Vicki Cobb is a prolific writer of science books for children. She has written more than 85 nonfiction books. As a child, she attended the celebrated Little Red Schoolhouse in Greenwich Village, where experiential learning was valued. Today, she dedicates herself to educating children about science and the joy of learning. Imagine her surprise when she conducted a workshop and discovered that the children did not share her enthusiasm for school.
Here is her assessment of the legacy of today’s school reforms.
The other day I was doing a program for a group of 4th-6th graders at a local public library. I introduced myself to them by telling them how I had LOVED school so much when I was a kid that I basically recreate it for myself everyday as I write my books. The kids’ reaction to my confession was a unanimous, vociferous, vocal expression of how much they disliked school. I was startled. After all, I’ve told this to children many times before at school visits. Was this because the venue was not in school and they felt freer to express themselves? Or has something changed to make school more onerous? These were privileged kids from an affluent public school district. Could it be because they had just finished a month of standardized testing? What’s going on here?
This is just the latest piece of evidence that something is rotten in American education. It seems that many people in a position of power believe that education is too important to allow professional educators do their jobs because they have failed to produce a consistently excellent product of people who are college and career ready after twelve years of schooling. They believe the way to excellence is to first write a law decreeing “No Child Left Behind” or “All Children College and Career Ready” to set a policy, without consulting anyone who actually teaches children. And then to test, test, test, to see if these impossible standards have been met. Meanwhile, they are creating a population of quietly submissive students and teachers who narrow the curriculum to what they hope will be on the test while administrators are cutting art, music, physical education programs and librarians to pour more of their limited financial resources into test prep and test grading….
Let me take this opportunity to remind us that human beings, from the moment they appear on this earth, are born to learn. A baby is as smart as s/he will ever be. Through infancy every day is filled with wonder and discovery. And although there are hard lessons along the way, as learning progresses, so does mastery. We know from research that there are many different learning styles but eventually we all learn to walk and talk and think . As we get older, if we’re lucky, we discover a passion that drives us to master more skills and contribute to society. But the skill of high performance on a test, is not an essential skill. There are many other metrics for success — the number of patents held by Americans, for example. The current “reformers” for education are simply imposing ill-conceived laws of the state and federal governments on schools as if we were a dictatorship not a democracy.
Deep in my bones I know that I would not be creating science books for children if I had grown up in one of today’s repressive schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“American Pie Reformed” (apologies to Don McLean)
A long long time ago
I can still remember how
That teaching used to make me smile
And I knew if I had my chance
That I could make those students dance
And maybe they’d be happy for a while
But standard testing made me shiver
With every lesson I’d deliver
Bad eggs in the home nest
I couldn’t give one more test
I can’t remember if I cried
When I read about “reforming” tide
Something touched me deep inside
The day the teaching died
So
Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Gave my lesson for the testin’ but the lesson was dry
And them good old boys were selling Common Core lie
Sayin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die
Did you read this close before
And do you have faith in Common Core
If the Coleman tells you so?
Or do you believe in art for all?
Can poems save your mortal soul?
And can you teach me how to dance real slow?
Well, I know that you just love to dance
‘Cause I saw you ‘fore you lost the chance
You just kicked off your shoes
Man, you dig those rhythm and blues
I was a veteran teacher — with a zest
With a love for Shakespeare, I must confess
But I knew I must give the test
The day the teaching died
I started singin’
Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Gave my lesson for the testin’ but the lesson was dry
And them good old boys were selling Common Core lie
Sayin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die
Now, for six years we’ve been on the mill
And Duncan’s pushing testing still
But, that’s not how it used to be
When the choir sang for the entire school
Before the testing came to rule
In a voice that came from you and me
Oh and when Vergara came to town
The Chetty wore his VAMmy crown
The courtroom was adjourned
The verdict was returned
And while Coleman read a book by Gates
The VAM scores sealed the teachers’ fates
And we sang dirges in The States
The day the teaching died
We were singin’
Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Gave my lesson for the testin’ but the lesson was dry
And them good old boys were selling Common Core lie
Sayin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die
Helter skelter in a summer swelter
The Feds flew off with a teacher pelter
Eight miles high and falling fast
It landed foul on the grass
The teachers tried for a forward pass
With the Chetty, on the sidelines, picking fast
Now the half-time air was rank perfume
While Arne played his marching tune
We all got up to dance
Oh, but we never got the chance
As the teachers tried to take the field
The Duncan band refused to yield
Do you recall what was revealed
The day the teaching died?
