Ken Previti draws a connection between Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” and President Obama’s education policies.
Dickens raged against the powerful who ignored want and ignorance. Dickens spoke truth to power.
Previti writes:
“One hundred seventy-one years later in the wealthiest nation in the world, President Obama made some startling statements about high stakes test scores (attached to Common Core State Standards) that profit well-connected financial investors who get the money from education taxes…..
“Dickens’ voice in the character of the Spirit of Christmas Present says it all.
“This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware of them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Whoops… common core and Coleman tell us there is nothing to be learned from fiction… and we “know” that whatever Coleman says is THE GOSPEL right????
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Actually, imaginative literature is a strong & important part of the Common Core. ELA standards require it from Kindergarten through 12th grade. I’m not in favor of CCSS, but it does require a balance of lierature (through English classes) and nonfiction.
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segads.. common core places utmost importance on non fiction and even places restrictions on how much fiction should be read – even attempting to “quantify” the amount. Buffoonery!
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Tell that to the teachers at my son’s high school, that have cut ALL fiction from the curriculum. Since the CC tests test ONLY non fiction, that’s what will be taught, because teacher evaluations are now based on those CC tests.
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Even on Christmas dat a dig at Obama. What next?
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Raj, i hope you enjoyed Leonard Cohen singing his “Hallelujah,” and the flash mob singing Handel in a food court.
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Yes that was a good one.
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Yes, Leonard Cohen was real nice. As to the larger situation, how involved in this year’s Congressional and statewide races were Ken and others who constantly attack President Obama.
Unquestionably there is a huge gap between rich and poor. But graduation rates are about the highest they have been, employment rates are up, millions of people who did not have healthy care have it now. Obama has appointed two fine people to the Supreme Court. He has accomplished a lot.
There are many wonderful things about this country, despite its problems. With a different Congress, Obama could have done much more.
I get that many here don’t like what Obama and Duncan have done in education. It reminds me of the grief that the late US Senator Hubert Humphrey took while running for president. He was wrong about Vietnam for many years – but he had a long, wonderful record in other areas. But people who disagreed with him on Vietnam helped insure Richard Nixon was elected. That was a shameful presidency.
I fear we’re about to have a radical right Congress for a couple of years. I wonder how active Ken and others who constantly criticize Obama were in trying to present that from happening.
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Joe Nathan,
The “radical right” Congress will continue to support charter schools. It suits their agenda. The puzzling part is how Obama and Duncan got on board with the same agenda in education as the far right, attacking public schools, supporting privatization, and undermining public sector unions and the teaching profession. Remember that Arne expressed great satisfaction with the Vergara decision, which would strip all teachers in California of the right to due process.
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Actually, Diane, Obama and Duncan have identified and praised many fine district public schools, teachers and principals.
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Joe, you may not have noticed but the President and the Secretary cheered when all of the teachers at Central Falls High School were fired, without any evaluations. Duncan regularly praises the actions of red, red states like Tennessee and Louisiana. He is a puzzle to me. There is no Democratic agenda at the national level.
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Rhode Island Public Radio reports that there has been progress in terms of graduation rates and math scores since the teachers were fired (and then rehired):
http://ripr.org/post/central-falls-high-school-three-years-after-mass-firing
“And Central Falls students have started to make gains. They’ve raised the graduation rate from a dismal 52 percent to 70 percent. Math scores nearly doubled in the last year, and fewer teachers are calling in sick. Principal Joshua LaPlante, a former biology teacher, says he believes the faculty is finally on the same page, working together to improve the school.
“So, for however many years we’ve been a low achieving, non-improving school,” LaPlante said. “And we can refer to the times when we all felt very comfortable, because when I started here we were all very comfortable, but our students were not making any gains.”
In extreme cases, whether district or charter, I think starting over is what’s best for students.
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Joe, there is always more to the story than the numbers you cite. The entire staff was fired without an evaluation. That is wrong. It is happening in hundreds if not thousands of schools around the country, disrupting the lives of children, teachers, families, and communities. Education is not the same as test scores.
