As we noted previously, Bill Gates compares the Common Core to standardization of electrical plugs and outlets, and to the gauge of railroad tracks. This is not a new metaphor from him. He used it several months ago when he explained the need for Common Core to the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.
The question of the day, therefore, is this: is your child an electrical outlet, an electrical plug, or an electrical appliance? Is she a toaster or a lamp?
Here is the standard I want for my grandchildren and your children: the standards at Lakeside Academy in Seattle, where Bill sends his children. The school has small classes, experienced teachers, a beautiful campus, a wonderful arts program, foreign languages, a fabulous gymnasium, a well-stocked library, the latest technology. That’s where I want our children educated. Not as toasters but as human beings.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Perfect!! This is my exact same argument against Reform at its CORE!!
It is not at all clear to me that assigning students to a school using street address or having district or state wide standards treats students as something other than a toaster or calculating GPAs to establish class standing treats students as more than a light bulb or requiring students pass certain classes in order to graduate treats students as anything more than a 240 volt outlet, not to be confused with the students who do not pass the class. Perhaps the students who do not pass the class and do not graduate are 120 volt outlets.
You can send all kids in one geographical area to the same school and still treat them like individuals.
You cannot, however, subject all kids to the same standardized tests and test prep “curriculum” and “no excuses” behavioral control and still treat them like individuals.
Somewhere in there, you really do understand this, you just like to perseverate.
Dienne,
You send your children to a private progressive school. Could a traditional zoned catchment school be a progressive school while the school in the catchment zone to the west is a Waldorf school and the one to the south is a Chinese language immersion school?
As you have been told on numerous occasions, that happens all the time in many places beyond Lawrence, Kansas. It won’t be lasting much longer though, as long as people with money and power can dictate cloned public education everywhere. You live in a very small world.
Dolly,
I see little difference between magnet and charter schools in this respect and I generally advocate for both. I am always careful to talk about traditional zoned schools when discussing the virtues of allowing schools to be different from each other.
I think you misspieled “prevaricate”.
Again, you know nothing about the options offered in traditional neighborhood schools beyond your own little college town in Kansas.
Standardization benefits no one more than the corporations for which that enables them to cheaply plug in their wares to children who are required to be on the same page on the same day of their lives in all locations.
Dolly,
I am all in favor of giving students OPTIONS TO CHOOSE FROM. That is what I think magnet and charter schools provide. It is the all and only traditional catchment system that I think treats students as interchangeable parts.
Think about the criticisms offered here of charter schools. Charter schools destroy neighborhoods by having students from the same block to different schools. Charter schools advantage Peter at the expense of Paul by taking the students from the most stable, most supportive families out of the traditional zoned school and putting them all together in a single program. Charter schools cherry pick students. Each one of these applies with equal if not more force to magnet schools, especially the qualified admission public magnets like Stuyvesant and Thomas Jefferson High Schools.
Many of the arguments presented here are not arguments against charter schools, they are against students having options.
“Could a traditional zoned catchment school be a progressive school while the school in the catchment zone to the west is a Waldorf school and the one to the south is a Chinese language immersion school?”
Why do those things need to be in separate schools? If there are some families that want a progressive school, why not have a progressive option within that school? It happens all the time. Why you plug your ears and sing “I CAN’T HEAR YOU” whenever this is pointed out to you is something I can’t understand.
Dienne,
Scale economies do matter. That is why NYC public brings the 3,000 students of Stuyvesant High School together in one building rather than ake lots of mini Stuyvasent high schools inside every neighborhood high school.
How many schools within schools do you think a single building can support? I am not sure why you object to sending students to different buildings rather than creating different programs within every building.
By the way, was a collocated public progressive school an option for you?
No need to think about the LAWRENCE KANSAS SCHOOL SYSTEM when that is YOUR LOCAL ISSUE and not how things operate in my area, as many have already told you about their district schools.
“Prevaricate” is right, Jon!
Dolly, once again I post IN UPORT OF STUDENTS HAVING OPTIONS, a position that you appear toy support as well. I am not sure why you are disagreeing with me about traditional all and only catchment public schools.
Prevaricate works too. I used perseverate because TE sometimes reminds me of the Rainman insisting on getting his underwear from K-Mart, because, well, just because. No matter what he’s told, it’s underwear from K-Mart. Five minutes ’til Wapner….
Does choice have to correspond to physical location? Can choice be provided within a single entity?
MathVale,
Given that there are some economies to scale in education, gathering all the students in a town that desire roughly the same approach to education seems prudent. This, of course depends on the density of the town and the transportation network as well. Dense locations like NYC can obviously offer more specialization in school buildings than can lightly populated districts up state.
te, I guess if we have unlimited funds for buses (transportation costs are always one of the biggest child-centered costs in schools districts) then all kinds of choices for all kids would be the ideal. Unfortunately, bus services are a very limiting factor. So, there has to be some limiting of choices. Magnets may skim the top students, but they also deliver higher scores (if that is what we are judging). Charters, other than a few, have consistently been shown to not deliver on their promises of better and cheaper. I think most parents would be happy and not need all those “choices” if their neighborhood schools were safe, clean and funded equitably.
