandizing the citizenry. Once a group is ‘otherized’, it’s much easier to justify the power elite’s ideology. Leaders can impose their will on that group with little to no public opposition.
The Rawandan civil war in 1990 was primed by the Hutu led government & powerful elite to oppress the Tutsi opposition. In the early days the Rwandan media was flooded with Tutsi stereotypes and stories depicting them as lazy, self-interested, power hungry, takers. Radio announcers called Tutsi children cockroaches.
The civil war started following many other events. But the groundwork was started several years prior.
We must not underestimate the ruthlessness of the financial & political elites. They want to crush and destroy public education. Period. They’ll demonize their own grandmothers to have their way.
VERY poor taste…and an insult to those who suffered and died. For shame!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ‘Otherizing’ is SOP for bullies at any level– & stereotyping the non-thinkers way of short-circuiting intelligent debate. What makes me depressed is that Harvard puts their name behind him.
I think I come down more on your side, SC Math Tch. Nazis have become too convenient a comparison.
“What it does indicate is how easily depersonalization leads to propagandizing the citizenry. Once a group is ‘otherized’, it’s much easier to justify the power elite’s ideology.”
I know that the Holocaust is our “go to” event. Remembering that butchery is important, but I seriously doubt that we are bound for genocide. Those horrors deserve their own place in history. We want to create powerful imagery for the devastation we see, but let’s work on a message grounded in this segment of jcgrim’s comment.
Probably not the perfect analogy, as the decimation sought isn’t of lives but a profession, but I think your shaming of those who use the analogy is hypersensitive/over-the-top.
The ‘otherizing” of any group is a problem. Overlook the analogy and see the point being made.
Let’s just remember that the Holocaust didn’t start with gassing the Jews. It started with “otherizing” them and then let public opinion do most of the rest. I’m sorry, but saying that teachers aren’t like the rest of us and that they have their own (sinister) agenda is no different than saying that Jews aren’t like the rest of us and that they have a sinister agenda, which is exactly what was said.
Will this end with teachers getting gassed? Maybe not. But once you start getting people riled up against members of a particular group, I don’t think we know where it will necessarily go. jcgrim’s discussion of the Rwandan genocide is apt too – propaganda that ended with neighbors killing each other with machetes.
“I’m sorry, but saying that teachers aren’t like the rest of us and that they have their own (sinister) agenda is no different than saying that Jews aren’t like the rest if us and that they have a sinister agenda”
No different, exactly the same. Teachers are a “group” exactly like Jews are a group. There is absolutely no difference between saying “I don’t like teachers” and “I don’t like Jews.” Who could possibly find any basis for a distinction?
“Will this end with teachers getting gassed? Maybe not.”
But maybe, right? You never know. There’s enough of a possibility that teachers will be “gassed” that we can’t ignore it. Right?
Take a page from Michael Fiorillo’s book and recognize that sometimes it’s ok to admit that some Nazi analogies are too distracting and not instructive enough to be worth making, and that we are not on the road to mass murder of teachers.
But we are on the road to killing spirits–to violating, by the very structure of the educational system being created–our prime directive as teachers, which is to nurture intrinsic motivation to learn. And we are on this road because our educational system has been usurped by people who have extreme authoritarian personalities–who like things centralized, regimented, commanded, and controlled. And people sense that connection between the Nazi and the Ed Deformer, even if they sometimes don’t articulate it well.
Yes, yes. We must not compare the horror that was the Holocaust to lesser evils. By doing that we dishonor the millions dead and the many millions more who had to live with the sorrow and grief of our loss. But two days after the Day of Remembrance, it behooves us all to remember this: The extremes that occurred in that evil time had their roots in human personalities and tendencies that are dangerous in ways small and large, and part of remembering is bearing that in mind–recognizing the signs of the extreme authoritarian personality type and keeping him or her away from our kids or from any desk were decisions that affect our kids are made.
Part of remembering, of honoring those dead, is being vigilant against the various ways in which authoritarianism creeps into a despoils our public institutions. It is this impulse, I believe, that leads people to reach for the Holocaust analogy. We must not make that analogy. But we must be vigilant against authoritarianism, for that is one of the most important of the lessons to be learned from that evil. And another is that ordinary people will collaborate with authoritarianism because it’s easier and because they are afraid.
Bob, I don’t think that the Nazi Holocaust should be a sacred reference point or that Holocaust analogies should never be made. There are valid, substantive, and instructive Holocaust analogies, and there are cheap, lazy, frivolous Holocaust analogies. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Holocaust analogies that you see in forums like this fit into the latter category. People love to invoke the Nazi Holocaust because everybody is familiar with the basic narrative and because it has an enormous and automatic power; invoking the name of Hitler today is arguably similar to invoking the name of Satan several hundred years ago. It also gels with our current addiction to overstated superlatives, i.e., where everything is either “AWESOME” or the “Worst. Thing. Ever.” If you want to get from point A to point B as efficiently as possible, and point B is “evil,” then you bust out the Nazis. Maximum rhetorical impact with minimal investments in time, thought, and effort. Making a kneejerk Nazi analogy is like using an f-bomb as an adjective. It always amplifies and it never makes sense if taken literally.