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We agree that education is not just test scores.
I originally posted to ask why people were ignoring many terrific things that the President has done to help youngsters and families. I also asked, other than posting criticisms here, what people did to prevent a right wing Congress from being elected.
It’s clear people don’t want to discuss either subject.
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Joe,
As one who saw through the political charades that Obama has played from the campaign of 08 onward, I have an impossibly difficult time giving credence to a supposed “man” who ordered the hit/murder of a 16 year old American boy because of his (the boy’s) fathers beliefs and/or the fact that the boy was the only one left to challenge the US government on the killing of the boy’s father. The Obomber is what the Obomber did/does.
How many other innocent victims are on his list???
The Obomber along with the likes of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Georgie Porgie should all be, at the minimum, convicted and held in solitary, or better yet hung. The spirit of this supposed season of peace demands it.
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Who did you vote for President, Duane? What did you do to help elect a more progressive Congress this year? And who is the 16 year old to which you refer?
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Joe,
I vote for candidates who espouse the policies that I believe we should be following. As a citizen I speak with fellow citizens, that is whoever is willing to engage in political debate, about the candidates and their platforms.
Your first two questions imply that perhaps there are only a few permissible possible means of influencing elections. I don’t agree with that type of orthodoxical thinking.
In answer to your last question: Abdulrahman al-Awlaki
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Duane, I don’t think you should vote for any certain person or party. I was just interested in what you have done to help move things ahead in addition to posting on the internet.
What’s the reference for information that President order the murder of a 16 year old?
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Huffington Post describes a new book as reporting that the President was “surprised and upset and wanted an explanation. ” A former White House official calls it “a mistake, a bad mistake.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/23/obama-anwar-al-awlaki-son_n_3141688.html
Another White House official had a somewhat different view: “However, John Brennan, at the time President Obama’s senior adviser on counterterrorism and homeland security, “suspected that the kid had been killed intentionally and ordered a review. I don’t know what happened with the review.”
I wouldn’t view HuffPo as the most definitive source – I’ve even written for them. You might or might not like at least some of what I said (ie we should not be arguing about which is better, district or charter, we should be using multiple measures to determine which schools are most effective with which students. )
But there are apparently views of what happened to the 16 year old. I think you and I would agree that killing a 16 year is wrong and terrible.
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Joe – I love how Republican obstructionism is always the answer for why Obama hasn’t accomplished what he supposedly wants. But you blind supporters never look at what Obama does when he’s not facing Republican obstructionism. For instance, he cut heating oil subsidies for the poor in the middle of a bitterly cold winter, he (not the Republicans) put Social Security cuts on the table, he invaded Libya, he assassinated a U.S. citizen and his sixteen-year-old U.S. citizen son, and he’s frantically (and secretly) working to pass TPP which is charitably described as NAFTA on steroids. To name a few.
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Dienne, I don’t agree with everything Obama has done. I’m just interested (really, not critical, interested) in what people have done to help move things ahead in addition to posting here.
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“I vote for candidates who espouse the policies that I believe we should be following.”
Very telling. I, on the other hand, pay more attention to what candidates do rather than what they say.
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Thank you Joe Nathan
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I checked and found out that all Central Falls High School teachers were rehired. It is also known that the firing was the result of the clash between the teachers union adamant behavior and the state laws. Just claiming that all teachers were fired is half the truth not the whole truth. Thanks to the Internet now the whole truth or as Paul Harvey would say, now the rest of the story can be revealed. It is also known that this school is now performing better than 2010 when the teachers were fired (half truth).
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Raj, that makes no sense. All the teachers were fired, then all the teachers were rehired, and the scores went up. Is there some strategy or logic there known only to you?
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Can’t speak for Raj, but the principal in the public radio interview said the experience has helped pull faculty together and given them unity on goals. Maybe yes, maybe no. Hard to know for sure.
