Long-time readers of this blog know that we have had a more or less steady procession of trolls who have inhabited these precincts. They lurk. They come and go. Some are grumpy. Some argue; some take a thread and take it off point. Some are annoying. I leave them alone so long as they live within the rules of the blog (no insulting your host because you are in my living room, no cursing, no conspiracy-mongering, a basic level of civility—and no monopolizing the comments section).
I have never asked others who blog what they do with their trolls. I just play it by ear. On severe; occasions, I have banned them when they broke the rules. Sometimes I put them in a queue to moderate their comments before they are posted to make sure they don’t continue their bad behavior. I give them a warning before there are consequences. But I am generally very tolerant.
It turns out that there are people who actually study troll behavior and offer advice about how to deal with them. The New York Times recently published an article on “the epidemic of facelessness.” This is a phenomenon new to our age, in which people communicate without having face-to-face contact. Much online interaction is between complete strangers. Online interactions can sometimes allow people–in their anonymity–to unleash a level of rage and hostility that they would never express in a face-to-face encounter. Some people have received death threats or rape threats online from total strangers, which happens to be criminal activity.
Stephen Marche writes:
What do we do with the trolls? It is one of the questions of the age. There are those who argue that we have a social responsibility to confront them. Mary Beard, the British historian, not only confronted a troll who sent her misogynistic messages, she befriended him and ended up writing him letters of reference. One young video game reviewer, Alanah Pearce, sent Facebook messages to the mothers of young boys who had sent her rape threats. These stories have the flavor of the heroic, a resistance to an assumed condition: giving face to the faceless.
The more established wisdom about trolls, at this point, is to disengage. Obviously, in many cases, actual crimes are being committed, crimes that demand confrontation, by victims and by law enforcement officials, but in everyday digital life engaging with the trolls “is like trying to drown a vampire with your own blood,” as the comedian Andy Richter put it. Ironically, the Anonymous collective, a pioneer of facelessness, has offered more or less the same advice.
Rule 14 of their “Rules of the Internet” is, “Do not argue with trolls — it means that they win.
Rule 19 is, “The more you hate it the stronger it gets.”
Ultimately, neither solution — confrontation or avoidance — satisfies. Even if confrontation were the correct strategy, those who are hounded by trolls do not have the time to confront them. To leave the faceless to their facelessness is also unacceptable — why should they own the digital space simply because of the anonymity of their cruelty?
There is a third way, distinct from confrontation or avoidance: compassion. The original trolls, Scandinavian monsters who haunted the Vikings, inhabited graveyards or mountains, which is why adventurers would always run into them on the road or at night. They were dull. They possessed monstrous force but only a dim sense of the reality of others. They were mystical nature-forces that lived in the distant, dark places between human habitations. The problem of contemporary trolls is a subset of a larger crisis, which is itself a consequence of the transformation of our modes of communication. Trolls breed under the shadows of the bridges we build.
In a world without faces, compassion is a practice that requires discipline, even imagination. Social media seems so easy; the whole point of its pleasure is its sense of casual familiarity. But we need a new art of conversation for the new conversations we are having — and the first rule of that art must be to remember that we are talking to human beings: “Never say anything online that you wouldn’t say to somebody’s face.” But also: “Don’t listen to what people wouldn’t say to your face.”
Given the national reach of the blog, I won’t be inviting any trolls for dinner. But there is an important point here: face-to-face contact tends to dissipate the rage that anonymity and facelessness promote. There is no way to make that happen, unfortunately. So we should just bear with one another, listen to those who join with us to argue every last point, be patient, be civil, and don’t jump to judgment.
I mostly ignore them, unless their ‘opinion’ offers an opportunity to point out that FACTS rule!
At Oped, which is a news site, opinion must be linked to real hard evidence, and Rob made it very clear that trolls will not be tolerated, as the news-site was not social media, but a place for serious discussion.,
When a troll spews hate on a particular subject, I just wish them a good day and remind them how fortunate we are to have a forum to express our ‘opinions.’ Then I worry about a country that has people who have such hatred in their souls to spew such venom.
I try to avoid using the word “troll” except when discussing fairy tales, but in my experience on the web I know that most of the folks on a site like this who behave in that obnoxious manner are doing so on purpose, recruited as agent provocateurs or what we call astro-turfers precisely for the purpose of obstructing informed discussion on the matters of pressing interest to the community at hand.
I agree. I also think one of the most destructive aspect of trolls is that hateful ideas become in acceptable and valued and incivility becomes a method of discourse. One of my friends told me it is important to know what others think, but this reality is indeed disturbing.