We should always listen to and learn from valid and substantive Holocaust analogies. And we should always challenge, or at least mock, frivolous Holocaust analogies. Not just out of respect for the victims, but also out of respect for history, truth, good argument, and a proper sense of proportion.
Yes, Flerp, but what of the argument that I just made? I think this important.
I’m sorry, Bob, which one? You make so many 🙂
My argument was that people often reach for this analogy whenever they encounter authoritarianism, and while the analogy is unfortunate, the sensitivity to authoritarianism is one of the major lessons that we should have learned from that dark, evil time. One of the most important ways in which we honor the dead is to be vigilant against totalitarianism generally in the public sphere.
I think that can be true, yes, and I agree that’s one of the reasons why people reach for the analogy (although I don’t think that’s what was happening in this thread).
FLERP! – for more than a decade now (or maybe more than 3 decades, depending on whether you start all this with NCLB or with “A Nation at Risk”), people have been told that pretty much all the problems of this country boil down to education, especially those lazy, entrenched, unionized teachers who put their own interests ahead of the interests of children. Now we have a Harvard professor coming along telling us that teachers aren’t like the rest of us – they’re self-interested, they have their own agenda, they’re not the cousins and neighbors they’ve been masquerading as for so long, they’re different, they’re insidious, etc. and you’re going to tell me it’s beyond reasonable to think that maybe, just maybe, that could have some physically dangerous ramifications for teachers simply being teachers???
Dienne’s point about creating an “other” is well taken. That is precisely what this bozo is attempting to do in this book.
Dienne & Jon Awbrey: this is like a manifesto of the teacher-bashing movement aka “education reformers” aka “new civil rights movement of our time.”
How can folks like this be described as anything but “edubullies”?
Teachers are not going to ride this one out. The only way to stop bullies is to stand up to them.
“Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice ands wrong that will be imposed on them.” [Frederick Douglass]
I have a feeling that this blog will play an important role in resisting any urge to “quietly submit.”
And I expect to see more comments here from folks like you!
😎
If you go to this website you can get a bullet-point overview of this Brookings-published attack on teachers.
You don’t have to buy this book and feed the beasts.
Just take a look at the gallery of people who endorse this attack. Jeb Bush and Michele Rhee, Eric Hanuschek and Joel Kline. Amazing the authors did not elist Harvard alums President Obama, Arne Duncan, and Bill Gates for endorsements
This the most overt attack on teachers since ex Secretary of Education Rod Paige called teachers “terrorists.” Paige was the master of the phony Texas miracle, Bush’s Secretary of Education.
http://www.brookings.edu/research/books/2014/teachers-versus-the-public
I thought it really amusing when Michelle “Erase to the Top” Rhee chose Rod “Fake the graduation rates” Paige to serve as her second for a debate with Diane Ravitch. And then that wasn’t enough, and she wanted a third. Put all these deformers together, and it would be difficult to find a functioning set of synapses.
Bob, is your comment about ASU real? Are they really going to online classes? I find it hard to believe students would want to pay any money to attend the campus.
My university is sticking to the practice of putting 500 to 1,000 students in a room to listen to a professor talk and show PowerPoint slides. I have a hard time seeing how this is so obviously superior to online classes.
Neither type of class is superior. The things I treasure from my college experiences are the interactions with my professors.
I would argue that online classes and classes over 100 students are bad for a quality education for most students. To argue that one of these poor choices is somehow better than the other is an argument of different degrees of poisonous material for most students.
Both on line instruction and large classes are an attempt to balance educational quality with cost. What good is offering an education that is unaffordable?
I look back very fondly on those talks,TE. The lecture is a very efficient delivery mechanism. Oddly, those in-person talks from my college days meant a lot more to me than simply listening to courses online does. I am not sure why I so prefer the in-person talk, but I do. That’s not logical of me, but it is very human.
I recently watched Christine Hayes’s superb “Introduction to the Old Testament” and Ben Polak’s “Game Theory,” both from Open Yale Courses. Both superb. I highly recommend them. But I would much rather have been there in the room.
In this particular case, a class required of all students, I doubt the conversations would have been stimulating. The opportunity cost would have been large as well. Given the class schedules in the high school and the local university, taking the traditional class at the high school would have meant not being able to take three classes at the university. Given that the class was mostly for certification (being raised by an economist and a political philosopher leads to some interesting dinner conversations about government and public policy), the choice was a pretty obvious one.
I am glad you enjoyed those talks, but being in the room with Christine Hayes or Ben Polak while desirable, is not feasible for most people. We all agree that it would have been better for my son to have taken a live class in political science with Robert Dahl in his prime and a live class in linear algebra with Gilbert Strang, but those were not options.
It’s the difference between going to the theater and watching television. There’s a buzz to the experience of a live performance.
Yes, Dee Dee, I am afraid so. ASU is a laboratory for new vision of higher education–Gates’s vision.
I think they do look at themselves as a lab, trying to find a way to get post secondary education to folks that can not afford paying over $40,000 a year in tuition.