TCliff,
I certainly agree that density and transportation are important factors. As I said in response to another thread here, NYC can do a good deal more than upstate districts. Even in rural areas though I think there is something to be said about allowing children to choose to attend a school. The Walton Rural Life Charter school, for example, was able to draw students from outside its catchment area by offering a special education that is very small farm centered. I am not sure about this, but I suspect that if it were a traditional catchment school, the extensive interaction with farm animals that the students have every day would have to be curtailed because of the possibility of allergic reactions by students assigned to the building. Choice allows students with allergies to avoid the school and students without to feed the chickens and the goats every day.
We are sick of hearing about this rural charter school, as if that should be the model for the nation, when the choice for so many kids in urban areas across the country now is WHICH military style charter they will attend, because the “miracle of choice” has resulted in there being no more neighborhood public schools in their communities and only boot camp charters.
Deal with your district issues at the local level already and stop trying to make them into national matters. We’re tired of having this conversation with you repeatedly and we don’t need any more federal mandates.
Dolly,
If you want we can talk about the military Montessori and Waldorf charter schools or the Community Roots charter school in Brooklyn. That one would seem pretty urban.
A school can offer diverse education opportunities within a single school building and organization. Economies of scale simply means people do not want to invest in that approach.
MathVale,
True to a degree, but offering the 15 students in each elementary school interested in a Waldorf education a Waldorf education in their assigned school would be a good deal more expensive than bringing them all together in one group in one school. There funds saved could buy resources for other pressing needs.
No. Talk to YOUR SCHOOL BOARD.
I have no interest in talking to you about outliers or any of your other drivel which fails to justify shutting down neighborhood schools so that kids have NO CHOICE EXCEPT “NO EXCUSES” CHARTERS.
Dolly,
Are Waldorf and Montessori charter schools “no excuse” charter schools?
Hey, I’ve seen this convo with you here before so I know that you are well aware that Waldorf and Montessori charters are very rare OUTLIERS. I’m all done here.
Dolly,
How rare? Do you have any actual numbers or is that just your impression?
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx TE, I think Dienne already answered you well at the beginning of this thread. The sort of nationalized standards/ testing/ curriculum system as described by Gates represents a narrowing of options, on a grand scale, of the manner in which education is delivered to all national public schools. Assigning students to public schools via zip code is in no way treating students like interchangeable parts. That would only be true if the manner in which their education were delivered was mandated to be identical.
S and F,
In my experience school catchment zones are much smaller than zip codes.but in any case, you might note that in this thread (https://dianeravitch.net/2014/09/29/peter-greene-explains-to-bill-gates-why-education-is-not-like-a-railroad-gauge/) Peter Greene suggests that supporting charter schools is inconsistent with standardization and uniformity. What kind of schools do you think Peter Greene would find consistent with standardization and uniformity?
We’re having this problem in Peekskill, NY right now. A group of parents want to restart a recently-closed Catholic school as a charter school (in the same building) under the guise of school choice. The problem is that it will eviscerate the Peekskill school budget. Yes, there will now be choice, but it also means that Peekskill will lose its art programs, enrichment programs, sports programs, bussing, and worse.
If choice means that a struggling but improving district will be stripped of funding, this is a false choice. My community needs good schools much more than a charter school that will only serve a small number of elementary-age students.
http://peekskillcommunityforschools.com
The Stuyvesant High School argument is a false one. You can only have a Stuyvesant when you have large economies of scale and the funding to match it. Stuyvesant is a great school but if you strip the advanced students from a small district, it skews the schools badly. And yes, I’m a graduate of Stuy (1986), but no matter how excellent an education it was, I want all students in my community to have an excellent education.
Gotta be careful. The Möbius strip here seems to be made of fly paper. That makes it difficult to leave. Scissors work well.
Deb,
I think the main problem is that folks in this thread are arguing for an indefensible proposition. They argue that neighborhood schools could be Waldorf and Montessori and progressive all at the same time. They teach in schools that divide the students in the neighborhood up by age and say we could keep the students that want a French language immersion program together in the same building with the arts immersion students along with the three that want a Awaldorf education.
For whatever reason, you never seem to get the point that most people are focusing upon. You have a different set of needs locally. You focus on that. It doesn’t apply to the broader needs of most schools, teachers, students, or parents. As has been said, you need to deal with your local situation. I don’t believe anyone here has the answers. If you think about it, the whole point of this blog is to advocate for local, not national, controls of PUBLIC education. The conversation veers off at times, but the advocacy is for each of us to maintain input into local school systems and to avoid being forced into a one-size-fits-all sort of regimented national curriculum and testing that undermines seeking the best PUBLIC education possible for all students.
Yes, the wealthy have opportunities that the rest of us don’t enjoy. They can travel. They can board their children at private schools. They can even buy their children’s grades or diplomas. Wealthy kids don’t have to be smart to succeed. They have inheritances as well as a network of job opportunities just because they are who they are. It doesn’t matter which school they attend. They will succeed unless they squander their inheritance.