“There is a third way, distinct from confrontation or avoidance: compassion…..In a world without faces, compassion is a practice that requires discipline, even imagination.” I will keep this on mind. Good article I will recomend it
I think that what is disturbing about trolls is not just the insults, but the hyperbole and lie-spreading. It actually affects our democracy by swaying people with misinformation in a cheap (cost wise and metaphorical) manner. It costs millions for TV ads for political campaigns, but trolls cost next to nothing and are lurking to spread intentional misinformation to push political agendas.
During the last gov race in TX for ex, the majority of my students had read online that Wendy Davis “killed babies”. This made a group of astute young women keen to support Gov Abbott who is currently decimating their educational opportunities, their ability to advocate for their own health, and the physical environment that they live in. Their parents vote against their best interests often more due to what they read on the internet in threads, than due to articles or ads. Trolls can create compelling false anecdotes to influence political races that seem more reliable than other sources.
The spreading of the narrative of “bad teachers” everywhere by trolls from the reform movement, is often seen as sufficient evidence by parents to approach schools and teachers with lack of trust, despite teachers’ best efforts to help their children. I suspect that trolling is becoming a cheaper method to destroy democracy, and it is not a loner at a computer, but a salaried employee somewhere.
When possible, feed them to one another.
To Bob Shepherd, “When possible, feed them to one another.” What a great idea!
Our dear Diane….. I feel like we know you, and your heart, through your writings….. Always thoughtful, always teaching us. We must have compassion. Every good teacher knows that.
The best way to deal with hostile posters and trolls? Setting up posting and comment guideline will do.
Like this,
http://www.debito.org/?page_id=1866
Ken, interesting guidelines for policing one’s blog. Like debit.org, I reserve the right to approve or disapprove what appears in the comments section. As he put it, it’s my blog and I’ll post what I want. As I put it, it’s my living room, and if you get obnoxious, you are banned.
My blog, which generates very few comments and therefore very few trolls, has rules for posting. They are similar to debito.org…but the gist of all of them come down to this…My blog is my ballpark. I’m the umpire. If you don’t behave yourself you’ll be ejected.
Have a long time fellow umpire whose motto is “When in doubt, throw em out!”
My response to him: “I’m never in doubt. Whatever I decide goes.”
I’ve been called a troll (and worse) here more than once simply because I disagree with the majority of readers on some key topics. I try to always be civil, and I appreciate the mutual discussion. I’ve learned things here, and hope that a few have learned things from me.
Somebody who argues just for argument’s sake, or is disrespectful (especially without cause), should be called out. But in a blog that is meant to discuss better education for all, please don’t consider anyone who disagrees with you to be one.
George Carlin said there were two kinds of drivers in this word, idiots and maniacs. An idiot is anyone driving slower than you and a maniac is anyone driving faster than you. We all have our point of view.
I believe engaging with people who disagree with you, while frustrating at times (for all involved), is what open minds do. If you come here to hang with people who agree with you, please just ignore my posts and others you disagree with. Others will chime in, I assure you ;-).
I definitely agree that the facelessness sometimes allows thoughts to be misconstrued and can easily lead to sniping that would never happen in person. I may not agree with all, but I respect well thought out and expressed opinions and appreciate the environment here that supports the discussion.
I have seen that as well with comments, and I agree with you.
I agree that there should always be an opportunity for vigorous discussion that includes disagreement in facts or opinions. If the comments become abusive or demeaning, then there should be consequences or perhaps sanctions.
You’re generally very polite on here, John, for which I thank you. However, there are some people on here that are very nasty and derogatory. I applaud Diane for her patience with those sorts. I just hope that we all listen and learn from each other.
John,
I agree with you whole heartedly. I have been called by many names here. There has been a serious effort to drive me out of this place of discussion. I ignore all the name calling. Being faceless helps,
I comment/engage here only when I see distorted facts that I feel the need for correction. My comments are always short and to the point.
I always believe that every one has the right to his/her opinion but they do not have the right to their own fact.
Raj,
Never forget that you are here by my sufferance. What you call a “fact” is what many see as your opinion, especially since you seem to have little personal knowledge of K-12 education.
You are so lucky that Diane tolerates your insistence on opinions that have no basis in fact. No one wants to drive you away… they just are exhausted by your attempts at arguing with so little grasp of the reality.
I know what I’d like to do to all the trolls on this blog, but it’s not publishable. Diane once referred to me as “injudicious”, and in those rare instances where I am, she’s right.
Some things are better left unsaid . . . .