It’s an admirable goal. I am not entirely unsympathetic to it. I do believe that technology can enable providing vastly greater offerings and thus possibility for true personalization of paths that people take. But in this, it is really, really important that we not lose sight of the fact that teaching and learning are FUNDAMENTALLY humane undertakings–they are a handoff between generations.
Let me share a story. A number of years ago I edited a textbook by Uri Haberschaim. Dr. Haberschaim was a pioneering physicist who worked with Fermi in Chicago. It was a great delight to work with him and learn from him. He was, in advanced age, still very childlike in his curiosity. One of my most treasured memories is of him showing me how to record and read spectra. Well, he told me about a project he had been involved in, back in the 50s in which the feds brought together a bunch of scientists to think about how this new medium of television might be used to further educational goals. He said, “We envisioned using this medium to bring the very best instructors to every student. But look at it. Look at what television has become!” And as he spoke of that devolution, of the failure of our country to realize that dream, he was so moved that tears came to his eyes.
We have already turned away from the oral tradition, relying on the printed word for much of the intergenerational hand off that you speak about. Perhaps the ubiquitous recording of people, the ability to communicate orally and visually over vast distances that technology creates could be viewed as a return to that oral tradition.
I like to think, TE, that this is so. But here’s something I see quite often: People create an invariant bullet list of “skills” to be attained. Then they create a software program to teach those. There’s an elaborate map of skills dependencies. The program tests kids to find out which skills they have “mastered” and so which they are ready to attempt. And this testing to find out where to drop the kid down in an invariant system with a uniform goal for all is called “personalization.” Now, that sort of system works fine for some things. It’s pretty good for learning basic computation, for example. But it’s very rudimentary, and the skills maps tend to be very, very crude whenever what is being taught is something really complex and involved like reading or writing. And all too often, what is left out is the child’s being able to grab something and run with it. This kid really loved that piece about snakes. Well, let’s give him or her a report to do on snakes, and some reading about snakes, and so on. The sort of thing that a human teacher does routinely but that most of these programs I encounter do not.
Online courses are not cheaper, nor are classes over 100. Universities may save some money by having them, but these classes cost just as much as a class of 12 for the students. Students do not see the cost savings. While it may keep college costs down behind the scenes, colleges are not offering students who take online coursework or 100+ classes quality educations.
Both choices have terrible completion rates. Both choices offer terrible instruction. It’s a choice of poisons.
I have to disagree there. My university charges half of NYY’s tuition to out of state students in part because we reduce spending by having some credit hours that are relatively inexpensive to produce.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx From the site: “The book provides the first experimental study of public and teacher opinion. Using a recently developed research strategy, the authors ask differently worded questions about the same topic to randomly chosen segments of representative groups of citizens. This approach allows them to identify the impact on public opinion of new information on issues such as student performance and school expenditures in each respondent’s community.”
Now I’m looking for one of those nice little summaries (abstract, methodology, sample size, etc) to give some credence to this “first experimental study.” Wonder if they tried submitting it to one of the AERA journals?
“Using a recently developed research strategy. . . ”
A strajegy that guarantees to get the results they were looking for, eh!
Hmm. I always thought of myself as a regular person. If only I had the actual sort of power and clout that the reformists pretend I have.
That’s what I was thinking. There I was in college with lots of folks who went into banking and business. . .I didn’t really have connections in those worlds, and I love teaching and music and so here I am a teacher. And what, exactly, makes me so different from them now? I didn’t realize I had joined a coalition or some type of group organized to be a threat to human progress.
This is really crazy.
This is really appalling. The war against public school teachers is unrelenting and quite well funded. You would think that teachers were enemy #1 or on the FBI’s most wanted list. What’s up with the NEA, that they will be participating in this sling fest against teachers at the right wing Hoover Institute (another phony baloney right wing libertarian “think” tank).? The NEA should boycott this forum and form pickets outside of it instead of adding a sense of legitimacy to the demonizing of teachers.
We all should cancel our local and national NEA dues with a letter explaining why–it’s time they support US, the teachers in the classroom!!
The elites will not rest until they have reduced teachers to indentured servants, short term at will employees, with no benefits, no defined benefit pensions, no job security, no tenure, no bargaining rights and no seniority.
Joe,
You’re correct! We’re about the last large group that hasn’t been reduced to this type of employment. This great nation…..our “democracy”…..has been hijacked!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx & then, when we’re found down among the other privatizers on PISA scores (Chile & Sweden).. what next? (Oh I forgot– by then, Chile & Sweden will have seen results from reversing course… shall we make it Turkey & Mexico?)
It scares me to think of a Harvard professor stating such nonsense. After all, teachers are the people who care enough to be in the classrooms.
This is what I would like to know: Who is financing Peterson’s research? Does anyone know? Thanks.
and also, does he mean in it in some type of esoteric academic theory way? Because, well. . . we’re real people.
This is from the “esteemed” Harvard?
I actually just wrote a piece aimed at explaining how teachers unions are often the most credible advocates on behalf of low-income students and communities: http://34justice.com/2014/04/25/teachers-unions-what-we-do-and-how-students-benefit/.