To suggest that the discussions need to constantly focus on the two or three points that you have been hammering on for over 2 years is preposterous. People have tried to be tolerant, kind, take you into discussions. Newer posts get sucked into the same old discussion that some of us have been dealing with for all this time. You always go to some unanswerable question that pertains to your local needs. Yes, we often submit anecdotes related to our own experiences, but we don’t expect the solutions to be found here.
As has been pointed out countless times, if money were no object, if distance were no object, if time were no object, “all” needs of all students and their parents might be addressed. HOWEVER, most of the people who I have had contact with over the years hwo tend to go on a “searching mission” trying to find the “perfect” place to educate their “little Johnny” NEVER find their answers. There are no perfect solutions. Even in the private schools of the wealthy, it is quite probable that their children have some learning issues and the parents try to manipulate outcomes and fire teachers at will…which is why they want to do the same for public school teachers.
There are online options. Seek those out. If your kids don’t fit in with the local schools, put them online and have at it. Use Kahn Academy mini-lessons. Get them all the tech you can afford. Time marches on. They will grow up. And, they will have to deal with the real world, which is not fair, not easily understood, not fabulous all the time, and not full of clones of ourselves. We can’t “get our way” unless we are wealthy. Even Donald Trump doesn’t get his way … but he is so wealthy that losing a few million dollars doesn’t phase his ability to bounce back and to continue comfortably until his death.
The point is, the what ifs of your situation are not the topicat hand. The problem seen by many here is that there are privatizers that wish to control both the curriculum, the budgets, the delivery, the salaries of all who educate all children to the point of taking the art out of teaching and turning it into a system with a certain form but no real function. If you have some penchant for Waldorf and Montessori schools, so be it. I am sure they are fine. They do what the parents of those students want them to do. I know of no research (and please, I don’t want any links) to the adult success of students from those schools v those from public schools.
The constant spiraling towards a discussion of your localized needs serves no purpose. Obviously you have found no answers here, so realize that no one here has those for you. Go to your local school board or your local charter and private schools and see what you can do for your own child’s advocacy. Every parent owes that to his own child. But, this movement is for something far-reaching and we have to find our place ON that train, or we need to just get onto another one.
Deb,
First of all I take the point of this blog to be contained in the title: A site to discuss better education for all. That title says nothing about this being a blog advocating for local control over public education. Local control may result in a better education for all, but that has not generally been the pattern in the US and I think you would be hard pressed to argue that local control in Jefferson County Colorado or East Ramapo Central School district has resulted in a better education for all.
Second, I post about a wide range of issues. On this blog I have posted about a) the virtues of peer evaluation of teaching, b) the virtues of compensating teachers as individuals rather than steps in a lane, c) the virtues of defined contribution retirement plans, d) the virtues of direct foreign investment around the world, e) the virtues of allowing students options, f) the virtues of modern technology in teaching, g) the virtues of using standardized tests as alternatives to traditional grades as a way to demonstrate academic ability, and h) the virtues of having a high school diploma have some meaning in terms of academic achievement.
I have also pointed out a) the problems with local control, b) the problems with democratic control, c) the inconsistencies between positions taken on various threads on the blog, d) the privileging of the status quo inherent in some posts on this blog, e) the confusion by some of absolute and relative measures of poverty, f) the confusion of some about the relationship between causation and correlation, g) the emptiness of Wilson’s arguments, h) and the routine comparison between an idealized version of how traditional public schools are supposed to work and how charter schools actually work.
I see none of these points as particularly local, and am surprised that you see them that way. You might be confused by my offering of evidence to support my arguments. I know that this is not standard here, but I feel that it is important that when I say that there are charter schools that are not “no excuse charter schools” I actually name some. When I say that students are not allowed to attend schools outside of their districts I actually support that claim with evidence about bounties being offered, investigations being done, and parents being jailed. Sometimes the evidence comes from my local district, sometimes it comes from districts far away.
If you want to justify your manner of posting, so be it. But, honestly, I repeatedly see the same comments from you over and over again. And, I see people with the same frustrations with the manner in which your posts seem to skew towards your catchment, your questions about Waldorf and Montessori schools, etc.
It seems you ask “questions” that you either 1) know the answers to, or 2) want to divert the conversation to.
If I, and many other posters here get the same vibe from your posts, I doubt that we are misinterpreting your comments.
I think you will not get answers here that satisfy the kinds of questions you raise. It is exhausting to read comments to you that are met with yet another slightly different version of the same question. I don’t understand you motivation other than to bring up your ideas over and over and not provide a suggested solution for the bigger problem.
Deb,
I think it is likely you will get the same “vibe” from posts on the same topics made by any frequent poster on this blog. Duane will post his Wilson post when tests are mentioned, Lloyd will connect a topic to his experiences teaching in a poor school as a 6’4 ex marine or the cultural revolution in China, Chiara will post negative news about whats happening with charter schools in Ohio, Democracy will argue against AP classes, etc. I think this is the nature of blogs over time.