We started singin’
Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Gave my lesson for the testin’ but the lesson was dry
And them good old boys were selling Common Core lie
Sayin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die
Oh, and there we were all in one Race
A teacher nation lost in space
With no time left to start again
So come on Bill be nimble, Bill be quick
Bill Gates sat on a candlestick
‘Cause fire is the devil’s only friend
Oh and as I watched him on the stage
My hands were clenched in fists of rage
No angel born in Hell
Could break that Satan’s spell
And as the flames climbed high into the night
To light the sacrificial rite
I saw Satan laughing with delight
The day the teaching died
He was singin’
Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Gave my lesson for the testin’ but the lesson was dry
And them good old boys were selling Common Core lie
Sayin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die
I met a teacher who sang the blues
And I asked her for some happy news
But she just smiled and turned away
I went down to the schoolhouse door
Where I’d started teaching years before
But the teachers there said testing ruled the day
And in the streets the children screamed
The parents cried, and the poets dreamed
But not a word was spoken
The public schools were broken
And the teachers I admire most
The ones who taught me ne’r to boast
They caught the last train for the coast
The day the teaching died
And they were singing
Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Gave my lesson for the testin’ but the lesson was dry
And them good old boys were selling Common Core lie
Sayin’ this’ll be the day that I die
This’ll be the day that I die
They were singing
Bye, bye Miss American Pie
Gave my lesson for the testin’ but the lesson was dry
And them good old boys were selling Common Core lie
Sayin’ this’ll be the day that I die
Perfect – one of your best (and that’s saying a lot). I think Don McLean would approve.
What Dienne said.
😎
I wish you could team up with Joanna Best, a music teacher from NC, who posts here sometimes, to record this. Post it on youtube, and we’d have all we need to say all that needs to be said. Thank you so much.
I don’t play guitar or piano but here’s a link to an mp3 file of an a cappella version.
But I think your idea of teaming up with Joanna (or someone else who is instrumentally inclined) to make a youtube video is a good one.
Wonderful!
Ok with you if I put it out on Twitter, with credit to you, of course ?
Love this!
Excellent! I’d love to share a re-write of Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” (nowhere near as poetic as your American Pie). Here goes:
THE WALL (Common CORE mix)
We don’t need Core education
We don’t need no thought control
No PARCC tests in the classroom
Arne, leave them kids alone!
Hey, Arne, leave the kids alone!
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall
We don’t need Core education
We don’t need no thought control
No close reading in the classroom
Coleman, leave them kids alone!
Hey, Coleman, leave us kids alone!
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall
We don’t need Core education
We don’t need your math to make us cry
No more pain in the classroom
Gates, leave them kids alone!
Hey, Bill!, leave the kids alone!
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall
We don’t need Core education
We don’t need no thought control
No teacher scripts in the classroom
Hey Arne! leave them kids alone!
Hey, Arne, leave the kids alone!
All in all it’s just another brick in the wall
All in all you’re just another brick in the wall
(Echoes in the backgound: “If you don’t do your lattice, you won’t get any pudding…How can you have any pudding if you don’t do your lattice??!!)
Ok, now I’ve got THAT tune stuck in my head.