Peterson’s suggestion that opposition to reform ideas indicates opposition to improving the education system is completely inaccurate; there are more legitimate, student-centered reasons to oppose vouchers, for example, than there are to support them. Reformers who make these arguments seem more intent on spreading an anti-labor message than they do on having a productive, research-based conversation. Education stakeholders who truly care about low-income students support teachers and a broad social justice agenda while collaborating with unions on implementing smart policy in schools.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Like your article, especially the section on teacher evaluation– quite comprehensive, & noting this: “Evaluator(s) shall base their assessment upon direct observation, on materials and evidence generated as part of a support plan or Teacher Assistance Program, and upon information that can be substantiated to be factual.”
Thanks! I appreciate it.
Like, Wow.
That is just about all I can think of to say.
On second thought, most people do belong to an interest group and it’s not difficult to ascertain which one. Just look at the behavior of the person and how hard they will fight to defend their interest.
Who cares for children each day? Who will give their lives to protect them? Which citizens spend the most of their own personal money on other people’s children?
Yes, parents, guardians and teachers are the foremost advocates of children. As most of us know, when disaster strikes, most parents and teachers will die to protect the children in their care.
So, it’s likely safe to say that both parents and teachers are the people most motivated to care for the interests of children. That’s actually a no-brainer and it’s sad to think that a Harvard professor wouldn’t know it.
“Yes, parents, guardians and teachers are the foremost advocates of children.”
Right, except parents became self-interested and not credible the moment they bucked standardized testing.
Duncan said parents were opposed to the CC because they think their children are smarter than they are and they want to protect property values. Self interested. Not credible.
The way to become self interested is to question an ed reform policy, apparently, because parents were all-knowing when they were choosing schools, and then when they opted out they became self interested and not credible.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx All I can say is, “Show me the study!” I suspect those parents who were “shown” to have different interests than their children’s teachers were “shown” different questions. As the book review says about this ‘first experimental study’, “the authors ask differently worded questions about the same topic to randomly chosen segments of representative groups of citizens.”
I’m not a teacher, but I’m curious why this “they’re self-interested!” argument is never applied to anyone other than teachers. Obviously, self-interest is a part of any person or occupation, and ALL people who lobby government are promoting a policy, whether they’re ed reformers or teachers. I am genuinely baffled why teachers, ALONE are always presented as “self -interested” so therefore…what? They’re not credible? Why is anyone credible, then?
People in the testing industry are “self interested” are they not? Charter school operators? Self interested! Private schools that lobby for vouchers? Self-interested!
It’s not even “teachers” it’s specifically “public school teachers”.
Is the only way to avoid the charge of “self interest” to go along with each and every reform? Because that’s hardly a way to set up a debate. The moment one questions one of these reforms one is then placed in the “self interested so not credible” group? Why would I accept the way they’ve set this up? It serves to immunize reformers from any criticism. Nice for them, I guess, but not so good for the public.
I’m sure you-all have seen this, but I just read it the other day. I was wondering what you thought:
” I am genuinely baffled why teachers, ALONE are always presented as “self -interested” so therefore…what? They’re not credible? Why is anyone credible, then? ”
My untested theory is that teaching is a female dominated profession. Females are expected to be ‘selfless’, ‘polite’, and ‘obedient’. Social mores convey that what we ( females) say matters less, what we want must wait until resources are available (meaning: never).
So, your answer to the question re: credibility is- No.
I think the whole “self interested” line of argument is crazy, because obviously both sides are self -interested, to a certain extent.
I was listening to a conference on ed tech and the charge was “schools are attached to the status quo so therefore likely to resist our innovations”
But the “innovators” in that case are ALSO self-interested. They’re promoting product. That’s not an accusation or an attack on their motives, it’s just a fact.
One can be “self interested” and ALSO believe one is doing the best for children. In fact, everyone in this debate is self interested, to a greater or lesser extent. So what? That doesn’t mean you’re wrong. That’s a different question.
I have trouble with separating out “childrens’ interests” from “adult interests”, anyway. Children live in families and in communities. I think it’s weird to cordon them off from their families and communities and imply that ONLY ed reformers are working in their best interest. Not just weird but obviously untrue. Who thinks of children like this, as people apart from everyone else, where there are “children” and “adults” and they operate wholly apart from one another? I don’t.
It is bad to be self interested unless you are a billionaire!
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I agree with Corey Robin’s conclusion (excellent link by the way!) that upper-crust parents denigrate teachers because they work for low pay (compared to the parents) so they are ‘losers’ (which perhaps reflects qualms that their own high pay produces far less in terms of societal good).
And why do many low-income parents denigrate members of teachers’ unions? #1 is envy: blue-collar parents once were in solidarity w/their kids’ teachers. Today, their unions have been decimated & they have no job security: why should their taxes support people w/job security? #2 is related– those w/a long memory blame unions (esp steel unions) for triggering the global search for cheaper goods, outsourcing etc– the forces which brought the economy to its knees & rendered them poor.
People being self interested is an organizing principle in economics. We assume that EVERYONE is motivated by their self interest, which includes, I hasten to add, their desires about others well being.
Didn’t you know that we take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience?