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NPR, Rhode Island Public Radio broadcast TUE DECEMBER 31, 2013
“For several years we’ve been following the struggling Central Falls School district.
The high school grabbed national headlines when it fired all of its teachers back in 2010.
The fired teachers were later rehired by the district, but the firings left Central Falls High School in an uproar.
Three years later, Rhode Island Public Radio’s Education reporter Elisabeth Harrison found signs of progress at the school, but scars from the mass firings remain.”
You may read the rest or listen in link below:
http://ripr.org/post/central-falls-high-school-three-years-after-mass-firing
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So, Raj, is it your educational philosophy that the path to higher test scores for impoverished children is to fire all their teachers, then rehire them? What exactly is the theory of action? Keep teachers living in fear of being fired?
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Raj, you probably didn’t read to the end of the story. The school had a federal grant of $1.3 million a year, which is now finished. And this:
LaPlante [the principal] is the first to admit Central Falls High has a long way to go. Even with the increase in math scores, only a small percentage of students are considered proficient, and that’s not unusual, according to Maria Fergusen from the Center for Education Policy. Fergusen has been watching turnaround efforts around the country, and she says improving test scores at the high school level is complicated. You have to factor in students’ personal problems, which often distract them from schoolwork.
“And then on top of that you layer the complexity of trying to teach math to a lot of kids who probably don’t have those skills at the early level that really will support math instruction in high school, and, you know, it is not easy,” said Fergusen.
And after three years, the federal funding for Central Falls turnaround effort has run out. That means the school no longer gets a yearly 1.3 million boost in federal funding to help turn the school around. School officials have already rolled back a longer school day because it proved too expensive.
These days, the hallways in Central Falls High School are noisy as Kinslow ushers 9th graders into his English class, but most students appear well behaved. Still, Kinslow says discipline is a challenge.
“Teachers are swore at all the time. They’re told to shut up. Two have been threatened that I know of this year. I’ll f-you up, that kind of stuff,” Kinslow said.
The school understands there are still problems, and administrators say they’re working on it. About half of the original faculty from before the firings remain at Central Falls High, according to the district.
A survey conducted by the Education Alliance at Brown University found that in the last year, teacher’s attitudes have become more positive. However, the same study found that student absenteeism continues to be a challenge for the school.
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Some of what happens next depends on how that $1.3 million was spent. Was some of it spent by committees of faculty, families and students to meet need they identified?
We did this in Cincinnati with Gates $. Some of it went to equipment that they wanted to buy. Some went for staff development. Some went to pay faculty to develop new, ongoing collaborative relationships with community groups. Overall result was elimination of graduation gap between white and African American students, and overall gains in graduation rates (white and African Am). Yes, those were district public schools.
It may also be that some youngsters need a non-traditional learning environment. Gordon Parks High School (district) and Face to Face (charter) are two examples of alternative high schools that have been successful here with students with whom traditional high schools did not succeed.
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There is more info here:
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/02/24/rhode.island.teachers/
This link has two videos worth watching to get a better overall view of Central Falls High school story.
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Diane, I read all of it and also gave the link to the story so that you may also read the whole story. I understand that every one reads the story with their own bias, I have mine and you have yours.
But you stated earlier:
“It is happening in hundreds if not thousands of schools around the country, disrupting the lives of children, teachers, families, and communities. Education is not the same as test scores.”
Can you please lead me to the place where I can get a handle on this hundreds if not thousands of schools where all the teachers were fired? It sounds incredible, but I would like to confirm this. I do not believe in blogs where anything goes and I prefer print, audio, video media as somewhat more believable sources. Please oblige.
I can not understand the context of the last sentence “Education is not the same as test scores”, could you please explain?
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Raj,
Race to the Top targeted 5,000 schools for “turnaround,” ie firing all or most of the staff. Thus far, there have been few studies of the result of all this turmoil but even the US DOE has been muted in claiming “success.” Some schools have been turned around more than once without success. Some are deemed a success but then the facade collapses (see, Miami Central High, where Obama, Duncan and Jeb Bush met to celebrate its successful turnaround, but a month later, the state announced it was a failing school).