I use Waldorf, Montessori, and progressive labels when discussing school choice (but not when discussing the other topics like peer evaluation of teaching or how to measure poverty or the use of technology in the classroom, etc.) because those are widely recognized alternative approaches to teaching that are easily available to relatively wealthy households. I argue that using geographic admission standards result in relative uniformity across schools based on the political economy of school boards and back the argument up with empirical evidence that it is only schools that students can choose or not choose to attend appear to have some variation in educational approaches. I don’t seem to be alone in thinking this way. Peter Greene, as quoted by Dr. Ravitch, argues that supporting standardization and uniformity is inconsistent with supporting charter schools.
“Duane will post his Wilson post when tests are mentioned, Lloyd will connect a topic to his experiences teaching in a poor school as a 6’4 ex marine or the cultural revolution in China, Chiara will post negative news about whats happening with charter schools in Ohio, Democracy will argue against AP classes, etc.”
Do me, do me!
FLERP will post that everyone else is wrong.
TAGO
Can we just “roll in” instead of “roll out” the common core standards and “roll” them into a giant toaster set to high!
Bill Gates’s kids’ school is able to provide those amenities by charging an arm and a leg ($30-40k+, rising far faster than inflation, at most 10-20% receive any aid); by admitting no students with significant learning issues; by hiring a non-tenured at-will workforce, 21% of whom do not have a graduate degree (many in this group are younger teachers with no intention of making it their career); by providing a defined contribution rather than defined benefit retirement option; by requiring employees to pay a greater share of the true cost of fringe benefits, generally; and by having very streamlined work rules (if there are rules at all) that allow the focus to be kept entirely on the kids.
To say that all kids should have access to a Lakeside style education without addressing the specifics is an empty talking point.
It is not “an empty talking point” when the richest man in America has used his money to gain power and influence over the course of public education, with accountability to no one, thereby ensuring that other people’s children get virtually the opposite of what his own affluent kids are receiving –but which is financially expedient to fellow entrepreneurs and corporations BIG time.
I have no doubt that this man and his enablers know very well that while the are buying their own kids a Lamborghini, they are throwing everyone else’s kids under the bus. And no one is trying to stop them except people like Diane.
Thank you for aksing, Diane!
asking
CaresAboutKids&Teachers: one of the most delightful, er, refreshing, well, redeeming qualities of those promoting and defending “education reform” and trashing public education is that they don’t seem to remember from one second to the next what comes out of their mouths.
As Dr. Raj Chetty would say, what follows is one of those “Michael Jordans” of all debate tricks [er, retorts], fairly reeking of large data sets and scrupulously avoiding the natural human tendency to focus on outliers [in order to create outliars].
Everything here—absolutely positively without doubt every atom speck and particle of these here United States of America—is in danger of imminent destruction.
Forget about politics, economics, famine and pestilence and the Four Horseman of the Apocalypse.
Nope. I’m talkin’ ‘bout edgumacation.
So you don’t nickel and dime defending yourself from existential threats. Whatever it takes. Whatever it costs. No questions asked. Just pony up. No excuses.
And is there even a faint chance that there is a valid response to that assertion?
“I reject that mind-set.” [Michelle Rhee]
Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
😎
How much does Bill Gates’ kids’ school save by not testing and buying test prep curricula, software, etc.? What about if every school spent their testing/test prep money on more progressive approaches?
Better yet, what if we as a nation decided to spend even a fraction of our military/defense/national security budget on education?
The total cost of testing nationwide has been estimated at 1.7 billion, or about 0.25% of annual K-12 public school spending. If Lakeside doesn’t teach to the test or test prep their kids, they are to be commended, but there is nothing at all in Common Core or any other reform that forces schools and districts to engage in such practices.
Sequestration and the winding down of George Bush’s wars (that Hilary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Diane Feinstein, and many others signed off on) has whittled the defense budget down to where it is just a little bit larger than what we spend nationally on education. I assume it could be cut more without endangering national security or having a negative net impact on the economy, but I have no idea by how much.
The pre-K experiment in NYC has been a fairy sobering reminder that simply being flush with cash isn’t any sort of a guarantee with respect to quality.
The cost of the test itself is nowhere near the only costs of all of this standardized testing, though. Schools have had to spend huge amounts of money on technology and replace it every two or three years. There is a lot of money spent on graders. And that’s just actual money. That doesn’t even consider the loss of huge amounts of instructional time.
I am having to cut one of my big essays on the Constitution and why it was founded in order to do EIGHT (you read that right) 45 minute (or so, each) standardized writing tests for social studies beginning this year. I will probably also have to cut several primary source investigations as well. Those are far more important than a standardized tests, but I now don’t have time for them.
“If Lakeside doesn’t teach to the test or test prep their kids, they are to be commended, but there is nothing at all in Common Core or any other reform that forces schools and districts to engage in such practices.”
You’re kidding, right? You mean, other than the fact that teachers jobs depend on having their students pass the tests. You’re being willfully blind (or worse) if you think that “reform” isn’t forcing teaching to the test.