Your question is closer to the truth than many may suspect. When I moved into teaching in the later half of the 1970s and through the 1980s, teachers were allowed to date or marry if they taught in the same school in the district where I taught.
If two teachers at the same school decided to get married, one of them had to move to another school to teach. I think it was in the 1990s when that draconian rule was changed so teachers at the same school could date and marry and keep their jobs.
Is there truth to the rumor that Joe Nathan got the first signed copy of this book?
Paul Peterson is from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, a truly despicable right-wing think tank that has been purchased by billionaires to promote their “special interest” to bleed and exploit the 99 percent by trading on the venerable “brand” of Harvard University.
“Lords of Salem in 21st century: Harvard professor calling for teachers witchhunt.”
I guess some elite professors like him have an ulternative name as “Vulture Lover” who likes to join in scavenger hunt for the corpses of ‘witches’ in the wanted list.
I am a teacher, and I have written a well -researched, 500-page book on why I distrust the so-called “reforms” Petersen is advancing:
Interesting note: Petersen’s promoters are using Jeb Bush’s and Michelle Rhee’s endorsements of his book as selling points. As if!
I’ve heard that a standardized test correlates mainly with the background of the student (80%) and much less with the instruction of the teacher (about 17%). Have you heard this? If so, can you cite the research? Thanks.
Linda
Looking forward to this, Mercedes!
I ordered the paperback, along with Senator Warren’s presidential puff entry, which has dropped to $16.50 (thus qualifying my order for free shipping).
Disturbing. It’s like saying, don’t trust doctors for medical advice. Don’t trust business people for advice about business. etc.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I fear it is more like saying, ‘teachers are not professionals like your doctor or CPA.’
“We tend to think of teachers as sort of like our second cousins or our neighbors ”
This made me laugh because “we” tend to think that because that is actually true. They are our second cousins and our neighbors. That’s probably why “we” don’t impute terrible secret motives to them when they object to ed reform ideas.
We know them. On the other hand, we don’t know Michelle Rhee or Bill Gates.
I don’t know, trust celebrity with our kids or trust neighbor and second cousin? I’m probably going with “neighbor or second cousin” 🙂
Last time I checked, “professor” was considered part of the teaching profession. Harvard professors are amongst the most self-interested people in the country. Are we not supposed to notice that? He gets pay and prestige by saying things about the American public school system. A little humility is in order here.
So if people wanted to see changes in medicine that were puzzling, and doctors advised against the changes the majority (who had not been to medical school) wanted to see, would there be a book called “Doctors Versus the Public?”
When I was a boy, I was taught to honor my teachers.
I still do.
Actually, I think they’ve given away the game plan here:
“On most issues, teacher opinion does not change in response to new information nearly as much as it does for the public as a whole. In fact, the gap between what teachers and the public think about school reform grows even wider when both teachers and the public are given more information about current school performance, current expenditure levels, and current teacher pay.”
What we should expect to see and hear now is the ratcheting up of “the public… given more information about current school performance, current expenditure levels, and current teacher pay”. Don’t expect however, the information to be true, just truthy.
As to Harvard – remember the unholy alliance the B school has formed with the grad school of Ed. Here in Boston, we’ve been subjected to years of torment at the hands of HGSE’s notions of what public education should be like.
PLEASE SHARE
Hearing on Charter School Management and Accountability
and Int 12-2014
The City Council’s Education Committee, chaired by Council Member Daniel Dromm, will hold an oversight hearing, “Charter School Management and Accountability.” Below is information regarding the upcoming hearing:
Hearing on: Oversight: “Charter School Management and Accountability”
Date: Tuesday, May 6, 2014
Time: 10:00 am (*public testimony is estimated to begin sometime after 12:00pm)
Place: Council Chambers – City Hall
Charter schools are publicly funded, privately run schools operating according to the terms of a 5-year performance contract or “charter” issued by the New York State Regents. There are currently 183 charter schools operating in New York City, serving 70,000 students which represent approximately 6% of the City’s 1.1 million public school enrollment. Rapid expansion of charter schools in NYC since 2002 has led to a number of concerns, the most prominent of which are related to siting and co-location inside district public school buildings. However, a number of other issues relating to charter schools have surfaced, including transparency and accountability in the use of public funds, enrollment policies, teacher attrition rates and discipline practices, among others. This hearing will explore these and other charter school management and accountability issues and will examine DOE’s monitoring and oversight role regarding charter schools.
The Committee will also hear testimony on the following bill:
Int 12-2014 – A Local Law to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to requiring the department of education to report academic and demographic information on co-located schools.
The full text of Int 12-2014 can be found at the following link on the Council’s website: http://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=1655632&GUID=080D2221-5462-4D1E-BFBD-D27D4A4D6E69&Options=Advanced&Search
We invite members of Community Education Councils, parents, students, educators, advocates, and all other stakeholders and interested members of the public to testify at this hearing. Testimony will be limited to 2-3 minutes per person to allow as many as possible to testify. Although the hearing starts at 10:00 am, the Administration (Department of Education), as well as other witnesses (such as elected officials) have been invited to testify and answer questions from Council Members at the outset, so we do not expect to hear from others until sometime after 12:00 pm. Please make sure you fill out a witness slip on the desk of the Sergeant-at-arms if you wish to testify. If you plan to bring written testimony, please bring at least 20 copies. If you are unable to attend the hearing and wish to submit written testimony, please email your testimony to jatwell@council.nyc.gov.