For those of us who still teach, it is often a constant battle to try to keep some joy in the process of learning. I began in a public school classroom in 1995. At that point at least until middle school most students were still turned on to learning, but by 8th grade they were learning to be economical – “will this be on the test?” becoming the guiding principle as to whether they ought to offer any attention. Since NCLB it has gotten far worse.
There is a different approach, one still done in schools with a progressive orientation, some of which are public schools. Certainly the existence of Montessori programs in public school districts is evidence that at least some in positions of authority recognize this. Thus let me strongly recommend a book I just read and which I will shortly review at Daily Kos, by the late Tom Little (who died 4/29/14) with the assistance of Katherine Ellison. It is titled “Loving Learning: How Progressive Education Can Save America’s Public School” and it will point out to you how much of what we know actually works to keep students impassioned about learning stems from the progressive approach.
Please note – I recognize that the progressive approach was in some cases implemented in ways that were both rigid and contrary to what people like Dewey recommended. Diane has written cogently on that that. While we need to assess, we do not need to test incessently, and whatever assessment we do should provide feedback to both students and teachers, and thus allow what the teacher does to be adjusted for the students being assessed. Our current approach does not do that, takes too much time from real learning, and turns students off to owning their learning, which should be part of the educational process.
I worry about these things, because I have young children in public school. But I try to take a less dark view, because I’m dark enough as it is. So I will just note that I hated elementary school, middle school, and high school. It wasn’t until college that I learned to like it. And it was’t until law school that I learned to love it.
I know plenty of people who hated school back in the glory days of yore.
Flerp…ah so, we agree here. With a few exceptions in high school (two fantastic teachers I still remember, one in English and the other in Economics…both influenced my future life) I only really enjoyed my education days at the university and then the challenging law school years.
I think one gets a better sense of how it has changed if one watches ed reform over time in a specific system. Our schools were not wildly joyful or wonderful prior to the big national adoption of this one narrow version of reform but they DO seem grimmer now. The push starts so young, too. The feeling I get is there’s no room for error- we adults are DEAD SERIOUS-, and I think little kids absolutely require room for error. It’s almost their job, to screw up 🙂
My youngest doesn’t know any different, so there’s a “snapshot” effect for current students and parents. His entire experience is ed reform. He has nothing to compare it to.
I live in the Houston TX area and have 5 and 7-year-old that I still need to get through school. As I watch what is going on everywhere I wonder where is the best place to go to make sure they get a quality education. Every state is as big a mess as Texas or worse. I am not financially able to send them to a private school. I’m really struggling with what is in their best interest.
Vermont. Except that if they had any sense, Vermonters would secede from the union and fiercely guard their borders. They seem to be about the only state with any sense left.
What is the average temperature in the winter in Vermont? I grew up in Kansas and my wife in Nebraska and we really would prefer to be not to deal with winter very much…I know two completely different needs.
Yeah, winter could be a problem. Average temperature is around the low 20s and it gets a heck of a lot of snow, especially near the mountains.
Not much worse than winter in Kansas or Nebraska! My daughter went to the University of Vermont all the way up in Burlington and didn’t find it much worse than Boston. And, you know, we do have global warming.
It’s too late. “City folk” from New York, Philadelphia, and Boston have created a full-blown heroin crisis in Vermont — http://governor.vermont.gov/newsroom-state-of-state-speech-2013.
And whether it is the lure of cheaper heroin or an interest in living among people who don’t look exactly like them, young Vermonters are fleeing the state as fast as they can. It is the second oldest state in the country and its population growth has stalled. The silver lining is a good job market, for now, but it will be interesting to see what happens with funding for schools and other services down the road.
I work with a younger woman who has children in an adjoining district. Her district has adopted the whole agenda, where mine has not, partly because we are lucky enough to have a very practical superintendent who seems wary of fads.
My co-worker was fine with reform until the Third Grade Reading Guarantee. She was shocked at how it was presented- like “do or die! your children will NEVER WORK unless they pass this test!”