As for Raj and Tim, I would only hope that no one suppresses their voice, as they both crack me up with their child-like, McDonald’s version of public education knowledge and “facts” (yawn) about teaching and learning.
Raj and Tim, if you keep on writing, I’ll keep on laughing.
Glad we are having this conversation. I agree that I have learned valuable things here, though I sometimes disagree with many who post.
Though I’ve been an urban public school teacher & administrator, PTA president, member of a state PTA board and actively engaged in and with public schools for more than 45 years, I’ve been called a variety of names here.
I’m a believer in free speech and in sharing insights. I’m also a believer in sharing facts & research. As many of us discovered years ago, researchers don’t always agree. Moreover, for many situations, a variety of facts can be presented to help support multi-view points.
Hope all is going well with you, Joe!
You too, Duane. While you and I sometimes disagree, I don’t think we’ve ever resorted to name calling or other personal attacks. I’ve certainly learned from you.
Here’s a link to a newspaper column I wrote about the heart attack I had on July 4.
http://hometownsource.com/2015/07/08/joe-nathan-column-healing-after-a-heart-attack/
Glad you’re still with us Joe.
Thanks, John.
My thoughts are with you. As one with HBP and not in the best of shape-ha ha, I certainly can empathize with you. Take care of yourself and take care! Glad it didn’t take you completely down!
Duane,
I’m in shape. “Round” is a shape.
I’m sticking with that ;-).
Same to you sir – glad things are working out for you.
Joe Nathan: Best wishes for your health and well being.
😎
Thank you.
So glad to see you here Joe…hope your recovery continues to go well. Despite that we often disagree, your educated perspective is always valuable to our discussion.
As to trolls, it is interesting to me that this stream of writers today is mainly one which has names attached to comments. Trolls hide behind their nom de plume to do their dirty work.
Thank you, Ellen.
The behavior of trolls is interesting to me. As we know, everyone is entitled to their opinion; these opinions may be skewed by misinformation, misinterpreted information, and just plain erroneous information. It is difficult to change these opinions. These same individuals are typically those who are intolerant of the opinions of others. Their side of the “conversation” often becomes laden with expletives. If they cannot abide by the guidelines of the blog, then they should not participate.
Up until early 2013 I didn’t know anything about internet Trolls, flame wars or flame traps—yes, Trolls deliberately set traps and then wait for victims to step into the trap to give the Troll an excuse to bate a victim until the victim loses control to their anger—until I became one of their victims on Goodreads and Amazon. In fact, I was so clueless that I was unaware that I had already been a target of Trolls in 2011 during the on-line debate on Amazon over Any Chua’s memoir, “The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.”
From that experience and reading this Blog, I’ve learned that there are Trolls, and then there is what Jon Awbrey mentioned in his earlier comment in this thread. Awbrey said, “But in my experience on the web I know that most of the folks on a site like this who behave in that obnoxious manner are doing so on purpose, recruited as agent provocateurs or what we call astro-turfers precisely for the purpose of obstructing informed discussion on the matters of pressing interest to the community at hand.”
The Trolls I ran into back in 2011 and then again in 2013 was not agent provocateurs and/or astro-turfers. They were vicious, mean bullies that went out of their way to destroy the authors they were targeting on Amazon and Goodreads every way they could through their on-line anonymity. They were known as the Goodreads Bullies and most of them used more than one sock puppet identity so they could make it look like one of their victims was being criticized and ravaged by several individuals. Some even organized and became mobs of Trolls who joined up to go after their targets.
By the time I realized what had happened, it was too late and the Troll attacks kept up for some months spreading rumors about me to destroy my career as an author and as an individual. To fight back, some authors launched a website called Stop the Goodreads Bullies and followed leads to reveal who these Goodreads bullies were.
After Amazon bought Goodreads, Amazon acted and disarmed the Goodreads Bullies to make it more difficult for them to operate with impunity. In fact, Anne Rice even took on the Goodreads Bullies at one point in her own flame war on Amazon with them. Eventually Anne Rice asked her millions of fans to help her deal with these Trolls. Soon after that, it got so vicious that Amazon had to step in and delete that thread from one of Anne Rice’s books and censure some of Rice’s fans and the Goodreads Bullies. From what I’ve read about that flame war, Rice’s fans put the fear of God in to the bullies who found themselves hunted targets instead of the snipers. It seems that some of Rice’s vampire loving fans are capable of being as vicious as vampires and Rice had to ask her fans to dial it down.
Anne Rice, on Facebook, also gave her support to the Stop the Goodreads Bullies site.