Here’s a devastating article that points up Bill Gates’ hypocrisy when it comes to the variation between what he demands for his own children, and what he subjects children from lower income communities:
http://seattletimes.com/html/dannywestneat/2014437975_danny09.html
THE SEATTLE TIMES’ Danny Weastneat takes Gates to task for promoting policy all over the country that jacks class size sky high, with Gates using the common-sense-defying logic that kids will fare better in larger classes.
Well, Weastneat sends his own kids to public schools, and will eventually attend Garfield High School (in the news of late). These are the schools that—once Gates has his way—will have obscenely large class sizes… A bit fed up, Weastneat did what perhaps no other writer has yet dared to do:
he investigated the two rich kids’ private school where Gates sends his own children and—doncha know it? —these schools major selling point is that they have… wait for it… EXTREMELY SMALL CLASS SIZES:
WEASTNEAT: “I bet (Gates) senses deep down as a parent that pushing more kids into classes isn’t what’s best for students. His kids’ private-sector grade school has 17 kids in each room. His daughter’s high school has 15. These intimate settings are the selling point, the chief reason tuition is $25,000 a year — more than double what Seattle schools spends per student.”
Calling out Gates’ hypocrisy, Weastneat ends the article with a knockout finish:
WEASTNEAT: “Bill, here’s an experiment. You and I both have an 8-year-old. Let’s take your school and double its class sizes, from 16 to 32. We’ll use the extra money generated by that — a whopping $400,000 more per year per classroom — to halve the class sizes, from 32 to 16, at my public high school, Garfield.
“In 2020, when our kids are graduating, we’ll compare what effect it all had. On student achievement. On teaching quality. On morale. Or that best thing of all, the “environment that promotes relationships between teachers and students.”
“Deal? Probably not. Nobody would take that trade. Which says more than all the studies ever will.”
That’s a great article and I am surprised there were no comments.
I think Dr. Ravitch gets it just right here: the most accurate comparison is of standardized electrical outlets with a standardized wealth of resources (small classes, experienced teachers, terrific library, etc.).
The Common Core dictates which “appliances” will get plugged into the available resources…even when it’s something developmentally inappropriate that could blow a fuse.
This Common Core/standardized electrical outlet comparison evidences wildly ironically fuzzy thinking…and awful inhumanity for the extent to which it reduces children to the level of unfeeling mechanical contraptions.
On a related note, my grandson in kindergarten told me a few days ago that he doesn’t like the library because “we have to sit too much and don’t get to run and play enough.” But I suppose toasters and ovens really don’t need any exercise. Are adults outside schools listening?, or when they receive feedback such as parent opposition to the Common Core in New York state, are they just shutting down the feedback process?
If Gates proved one thing through his running of Microsoft, it’s that he was clueless about innovating in any way that was remotely human – he left that to more innovative types. Then used their ideas to make his own versions.
Yes. This suggestion about standards is completely clueless about the human. No surprise given that Gates is the last person I’d look to for perception about people.
Diane,
Your “Question of the Day, Borrowed from Bill Gates” is hilarious!! Thanks for making your point with such humor.
Bill
Check out Lakeside Academy in Seattle, where Bill Gates sends his children.
I looked around their website but could not find any references to “reform” or Common Core.
http://www.lakesideschool.org/podium/default.aspx?t=153004&rc=0
As John Cougar Mellencamp said (with a few minor changes)
Ain’t that the Common Core for you and me.
Ain’t that the Common Core something to see baby
Ain’t that the Common Core home of the fee
Little Gates outlets for you and me.
SomeDAM Poet: are you sure you’re not one of the Muses?
😉
With most profuse apologies to the late Whitney Houston, THE GREATEST LOVE OF ALL [Bill Gates version a la CCSS], a few lines.
I believe beyond all doubt that I am your future
Teach by script and let me pay the way
Let me show y’all the beauty I possess inside
Grovel before my sense of pride to make it easier
Let the children’s CCSS test vomit bags remind us how it ought to be.
Everybody’s searching for a hero
People need me to look up to
Only I can fulfill everyone else’s needs
A lonely place to be
And so y’all are destined to depend on me.
I decided long ago, never to pay attention to anyone else’s opinion
I can’t fail, because I’m born to succeed as least that’s a universal belief
The greatest love of all is easy for y’all to achieve
Learning to love me and my CCSS, that is the greatest love of all.
[skip to the last verse]
And if by chance that special place
That y’all having been dreaming of
Leads you to Diane Ravitch’s blog
Ignore her—and find your strength in MEEEEEE.
😎
The bottom line, no matter how many arguments can be made for/against, is that in the end, THEY are trying to put an end to public education, dictate a curriculum tied to the test so THEY can make billions on the test based on the one curriculum “xeroxed” “dittoed” “copied” “resold” over and over and over……, profit from the computer infrastructure that will be needed to tender the tests, tie the tests to teacher performance, fire teachers, replace teachers with clerks, if at all eventually, and in the end, profit from the steady stream of taxpayer dollars.
We can bait each other with open ended arguments, we can virtually stomp our feet and shake our fists and tell each other we’re wrong, we can attack each others’ points of view, and debate zip codes and what the elite students do and do not have, get or do not get, but the bottom line is…..THEY are coming for your wallet, and they are coming for the majority of the kids, and they are coming to get rid of teachers, and PLUG the kids in, and make break them to their will. Period.