Education is not the same as test scores. Education aims for a broad and deep understanding of one’s world and the skills to operate in it. Scores on standardized tests can be raised by intensive drill. Deeply ignorant people may produce high scores with enough test prep.
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Test scores are not the only important way to measure a school’s impact. Safety, attendance by students and faculty, four and six year graduation rates, ability to help young people find jobs or enter some form of higher education, percentage of graduates who have to take remedial courses, all should be used to help provide a fuller picture of what’s happening in a school.
School districts could decide among 4 turnaround models only one of which involving firing most of the teachers (and giving them the right to apply again)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_Improvement_Grant
Conversations with state leaders around the country suggest the vast majority of districts did not select the firing all staff. Do you have research show how often this option was chosen?
Another option was to bring in a new principal. Sometimes a new principal can be very helpful.
I’d say starting over with total staff should be used only in very rare instances. But there are some toxic situations in which this is appropriate.
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I found the following 4 models from
http://www.gadoe.org/Race-to-the-Top/Pages/Turning-Around-Lowest-Achieving-Schools.aspx
1. Turnaround (replace principal and remove 50% of staff)
2. Conversion to charter management organization or education management organization
3. School closure
4. Transformation (replace principal and utilize a combination of strategies in the other reform models)
But I cannot find that 5000 schools were either targeted or closed anywhere.
Besides Federal government (not Obama) provides grants and they cannot mandate this method to the states. States have total control of the education arena. Only those states that apply and accept the RTTP grants have to follow one of the methods listed above. RTTP grants were funded by Congress, not Obama. Federal government only provides incentives but cannot mandate that the school district improve the schools.
Besides I cannot find anywhere that 5000 schools were targeted and many were closed and the teachers were fired. Isn’t that what your statements mean?
School closures happen all the time, some because of serious reduction of student body (population demographic change in a given area) and it is cheaper to move the students to another school or a new school in another high growth residential area. Some times a school is closed because it was replaced by a newer more modern facility. Chicago Public School district is a good example. None of these are a part of RTTP and the firing of the teachers.
In California and probably some other states, some schools are turned into a charter under the parent trigger law.
The only school that actually went through the process of closure that made the news is “Central Falls High School.” Even that school did not close in the end and no teacher was fired.
I would love to find data on the rest of the 5000 school closures and how many teachers lost their jobs and not just a statement in a blog. Am I asking for too much?
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Raj,
I can’t do your research for you. Read my book “Reign of Error,” it’s free in the public library. There’s a chapter on turnarounds. Read about Chicago. Closing schools should not be a strategy for reform. It’s brutal, unless you think of schools and children as inanate objects, of teachers as widgets, of communities as blank spaces.
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Why not? Thanks to Obama’s educational policies, Christmas is rather less merry for millions of kids this year who will be facing non-stop test prep when they return to school in January and who have to worry whether or not they’ll pass, whether their teacher will still be employed, whether their school will still be open. Obama is the Scrooge of education.
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No one could have said it better! Let me add another one…Ignorance is bliss… for all those who think they know how to reform education and know nothing about it.
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Yes, and under the Obama administration and considering the overall gestalt of the state of the Union, we shall being our own “A Tale of the Shrinking Middle Class” with “It was the worst of times; it was the worst of times.
I have to keep telling myself that this is a growing pain of our culture, our society, and our country. It is par for the course.
We outnumber them. We stand on the side of just, fair, and moral and they do not.
There is hope, as I am reminded this holiday . . . . .