Please share this information with any interested groups or individuals. Thank you for your assistance and we look forward to seeing you on May 6th! Please note – hearing dates and times are subject to change. For information about hearings and other events, check the Council’s website at http://council.nyc.gov/html/action/calendar.shtml or, if you’d like to receive email notices of upcoming hearings, you can sign up at the following link http://council.nyc.gov/html/action/signup.shtml. All hearings are open to members of the public.
Isn’t that exactly what Pol Pot did in Cambodia? Find a scapegoat and history repeats itself.
If by “exactly” you mean “arguably similar in a specific way but certainly not exactly,” then yes. Regardless, you get points for mixing it up and going with a non-Nazi analogy.
Exactly, and it’s very similar to what Mao did in China in the Great Leap Forward. Or what the Inquisition did with non-Catholics in Spain and the “New” World-convert or be exiled and/or die.
Or what the fledgling USA governments did to the Native American populations!
I recognize his name from WSJ op-eds! I can’t believe the audacity of the title! Talk about polarizing?! And I am disappointed in the Brookings Institute, which publishes it.
Of course most if not all of almost 4 million teachers, who are mostly middle class Americans, will be against the fake Ed reforms, but not for the reasons Harvard professor Paul E. Peterson claims.
The real reasons are because almost 4 million mostly middle class teachers spread across every state in America work with America’s children almost 60 hours on average every week during the school year, and they have a much better idea of what’s needed than a handful of billionaires who will mostly profit from these same fake Ed reforms.
Those teachers are Democrats (about half), Republicans (about a third) and the rest are independents so they cover the political spectrum too.
The fake Ed reformers also claim that America’s teachers are good enough and often compare the PISA results of America to Finland where all the teachers are considered highly qualified because they all are required to have earned a masters degrees.
Finland also has very few private sector schools. About 99% of their children attend public schools and the teachers belong to a strong labor union—the fake Ed reformers don’t share those facts.
Now, let’s compare the teachers in the US public schools to the privates ones and see which has more teachers with masters degrees.
The National Center for Education Statistics reports:
In 2007-08, 52% of public school teachers (1.92 million) had a master’s or higher degree compared to 38% in the private schools (152,000).
https://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=28
I think that if the fake Ed reformers really wanted better schools instead of profits, they’d make sure that the mostly corporate run private schools they are forcing on the nation to replace the public schools wouldn’t hire teachers without masters degrees in the field they are teaching in.
On the other hand, according to that link, class sizes are substantially lower in private schools. Is it better to have a class size of 16 taught by a teacher with a 52% likelihood of having a master’s degree, or a class size of 12 taught by a teacher with a 38% likelihood of having a master’s degree? I have utterly no idea. I guess I’d have to meet the teacher.
Let’s see, most middle and high school students have five or six teachers who change annually—six classes and six teachers.
Pretty challenging to discover first hand who the best teachers are if it takes observations from parents and would there be room for every parent to come in a half dozen times while taking notes. Lot of observing and distraction to the teaching and learning process for the teacher and students—that is if the parents had time.
They don’t do that in Finland. They trust the teachers—-something that hasn’t happened in the US since the Walton family declared war on the public schools by funding a never ending campaign of cherry picked propaganda and outright lies to make the Public Schools and teachers look bad.
As for class sizes in private sector schools, the best schools that charge lots of tuition $25,000 to $35,000+ on average have small class sizes but what about the for profit/non profit for charter school like Eve M’s in NYC where she’s paying herself almost $500,000 annually out of that pot of tax payer money while also spending another half million on PR?
What’s left for material, teachers and class size? Isn’t Eva using those cheap highly trained (with 5 hours of lecture) teachers from Teach for America who graduated from college with a high GPA but leave teaching in two years?
Heck, I had no idea that a high GPA with a few hours of training translated to a highly qualified teacher. With Teach for America no need to copy Finland and require all the teachers to have a Masters degree in the subject area they teach in.
On the other hand, that’s why the public schools are transparent, certified by teams of objective professionals who inspect and evaluate the schools to make sure they are doing the job, and teachers are evaluated through annual observations and evaluation meetings where improvement may be suggested along with plans to insure improvement takes place.
Wait, wait, maybe we could set up those little observation rooms like they have in police departments with one way mirrors and parents could come in and out and observe anytime they wanted without being seen. That way teachers could be treated just like criminals in a line up. We could even chain teachers to the table when parents wanted to grill them, give them the 3rd degree and verbally abuse them so the teacher couldn’t’ leave while they were being accused of incompetence and being called every name in the book because the kids said they were bored and refused to cooperate, refused read outside of class because they hate reading and love video games, TV and texting, refuse to do class work, refuse to do homework and study.
A great idea. We should install whipping posts on every public school campus where teachers are chained and caned by students and parents who are bored with the teacher or who think the teacher is incompetent. No need for due process. No need for trails and evidence.