The attack is tiresome. Its exhausting.
Other negative side effects of toaster teaching on stretched thin budgets: angry classroom teachers (who have not bothered to join a professional organization) look around and try to figure out whose professional life they can make miserable. Look over there at the music teacher! She surely doesn’t work as hard as we do. Nevermind that she agreed to take 34 K-4 students for 50 minutes so classroom teachers can have longer plan time. We still need to make sure she is doing more than we are or that her work is just as toastery.
tutoring math 5 days now.
Cancelled chorus. Cancelled the talent show. Must tutor math.
upside down world.
The children are losing out.
ok I’m done being nice…f no my sons are not electrical plugs or outlets or anything of the sort. Nor would he say his children are. He bought an entire house for his daughter to hang out in while she was practicing with her horse in Florida (I think). God forbid she stay in a hotel or have her dream squashed. Well if all kids are the same then all of our children should have private houses to hang out in while they pursue their dreams!!! But to be honest with you I’d settle for undisturbed public schools run by local school boards according the the communities they are located in!
see article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2350311/Bill-Gates-buys-8-7-million-Florida-mansion-help-teenage-daughter-Jennifer-compete-showjumping-circuit.html
I just watched a CPAN program from September 26, a rebroadcast cast of a discussion of the CCSS by Democrat George Miller, a clueless retired general, a survey guru, and two educators from Maryland, one the state superintendent of education, the other an assistant principal.
Not a single teacher on the panel. Sponsor was the Center for American Progress. Typical thrusts here and there to sustain the difference between standards and curriculum implementation with teachers in charge of the how. No mention of Pearson, or Gates. Brief mention of PARCC tests as if these were no real problem, just necessary up grades–far better– than existing tests.
The state superintendent dominated the conversation with nonsense platitudes about the “roll-out” of the CCSS needing more time. She voiced the lie that the CCSS were teacher developed. Nobody challenged that statement, or her spiel about global competitiveness, college and career readiness. She thought that the Twitter examples of bad math problems were not helpful.
The assistant principal tried to make a point about the math standards with an example of the difference between knowing the answer by following rules, and knowing the answer from a deep understanding of math. He bowed out of elaborating on all that when he realized he was over his head with a example. But he insisted (like the “new math” gurus of the 1960s) that deep understanding of math is really needed and kids are “digging” the new standards, using manipulatives and so on.
The retired general waxed on about knowing the mission and mustering the troops, needing sufficient training, and the rest.
The survey guru reported that many parents were concerned–some from the federal overreach, others from not understanding why the standards were needed at all.
George Miller wandered here and there leaving me with the impression that he thinks this is a problem of implementation. Of course he is a ranking member of the committee who allowed this farce to be hard-wired into federal policy.
There were several questions from the audience. The first was about teacher evaluation and the bearing of the CCSS on that. The Maryland superintendent dismissed it, saying it is not a major issue in her state since test scores only count for 30% of a teacher’s evaluation and all teachers will be doing SLOs–student learning objectives.
A person who knew about the new science standards asked if there were lessons about the “controversy” over the CCSS that might make acceptance of the new science standards easier, especially since they dealt with touchy issues–evolution. No clear answer, just “take time to do it.” People will get used to the new science and the controversy will fade away, just as it will with the CCSS.
A teacher educator asked a question about the need to address the CCSS in new policies. Not anything intelligible from the panel on that.
So, that is another example of more than an hour of nonsense about the CCSS and not a single informed critic, and not a single teacher in the loop as a speaker.
Laura Chapman,
CAP gets money from Gates to promote CCSS. No accident that the panel included not a single informed critic. George Miller should always be remembered as the Democratic father of NCLB. He led the Democrats in the House in writing it, he was present when President George W. Bush signed it into law, and he never stopped singing its praises.
Know some of that history. Thanks for the detail.
and the Newark Academy in New Jersey, superb education… for the price of what used to be college tuition.
Diane, this strikes me as ironic. Sometime . . . last year, maybe? . . . you had a post about ANSI procedures, and that one of the many reasons that CCSS is illegitimate is that they were not followed in the adoption of CCSS. I wish there were a search feature on your blog so I could find it! So, in my mind, this comparison is all the more insulting. It’s like our kids are NOT EVEN AS IMPORTANT as appliances. CCSS did not have to be test, piloted or vetted before being approved, as even plugs and appliances would have to be.
Linda Myrick, this post appeared on both the blog and HuffPost: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-ravitch/common-core_b_5016877.html
When I asked about inBloom, someone from my state used the plug analogy.
Concerned Mom,
The reformers have a phrase book. They like to “build a plane in mid-air.” No child’s education “should be determined by his or her zip code.” Poverty “is an excuse.” So many more.
Our superintendent used that quote at our commencement, and told us that we were the only team of teachers who could do it.
*eyeroll*
How can they even pretend they’re teaching creativity or critical thinking when they themselves think and speak like robots?
The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. And bureaucracies live forever.