Her daughter is 8, and she’s the third of 4 children, which means she had two children thru elementary school prior to the 3rd grade reading guarantee. She knows better 🙂
It is very strange that most of the better school are in states that it is cold and miserable during the winter and some of the worst are in the south.
David…consider moving to Santa Monica, California, where the weather is gorgeous.
One of the best public schools I have ever observed nationwide is near 24th Street and Montana. The young principal is on top of all aspects, the teachers are superb, learning is inspiring, kids are happy and interactive with much cooperative learning taking place, and the parent group comprised mainly of highly educated well-to-do Westsiders invests time and cash to do much upgrading of this public school with their 501c3 PTO.
Wish it could be recapitulated everywhere. But it is a unique situation in So. California where 80% of students live at or below poverty level and inner city schools can be hellish with overcrowding and few services. Our BoE member, Monica Ratliff, teaches in a rare inner city school where students flourish.
Tim, your claim that “city folks” brought heroin to Vermont is totally unsubstantiated, and your link to Governor Shumlin’s State of the State speech in an effort to justify your statement is specious: there is no mention whatsoever of “outsiders” bringing drug addiction to the state.
In fact, the Governor’s speech specifically says that the heroine crisis is an outgrowth of prescription drug abuse; are you saying abuse of synthetic opiates was also brought to the Green Mountain State by those hypocritical urban liberals you like to use as straw men for defending so-called reform?
Addendum…and must mention the strangest anomally is that Michael Milken, the Wall Street charter purveyor of failed learning, lives near this neighborhood.
Michael,
Perhaps you didn’t read far—or carefully—enough:
“Due to our proximity to Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and other cities where heroin is cheap, dealers can make a lot of money from addicts in Vermont. A $6 bag of heroin in New York City can go for up to $30 here. So think about that: a $6 purchase could sell for five times as much, just a few hours up the interstate.”
I mean, that isn’t even subtle enough to qualify as dog whistling. We could have handled our issues fine until those big-city drug dealers came along!
Ellen, I appreciate the suggestion but the cost of living compared to Texas is out of my budget. I realize that Santa Monica is a very nice place. I was actually born nearby in Van Nuys.
Tim and Michael..the Bushes and Stockman would call it supply side economics. Beyond trickle down, the free market finds the best situations to expand profits.
Tim continues to use misdirection and disingenuousness.
The term “City Folk” in a state like Vermont has very specific connotations, namely, summer people, or affluent urbanites who have second homes in the state.
His saying that, because heroin is cheaper in the cities, it follows that “city people” are bringing it to Vermont (though in individual cases some presumably are) is so broad as to be meaningless, unless you have an ideological axe to grind. That ideological axe is on frequent display on this site.
He might have just as logically have said that “UPS and interstate truck drivers” are the source of heroin addiction in Vermont. While perhaps having a molecule of literal truth, it’s nevertheless false.
And anyway, it’s all supply and demand, and the “magic of the marketplace,” isn’t it? The exact same ethos the so-called reformers insist on imposing on public education.
Except I think it was Tim who used the term “City Folk,” not Shumlin. On the other hand, the term may have the same connotation in scare-quotes as it has in Vermont.
Just admit it, Michael. Rich liberals and their good-time buddies are arbitraging spot-market smack prices in a NYC-Vermont carry trade.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
The current “reformers” for education are simply imposing ill-conceived laws of the state and federal governments on schools as if we were a dictatorship not a democracy.
“The current ‘reformers’ for education are simply imposing ill-conceived laws of the state and federal governments on schools as if we were a dictatorship not a democracy.”
That pretty much says it ALL. Considering how bad it was becoming when I left teaching after 30 years in 2005, I shudder to think what it is like today. When I started teaching in 1975, no one was looking over our shoulder, no one was examining our lesson plans, there were no standardized tests driving instruction, and there weren’t even enough textbooks to go around so teachers had to create almost everything they taught with no guidance.