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We can expect more of the same. The President recently signed a spending bill with a green light for more corporate welfare, relaxing rules for Wall St., and more perks for the 1%. We are slowly returning to a Dickensian economy. http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/robert-reich-why-we-cant-get-government-we-want-and-deserve
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RT – agreed that the new spending bill/law has many objectionable things in it. I think the President worked hard to get some of the things he most wanted. He also had to give on some things. Here’s a Washington Post summary:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-politics/wp/2014/12/09/whats-in-the-spending-bill-we-skim-it-so-you-dont-have-to/
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CorrectionL
” . . . . we shall begin our own “A Tale of the Shrinking Middle Class” with . . . . “
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Joe Nathan’s words are those that are typical of public education destroyers–in the name of reforming. If someone got a good analytical computer program and put in the rhetoric of the Joe Nathans of the world it would be spectacularly frightening in its common newspeak quality.
I am one of the teachers who was fired in Central Falls, Rhode Island, Mr. Nathan. And, yes we were rehired–after giving up many of our rights. But then, Frances Gallo, the superintendent and her agents began persecuting us beginning with phony 5-minute evaluations and then dictating involuntary transfers–to the point 4 1/2 years later that over 80 percent of the teachers in Central Falls H.S. are now gone via firings, forced retirements and resignations. My wife and I are two of them. As a matter of fact—I know you like facts, Mr. Nathan—the Central Falls’ student population has dropped drastically since they were thrown under the bus by Race to the Top, Obama, Duncan and Deborah Gist, who is our state Commissioner of Education and a Duncan groupie. Central Falls now has the highest percentage of charter school students in the state and the high school graduation rate has gone up due in large part to exiting students who are “problems” by giving them “alternative credit” or “multiple pathways” for easy classes or no classes in separate facilities.
The statistics originally quoted by Duncan, Obama, Gallo and Gist as well as prejudiced journalists like Campbell Brown, were almost all doctored or outright lies. I contested them at that time of crisis—I was a guidance counselor with access to the real statistics—but no one with political power seemed to care. The Central Falls barons and state education czars are still lying or setting up student population scenarios which make the “facts” seem in their favor. Central Falls just dropped down in science scores on the regional assessment, for instance. You haven’t heard that, have you? They have a nice website now, since they hired a techie as an assistant superintendent at $150,000 a year. Have you heard about that? And they use your common lingo to tell the world how successful they are. Believe me, they are not. If Orwell were alive, he would revel in their destruction of the English language in order to make their lies seem like truth. National Public Radio gets huge amounts of money from the Gates and Walton Foundations, two big backers of charter schools. They have instructed many of their reporters to go easy on the reformers—emphasizing the “positive aspects” of closing public schools and replacing them with charter schools—as have PBS, the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal and other media sources.
Currently, I would venture a guess at what drives you to contest so much of what Diane Ravitch has established in the minds of those of good will who are truly seeking verity about the charter “reform” movement. It is that you want to be devoid of guilt and responsibility when it comes to the lies, the destruction and the demoralization of public education. Since I am a fierce believer in divine justice, I know that, in the end, the lies will be revealed and they will crush those who have perpetrated them. Don’t be one of them; listen to Diane and give up the life of lies. Time waits for no man, especially for those who secretly know they are wrong.
George Thomas McLaughlin
Save Public Education
Providence, Rhode Island
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George McLaughlin,
Good to hear from one of the teachers who was fired and rehired. And interesting to learn that 80% of those who were “rehired” were eventually pushed out. We do live in an Orwellian world where facts are whatever serve the purpose of the speaker.
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thanks for sharing your insights and your work with young people, Mr. McLaughlin. As it happens, our 3 children all attended and graduated from St Paul Public Schools, my wife recently retired after 33 years as a St Paul Public School teacher, and our oldest daughter currently teaches in St. Paul Public Schools. I spent 14 years in the district and also was a PTA president for one of the schools our children attended.
My work over 40 years – like many other educators – involves trying to listen to, learn from and share outstanding work of educators. What I find most exciting and encouraging is the number of educators who continue to make a difference in the lives of youngsters. Far from feeling guilty, I’m delighted by the transformation of youngsters that many educators are able to produce.