So the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse’s ass came up with it, you may be exactly right, because the Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
Now the twist to the story
When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory at Utah. The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains. The SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses’ behinds.
Fascinating! I often wondered the origin of that. Thanks for this info!
“And bureaucracies live forever.” And we are kidding ourselves if we think no one anticipated that charters would result in charter chains and charter management organizations, adding heaps of more bureaucracy to education, led by non-educators filching six and seven figure incomes from tax dollars.
Dolly,
NYC public has 135,000 on staff to educate 1,100,000 students. I suspect that the size of the public school bureaucracy is part of the reason that parents are interested in charter schools in the city.
You sure do rely on a boat load of BS, poppycock, hogwash, baloney and hooey to justify your “miracle of choice.” Get a clue: NYC is not Kansas.
Of course, the story is probably apocryphal, but a lot of what’s considered history isn’t totally grounded in fact either.
“Get a clue: NYC is not Kansas.”
I’ll say! NYC has nearly three times as many people in its five boroughs than there are in the entire state of KS!
The Walton Rural Life Charter School has a staff of 28, there are 190 students at this school. Student to staff ratio = 6.78, using your #s for NYC, the student to staff ratio for the city is 8.14.
Concerned,
Those numbers seem likely to be correct, but I am not sure what your point is about them.
Cares About,
Indeed New York does everything on a large scale but as many who post here point out, large scale may not be the best for education. Many posters here argue that local control is to be preferred over state control of education. It seems perfectly reasonable to argue that local districts that educate more students than many states also suffer from the same criticism.
You imply that NYC schools are overstaffed, but your favorite charter school has a staff member for approximately every 7 students while NYC has a staff member for approximately every 8 students.
Would that imply that the charter school is over-staffed and too bureaucratic? Maybe not, if the majority of the staff at your favorite charter are teachers and that same logic could be true for NYC schools (especially if you consider the diversity and special needs of NYC’s student population).
It seems as though more information is needed about the NYC numbers before one can make any assumptions.
Concerned,
I did not mean to suggest that NYC was over staffed, just huge. If you made all of Massachusetts into a single school district that district and combined it with Vermont for good measure, the resulting school district would still have fewer students than NYC public.
TE, you’re truly in denial if you think that large charter chains won’t crowd out the mom and pop charters over time. Economies of scale is what Gates is really after here.
Places like all of the varieties of schools you suggested in another post will get reduced significantly when places like Walton Rural Life Prep gets eliminated because the charter chain has a wealth of resources to be more cost-effective. This trend is already starting to happen in urban areas where charters have existed for a while.
Then you’ll have massive national bureaucracies. In fact, K12 Inc., is an example. It has far more students than NYC public school and multiple executives making far more than Farina. Add KIPP, Rocketship, Noble Street and a few others to the mix and the vast majority of schools will simply be franchises of the charter chains.
You’re an economics instructor. I don’t see how you don’t understand this historical trend. The majority of students, over time, will attend massive bureaucratic organization schools with a nationwide reach.
Steve K,
I would be more concerned with scale economies if I saw private school chains dominating private education. That does not seem to have happened. One thing economics teaches is that putting a ruler to past trends is a very poor way to predict the future.
In any case, if you are opposed to chains, it would be better to eliminate chains and allow stand alone charter schools to exist than to eliminate all charter schools.
The NEPC estimates that full time enrollment in all virtual schools is about 200,000, around a fifth of the enrollment in NYC public. K -12 probably has the majority of those 200,000, but districts and state virtual schools are included in that total. (here is the NEPC paper:http://nepc.colorado.edu/files/nepc-virtual-2013-section-1-2.pdf)
TE,
The primary difference is that private schools have not tried to replicate like the charter chains have. Charter chains are based on an economic model. Private schools are intended to be more clique-ish and exclusive. There’s limited benefit for private schools to expand rapidly because it diminishes the distinction of the school. Also, remember that the cost of private schools is a check on their growth. Charters have no tuition cost.
Private schools are not based on the same concept as charters. I think your analogy is deeply flawed.
You really don’t see the explosive expansion of the charters I mentioned as being a medium-term threat to local charters that are community-based? Remember, charter caps were lifted in many states with the last two years. The explosive growth is now unchecked.
I live in Michigan where NHA is adding new schools every year and growing quickly. I think the charter economic model is new to the education sector and comparisons WITHIN the sector are not indicative of future performance. Charter schools are more a reflection of business services rather than educational institutions.
Therefore, I would see restaurant chains as a closer equivalent than private schools. How many restaurants can a world-class chef really open versus a fast-food chain? That, to me, is a better analogy.
Steve K,
It seems to me that the scale economies of schools are the scale economies of schools, no matter if they are private or charter. The fact that there are no large scale private school chains suggests to me that there are no significant economies of scale in having networks of schools. If there were significant economies of scale, the chains could charge lower tuition than stand alone schools and mitigate your concern that high tuition limits growth.
Given that you are arguing against charter chains because of the threat to stand alone charter schools, it seems to me that you are not in favor of eliminating charter schools, but perhaps of regulating them so that charter chains do not exist. Is that correct?