We even have a good roll model from history that worked great: the inquisitions and Mao’s Cultural Revolution where teachers were denounced, made to wear dunce caps and signs around their necks–why a couple million even killed themselves and if that happened here we’d save the expense of funding the testing inquisition from the Common Core.
Not far to go. The United States is almost there. Just a few more steps.
I’m not talking about the best private schools that charge top-dollar tuition. I’m talking about the same “private schools” that you mentioned in your comment, the overwhelming majority of which are not the best private schools that charge top-dollar tuition. According to the source you cite, those schools have significantly lower class sizes on average than public schools.
The private schools in my town charge around $10,000 per student, about the cost per student of the public schools. I am unsure about class size.
They do. Scroll down and look for the paragraph on Charter schools. I think private schools and private sector Charter schools are two different things.
Private sector charter schools are supported with tax payer dollars but most high quality private schools that have been around for while are not supported by tax.
Then there are two types of charter schools—those that are part of school districts and those that are not.
So we have four different systems
Traditional private schools.
This new wave of private sector, corporate run Charters I think hijacked the name from the original Charters started by public school teachers in the 1970s to work with the most at risk kids.
Then there are those alternative, charter schools that are part of public school districts.
Then we have traditional public schools that are run by democratically elected school board, are transparent in just about every way imaginable while being watched closely to make sure they are doing the job they were meant to do, teach kids who want to learn.
There is a fifth system I just thought of. The juvenile justice system in some states has juvenile boot camp schools where the worst kids end up after a judge has them removed from their homes and sent to a prison camp run like the Marine Corp boot camp. Those schools have had some great success with kids who don’t cooperate in the traditional public schools, and those kids eventually earn their way out by improving their reading and math skills. And once they are back in the public schools 70% start doing the work so they will not be sent back to the juvenile book camp prison school.
“They do.”
They do what? And who are “they”?
“Scroll down and look for the paragraph on Charter schools.”
There’s no paragraph about charter schools in the link you pasted.
I’m not sure what you’re saying in this latest comment.
Must have been another site where I read that.
Maybe you’ll want to read this one from Forbes about the for profit Charters:
Charter School Gravy Train Runs Express to Fat City
http://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2013/09/10/charter-school-gravy-train-runs-express-to-fat-city/
You guys will enjoy this. Louis CK is posting pictures of his daughter’s 3rd grade math test prep:
It is really funny. He’s on a bit of a roll 🙂
He is brilliant.
The CC proponents are mad at him, but it is really funny to read.
I don’t think it’s his fault there’s enormous confusion about CC. My 5th grader has science lessons he was told are “Common Core”.
I don’t think there IS a science Common Core, but maybe they could have nailed down what that phrase means before they rolled it out?
Is it just random? Anyone can stamp anything “Common Core”? How are parents supposed to figure out what’s going on?
In fairness (to what, the Common Core, I guess?), I will say that I found the K-5 test prep materials to be just as infuriating before Common Core (i.e., a few years ago) as they are now. And I have zero nostalgia for pre-Common Core math curriculum, because for my kids, that was TERC, and I don’t think it’s possible to have a worse math curriculum than TERC.
But I’m not going to harsh on this Twitter bit of his, it’s great. I hope it makes it into his act.
Science, social studies, and “technical subjects” fall under an addendum to the ELA Common Core, so the science stuff might actually BE Common Core.
He’s calling out “common core” by name. There’s your viral campaign.
Louis C.K. @louisck 35m
“Why night you want each picture to stand for more than 1 balloon?”
Yet again I must tell my kid “don’t answer it. It’s a bad question”
Louis C.K. @louisck 10m
It’s this massive stressball that hangs over the whole school. The kids teachers trying to adapt to these badly written notions.
Agreed. I think it’s good he’s not blaming their teachers. I don’t blame ours either.
No one in charge seems to know how to step back and really look at how this appears to “outsiders” (parents) and maybe re-assess or reconsider or change course.
I don’t know what I’d do at this point, honestly. Beats me. The whole thing is centered on testing, and I don’t know how they change that perception and reality without it collapsing completely.
What a shame. Not a single public school leader or advocate will be discussing public schools at this leadership forum:
http://pahara.org/2014/04/press-release-april-28-2014/
I hope they tell us what they decided on for public schools!
If they’re wondering why people think the Common Core is all about tests, they could read local coverage in states. It’s all about tests, and it will be all about tests when the scores come out.
“These standardized tests, aligned to Common Core Standards, are expected to replace existing state assessments next school year.
The first round of pilot tests was March 24-April 11. End-of-year tests will be given May 5-June 6.
“By participating in the PARCC field tests, our district gains valuable insight into these new tests,” said Deb Glynn, Springboro District Test Coordinator. “Seeing the field tests allows us to be better prepared for the next generation assessments that will replace the Ohio Graduation Test and Ohio Achievement Assessments in the near future.”
Field test results don’t count toward student or district ratings. Individual student data will not be accessible to districts, teachers or parents.