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Mr. Nathan, even your language in response to me proves my point–children are not products and teachers and administrators do not produce their transformation. Using the language of industry does not change who children and their teachers are–human beings– each with a unique and independent existence in the universe, composed of a body, a mind, and a soul. They are not objects which can be transformed by repetitive and often hair-brained practices by one dimensional thinkers.
I am sorry to hear of your lack of guilt, Mr. Nathan. I was being optimistic when I mentioned it. If indeed you have no guilt, it might be indicative of another, deeper disorder.
By the way, you didn’t respond to my corrections of your Central Falls analysis. Why not?
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Sorry you have not seen children transformed by teachers. I’ve seen it many times. Not because they are products – but because some of them come to schools angry, alienated, full of rage and frustration. I’ve helped some, and seen many teachers, transform young people into positive, hopeful, active workers for greater justice and opportunity. It’s that kind of thing that inspires many educators. It’s some of the best work educators do.
Among other places, I found this kind of thing happening at “The Met” in Providence.
Incidentally, given the discussion of charters in Rhode Island, I wonder what you think of millions of dollars that have gone to the Providence District
http://pbn.com/Carnegie-awards-Providence-3M-to-create-innovative-high-schools,98726
There’s a lot of comment by various people here about foundations giving to charters, but the enormous sums given to districts is rarely mentioned. The above is a good example.
I have enjoyed working with and learning from educators in Rhode Island, including
There are many interpretations of Central Falls. You’re share yours, and I’ve quoted a reporter. Truth is complex.
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Unlike the truth, hopeless drivel filled with endless cliches and doctored statistics is not complex . I have been a teacher and a guidance counselor for almost 40 years in poor urban schools, 14 of them in New York City where I grew up in a poor family–in Brooklyn. I have five teaching certificates and 3 degrees. But I have one thing which distinguishes me from the education destroyers. It is called common sense.
I am very familiar with the lying movement of “reform” in Saint Paul and the rest of Minnesota since my in-laws live there and I have spent much time there. It is not much different than New York, Central Falls, Los Angeles, Chicago, New Orleans, Atlanta, Philadelphia and Providence. The dynamics of language, manufactured and doctored “facts” and the obsession with “truth” which comes from tests dominates all of them. If you ever get to visit Providence or Central Falls, you will discover that teachers in those cities and scores of others know that the Race To The Top money you speak of glowingly never really reaches students and teachers since it is designated for consultants, more tests and new “reform” administrative positions. They also know that it is considered public relations blackmail money, which is how it has been used in Providence, a system filled with more dysfunction and ineptitude than ever since “reform” began there after the appointed school board and the mayor fired 3000 teachers. Sound familiar? Obama’s and Duncan’s blackmail money hasn’t helped the public schools. It has made them worse. And. of course there is the surprising parallel growth of charter schools there as well. Sound familiar? As Will Rogers said, “Don’t believe every thing you read in the newspapers” or hear on the radio.
The tragedy in the case of the taking heads for “reform” is that a naive and immobilized public sometimes, at least temporarily, believes them. They are all full of the same catch phrases and state-driven statistics. When I and others challenge these pronouncements–as i did with yours– there is almost never a solid, and verifiable response that is not based on the reform machine’s “fact” machinery. Sound familiar?
The destruction of the public, neighborhood school that people like you are professing, no matter how you try to convince us of the opposite as you do it, is what generates the blood stains that can’t be rubbed off your hands.
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Here’s an editorial from today’s St Paul newspaper praising a variety of district, charter, teacher union, and most of all students for their accomplishments:
http://www.twincities.com/columnists/ci_27209553/joe-nathan-early-encouraging-results-dual-credit-partnership
Mr. McLaughlin, I’m sorry your almost years have filled you with such anger. My experience since 1970 has filled me with great admiration for many educators, union leaders, families and students. It’s also filled me with with a deep appreciation of what public schools can accomplish – including with students from very challenging backgrounds, which includes many of the students described in this column.
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Throwing the money changers out of the temple does not mean you are filled with anger. It means you are doing God’s work. Hopefully, you will see that before it is too late. Slan anois agus adh more.
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