A close friend and former colleague, much younger than me with about 12 years to go to escape the Inquisition dungeon the classroom has become, tells me that he has to used scripted lessons, and if he writes his own lessons, they must be approved before he can teach them. The approval is based on the teacher made lesson linking specifically to the CCSS with no drift.
I decided just now to look up high school graduation rates going back as far as possible and found a chart (Figure 11 – page 31 – link below) that starts in 1869, and It’s obvious that in the 1960s on-time HS graduation rates were at their highest point and then came the 1983 A Nation at Risk heralding the standardization, test them to death movement and a decline in HS graduation rates that’s struggling heroically to recover under the dictatorship of NCLB and the CCSS rank and destroy agenda.
Click to access 93442.pdf
I also noticed that in time of war, the on time HS graduation rate seems to also dip. If you look at the chart, you might notice the abrupt drop about the time of WWII and the Korean Conflict. Is it possible that many young men who were still in HS dropped out to join up and fight? Does war have an impact on HS graduation rates and is the CCSS war any different?
Vicky is right: school is becoming joyless. It’s not just that we’re teaching to standards and tests. It’s the KINDS of standards and tests we have –which are fixated on skills as opposed to knowledge. Contrary to popular opinion, knowledge is where the fun is at school –learning about worms’ organs, Renaissance art, the plot of a Mark Twain novel. Vicky is right: we were born wanting to know things. Sadly schools now perversely and foolishly try to impart the mental abilities we already have –that we were born with (a.k.a problem solving skills, inferencing, “learning how to learn”), while neglecting to teach the knowledge we manifestly were NOT born with and that we hunger for. It’s not just Reformers who are at fault here: the vast majority of the educational establishment is on board with the wrong-headed notion that school is mostly about skills. Teachers are confused. They see a kid struggle with a chemistry problem and say he lacks “problem solving skills”. No. He has solved many problems with great skill throughout his life. What he lacks is the chemistry knowledge that will enable him to use his innate problem solving skills on the domain of chemistry! Kids do not lack skills; they lack knowledge. The main tragedy of Common Core, the main reason it is so deadly, is that it endeavors to shove schools into the ludicrous project of teaching thinking skills rather than knowledge.
AMEN!
I have always laughed when speaker tell me that I need to teach higher order thinking skill. I usually reply, they have to have something to think about first.
For most kids, there can be no joy, no satisfaction, no fascination, no intrinsic reward, no excitement – without learning something new and important and interesting. Guessing at an author’s intent, examining the author’s tone, searching for textual evidence, or explaining why 2 + 3 = 5 with some contrived diagram rings hollow to a child’s innate curiosity and desire to learn. For kids under the Common Core, every day is like a bad PD day with a know nothing consultant. Ponderosa you are a lone voice that really seems to get just how far down the wrong road we have traveled. The Common Core standards are about one mm deep and maybe one mm wide in terms of content. One fundamental problem is that the ELA approach to informational text tends to focus more on supporting evidence than the information itself. And math is generally devoid of content anyway. So when the majority of school time emphasizes two subjects that generally ignore new and important and interesting concepts or facts
or ideas, no wonder it is described as joyless.
We’ve been brainwashed to believe that knowledge doesn’t matter; that’s why no one is teaching it. It’s declasse. Or if they teach it, they feel guilty about it because they “know” knowledge doesn’t matter. It’s always “mere” knowledge, “mere” facts. Asking kids to show their knowledge is pedagogically contemptible “regurgitation”. Occasionally you’ll hear a little lip service on its behalf, but everyone knows skills (reading skills, writing skills, thinking skills) is where it’s at. We are truly in a situation akin to Europe before Copernicus when all respectable thinkers believed something completely false. We need a Copernicus to upend current educational thinking. Thanks for your endorsement, NY Teacher!
I am always surprised how few comments support this idea. Brainwashed indeed.