“We are grateful to the students, educators and technology coordinators who participated in this ‘test of the test,’ ” said State Superintendent Richard Ross. “Ohio has taken a big step toward building a better testing system, and we can use this experience to refine the Next Generation Assessments and help all districts prepare for 2015.”
Mark Graler, Lebanon’s director of curriculum and instruction, said participation allows districts to evaluate technology infrastructure and the online test-taking experience.”
Because all we ever talk about is school test scores, so newspapers understandably picked that up, and all they ever talk about is test scores. There’s never any mention of anything else going on in a public school.
If that wasn’t ed reformers’ intent when they focused solely on test scores for a decade, well, then, there seems to be a huge misunderstanding among the public and in local media.
http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/news/local/school-districts-pilot-state-tests/nfhZk/
Now if only, based on Peterson’s premise, his salary were reduced to about one third and his status at Harvard becomes employment at will only.
I wonder who he is connected with. One probably need not dig too deeply to find his possy, sugar daddies and mommies, and entourage.
Is he perhaps having lunch with Alice Walton?
Does this also mean that Lily Garcia of the NEA agrees with Peterson? If so, uh-oh . . . .
Do you mean Lily Eskelsen, vice president of the NEA?
Yes. That’s the Lily I referred to . . .
“Attorneys versus the Public offers the first comparison of the legal policy views of both attorneys and the public as a whole, and reveals a deep, broad divide between the opinions held by citizens and those who practice law.”
“Doctors versus the Public offers the first comparison of the medical policy views of both doctors and the public as a whole, and reveals a deep, broad divide between the opinions held by citizens and those who practice medicine.”
Get my drift?
In other words, it’s professional people who were extensively trained, understand far better the lay of the land, and know what they’re doing, versus laypeople.
Just another Ivy League union buster…
nyceducator.com/2010/09/ivy-league-unioin-busters-then-and-now.html
Peterson is not at Harvard these days. Instead, he has a Walmart endowed chair at University of Arkansas. What a surprise
Wow, interesting information, Joan Baratz Snowden!
Though now I’m not sure if this is correct. He is still listed as Director,
Program on Education Policy and Governance on Harvard’s Kennedy School web page, and I can only find him as a guest lecturer and Board Member on University of Arkansas’s “Dept of Educational Reform.” (What the heck is a Dept of Educational Reform in a public university? Sounds like a government agency.)
So now teachers are obstacles to all things “reformy good”??? Stephen Krashen makes a brief comment on his blog that SO RESONATES. How many of us have read the results of a ridiculous poll masking as a “researched one” and read the opinions of masses of people who hear a short sound byte on a subject which is virtually unknown to them prior and then VOILA the results by the giver are taken as if they were researched on the topic! This seems to be how the “reformists” like to frame support for their “ideas” posed as facts! If you make a statement to a lay person like, our current school system is failing our students and exhaustive research has been done resulting in the development of a national standards to ensure all students no matter where they live in this country have the right to a quality, high order thinking education suitable for the 21st century. Do you approve of this? Many people put on the spot will not want to disagree because disagreeing with this supposition means that “YOU DON”T WANT ALL STUDENTS TO HAVE EQUAL ACCESS TO A 21st CENTURY EDUCATION” and such! If a person knew about common core prior to being asked, they would have a great retort with all sorts of background info to support their anti common core stance. Ed reformers are great with this kind of “poll” taken for fact and then getting it published (Ed Week certainly has propelled this as has the NEA publications). I cringe when reading a comment like most teachers support common core just not all the testing. Most teachers I work with cannot stand common core and find it destructively intrusive to learning in the classroom. A tweet by Louis C.K on the Answer Sheet states that his third grader used to love math and now hates it and there are images of questions asked… yes and they are absurd and poorly created too. Here is Krashen’s resonating brief entry on the topic of polls!
http://skrashen.blogspot.com/2014/04/poll-of-uninformed.html
Malcolm Gladwell addresses this kind of priming effect that can be used to sway opinion in his book Blink. It is well worth a read.
If I’m given a poll that asks me my favorite type of nut, and I’m allergic to peanuts, I’m probably not going to answer peanuts. What kind sort of stupid research asks teachers if they want to jeapordize their livelihood and the turns it around and blames us for not wanting to do just that. They are hoping for a future generation that is so uneducated they can’t see through the BS.
He might be from Harvard, but he’s a knucklehead.
Why doesn’t someone ask Peterson what his salary is? My salary is a matter of public record, as is my address, since, as a community college teacher, I am a “public servant” and have no right to keep that information private.
There are 879 total faculty with a rank of professor at Harvard University. Among these professors, 201 are women.
The school pays a total of $179 Million to all faculty with a rank of professor. The average salary for all male faculty is $207,575, which is $152,202 more than the average for all male faculty salaries. The average salary for all female faculty $190,624, which is $136,764 more than the average for all female faculty salaries.
Here is a link to his bio on the Hoover institutes page. The hoover institute clearly says that they use a “”collective approach that focuses on the Institution’s research agenda”
http://www.hoover.org/fellows/9850
Peterson is a member of the Koret Task Force:
The eleven members of the Koret Task Force promote vouchers, charter schools, and standardized testing. (sourcewatch)