Oh, and TE, I never said eliminate all charter schools. I have no idea where that paragraph fits into what I wrote earlier. I suspect it’s another of your attempts to distract from the original argument or idea.
Steve K,
I think the orthodox view here is that charter schools should be eliminated. I was not sure if you were arguing in favor of that view or in favor of a view that charter schools should be regulated more. The latter seems like a perfectly defendable position to me.
Gates is interested in standardizing the “customer base” (students) in order to “unleash powerful market forces” (his words)
To sell Common Core, he has engaged in fear mongering;
“If your state doesn’t join the common standards, your kids will be left behind; and if too many states opt out—the country will be left behind. Remember—this is not a debate that China, Korea, and Japan are having. Either our schools will get better—or our economic position will get worse.” — Bill Gates
Our economic position also gets worse when people like Gates beg for STEM grads but then lay them off when presented with the opportunity to hire cheaper H1Bs.
Definition of hypocrisy: insist on more STEM graduates then willingly prevent demand for them.
Increasing the supply over the demand is simply a way to keep the price low.
It’s not hypocrisy — it’s strategy.
(Okay, it’s hypocrisy, too.)
Bill Gates’s analogy comparisons of that CCSS to standardization of electrical plugs and outlets, and to the gauge of railroad tracks may have some merit under certain conditions. My understanding of Gate’s analogy is that the gauge of railroad tracks is constant( standardized), so a train can move anywhere to deliver the materials. By analogy, CCSS ideally would also be constant( standardized) and could deliver equal learning opportunities and choices to all students throughout the nation. The standardization of the electrical plugs and outlets comparison allows a constant flow of energy to any appliance regardless of location. Once again by analogy, CCSS would allow equivalent learning to occur regardless of location or situation- social-economic, gender, ethnicity. Both standardization comparisons may be valid if possibly three conditions are met in the K-12, CCSS model. These conditions may include: (1) all students in class at entrance are placed by equivalent background skills and evaluated on exit by empirically determined equivalent standardized measures(2) The teacher has the many effective “tools”, programs and expertise to monitor student and class performance in real time and can make appropriate corrections, as needed, to maintain student/class proficiency. (3) Finally, the school board, district, school administration and counselors, parents, and students are on the same page in terms of educational programs, expectation grading outcomes, and other performance criteria. In support of the three conditions, NAEP, NCLB, and classroom research suggests that the learning process has at least ten learning characteristics including: (1) linear; (2) incremental; (3) comprehensive; (4) additive; (5) interactive; (6) slow; (7) inductive; and 8-10- independent of social-economic; ethnic and gender/age factors. If one accepts the research defined above as reliable and valid, a student must be promoted by proficiency as a student moves from level to level, IF the student is to learn the skills effectively taught at the next level. If the student is NOT promoted by proficiency, especially in the STEM disciplines, as the research above suggests, the student becomes less and less able to learn the subsequent material at the higher levels when the material is being taught and evaluated appropriately. In addition, if the evaluation process including printouts are truly diagnostic-prescriptive, the evaluation process defines what the student knows or not, so that corrective process on the deficient areas can be addressed. Unfortunately, it does not seem the educators have the tools, programs, and expertise to define, implement, and evaluate such an effective model, currently.
.
Here is a practical, inexpensive K-12 program choice model that might help meet some of these conditions including Gate’s standardization comparisons analogy. In K-12, separate the traditional grade promotion by age/attendance model from a promotional by proficiency level model. For example, the student could be in the traditional 3rd grade by attendance/age, but is placed and promoted by academic levels 1,2,3,4,5 determined by academic proficiency performance. In the model the student would still would be promoted by attendance each year, but would be placed, evaluated, and promoted separately by academic proficiency level. The academic promotion level process could be by teacher recommendation and/or empirical evaluation. In addition, the time line among promotional levels may be by grading period, semester, or other means. The model would have no remedial nor advanced program levels with only one systematic program in each discipline based on proficiency. The model would then allow ALL students to meet the federal NCLB and state laws on promotion by proficiency. With only one program in each discipline, student placement, promotion and programs are simplified and costs/student reduced. In addition, the model changes the responsibility and accountability for learning on the student, with the teacher, parent and others being the support system for the student. With more student responsibility and accountability , better student placement, and proven effective instruction, class size could be larger reducing cost/student; creating more effective teacher- student-student interactive learning; and reducing remedial instructional time and class discipline disruptions.
.
When most of the three conditions suggested are systematically and continuously in effect in K-12 schools, Gates analogy for effective K-12 learning comparison to the standardization of electrical plugs and outlets, and to the gauge of railroad tracks may move beyond a theory and become a valid, K-12 student learning model. However, why not attempt to understand and address effectively the research learning characteristics and possibly the three conditions defined above. If even partially successful, research and common sense suggests that many more students, regardless of social-economic, ethnic and other conditions could possibly reach the student’s goal with proficiency defined by their expectation, perseverance, ability, and luck.
.
Research support information on the discussion is available from this retired instructor and current independent researcher via ekangas @juno.com