Kids actually are looking for a ‘sage on the stage’ that makes their 40 minutes interesting and intellectually exciting. Too bad this term has used to stigmatize any teacher that “lectures” or requires their students to learn factual information. As teachers of content rich subjects (science and SS) we are caught in an era where much of what we do best goes unappreciated for everyone except our students.
NY Teacher, I’m led to think about Vast Error throughout time. It could well be that the 2 billion Christians are completely wrong about their faith (either they’re wrong or several billion other humans are wrong about theirs). It’s certainly true that 40 million Germans were wrong about the perfidy of the Jews. All humans were wrong about the situation of Earth in the cosmos until Newton and Galileo. If Paul Krugman is correct, most leaders and economists are wrong about the importance of taming budget deficits. So Vast Error is something we humans are susceptible to (unfortunately, few people seem to appreciate this fact, one of the important facts that one might glean from a true liberal arts education). And today, 99.9% of teachers are wrong about what teachers should be teaching. I’m ashamed on behalf of my profession. I’m embarrassed when I hear them say “I’m teaching problem solving skills” or “reading skills”. Or I’m teaching kids to “learn how to learn”. They’re just regurgitating respectable sounding cliches that they probably haven’t given a moment’s critical thought to (though many, alas, are hair-trigger ready to shout down anyone who questions this dogma. Ironically the very people who tout their love of critical thinking skills wouldn’t consider for a moment applying critical thinking to what they were indoctrinated with in ed school). Our brains were born with thinking skills. We cannot give these to kids. All we can do is widen the SCOPE of these innate skills. They way to do that is to give broad knowledge. If you know about chemistry, you can think, read and write well about chemistry. If you know about the Middle East, you can think, read and write well about the Middle East. If you know about Korean food, you can think, read and write well about Korean food. Without the domain knowledge, you cannot think, read or write well about any ofthese domains, no matter how much specious training in skills you’ve received. There’s a reason that education has been, for most of human existence, about transmitting knowledge: it’s that knowledge is not congenital. There’s a reason that, for most of human existence, we haven’t taught thinking skills: they’re congenital! And reading is not a matter of having “reading skills”. It’s a matter of knowing what the letters stand for and knowing what the words mean. If you know phonics and you know what the words mean, you can read. The reason many kids can’t read is that they lack broad knowledge, not that they lack “reading skills”. Most of the reading “experts” today are total charlatans. Oy.
This is a very moving (for me) video by teachers who feel strongly about how the tests impact their struggling student.
Educators speak out on IEP and ELL children taking state tests:
https://vimeo.com/124482344
Thank you for this, Richard.
As a retired ESL teacher I have faced the inequities of the tests for ELLs. We subject ELLs to a test before the research says they should be ready. It takes five to seven years for a typical student to be able to perform close to grade level expectations. The Common Core, it has been reported, is written two years above grade level. How is this fair for our most vulnerable students?
Diane thanks for your continuous sharing of excellent opinions about the absurdity and wasteful time and energy spent on testing. If you want, I will send you decades of my letters to editors , politicians, legislative leaders, etc. urging an end to this high stakes testing era we are trying to live through. We have lost so many kids through these years and by the time we get it together, we will be heartbroken at the loss of children turned off school and never to be welcomed back to the excitement and wonder of learning.
Mimi Brodsky Chenfeld (teacher, author, consultant, rabble rouser)
As I blogged the other day, the Japanese learned the hard way and to their immense sorrow that when they pushed their children so very hard by the time the children had finished high school they had learned two things:
1. To hate school and learning
2. How to pass tests. They had not really learned the material, only parroted the “facts” given to them with no real understanding.
It looks like these politicians have got to learn the hard way also.
“Experience is a very dear teacher but a fool can learn in no other way”.
I couldn’t agree more. I often say that children are born scientists. Everything they do is an attempt to make sense of the world. They (we) would maintain that innate curiosity and sense of wonder and awe if we didn’t have schools that do all in their power to beat it out of us.