From this, I learned the hard way that the trolls, who go out of their way to destroy individuals and drive them crazy or even to take their own lives to escape the attacks, are a breed of trolls that it is best to not feed because they are mentally ill and gain a sense of sick power over their victims when the victims attempt to debate with them until the victim loses control and becomes the same as the Troll—a raging lunatic so angry they can’t contain it any longer.
The agent provocateurs and astro turfers, I think, must be confronted if they are allowed on stage, because their goal is to sabotage the debate and create doubt in the minds of readers who are reading the debate as they make up their own minds about a particular hot button issue. When confronting these trolls, I know it isn’t easy to stay calm but that is what must be done. Stay calm and confront their attempts to mislead and confuse with facts and links and be aware that these trolls will almost NEVER graciously admit they were wrong but will use every trick in the book to drive a wedge between reason and honest debate as they continue to support the fraud they are attempting to make legitimate. The reason why we stand up to these types of Trolls is not because of them but to set the record straight for readers who are there to learn and then make up their own minds. The other option is to deny the agent provocateurs and/or astro-turfers a place on a stage where their only goal is to spread confusion, misinformation and doubt. These Trolls are not interested in facts or the truth.
From that experience and reading this Blog, I’ve learned that there are trolls, and then there are what Jon Awbrey mention3ed in his earlier comment in this threat.
Lloyd,
When I read that there is no such thing as a good charter, that all who support ed reform are corporate shills, that we all think alike and support the same things, that none of us know anything about education, that parents who choose charters are being duped, that charters aren’t public schools, that their purpose is privatization, that me and my staff and teachers are being “used” by private interests, etc, then yes, my aim is to “create doubt in the minds of readers who are reading the debate as they make up their own minds about a particular hot button issue.” and I consider it an admirable one
There are fact-free arguments, as well as opinion stated as fact, on both sides. Yes, confront my opinions as I will yours, but if the purpose is to discuss education for all, don’t mistake your own opinions as facts, nor your own interpretation of data and studies as being the sole interpretation, and I’ll do the same.
Occasionally, someone will pop on here and state something as fact that is inaccurate, get corrected, and go away. Sometimes there’s some back and forth before they leave. But, I think anyone who engages in a respectful discussion is not trying to “sabotage the debate”. Participating on the other side of a debate is called engaging, not sabotaging.
John,
I appreciate your civility. I disagree about your opinion that charter schools are public schools; they are not. Every time a charter school is hauled into court (or the NLRB) for violating the rights of an employee or a student, their defense is that they are not a public school, they are private contractors with contracts to operate schools with public funds. Do you really think that the rightwing extremist governors like Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal, John Kasich, and Jeb Bush (as well as the rightwing governors in Indiana and North Carolina) promote charters because they want new “public schools”; I don’t. I think they want to get rid of public education. Do you think that the far-right ALEC promotes charters because they want more and different public schools? I don’t. I think they want to privatize public education. Don’t get me started about the billionaires and hedge fund managers.
Diane,
The plural of anecdote is not data. The fact that a couple of charters have argued one way does not change the laws of 50 states. So, while I appreciate your opinion that charters are not public, when you say “they are not” as fact, I find that disappointing.
You have made the point that they are not public because they don’t have publicly elected school boards. So, please kindly stop going to your public library, stop driving on the NYS Thruway. Do you consider public libraries to be equally “not public”?
Re “rightwing, extremist governors”, I don’t really care why they promote charters. I’m a progressive democrat, and I don’t care much about their opinions on anything. I agree that many of them are anti-union and view charters as a means for taking power away from unions and from an education bureaucracy.
I respect what unions have done for this country, but I also see negative effects they (especially public employee unions) have had. There are two sides to every debate. There are those that support charters with the best interests of students in mind and those that support charters based on adult interests. There are absolutely both on the anti-charter side of the debate as well.
As has been pointed out, both far-right conservatives and you want to eliminate, or very much scale back the national role in education, testing ,etc. Does that make you far right? Does that make your issue far right? Of course not.
The needs of adults and children in education frequently, but don’t always align. When they don’t, dems sometimes take the side of the adults and republicans sometimes take the side of the kids. I can assure you that education is pretty much the only area in which I find myself sometimes being disappointed in dems and happy with republicans.
And we’ll agree to disagree regarding billionaires and hedge fund managers. There are a few that are in this for the wrong reasons, but my personal experience is that most are not. We should be very careful about ascribing motives to people because we disagree with their approach. I could very easily decide that many here don’t care about the kids in my community because they want to shut down or starve their charter schools simply because they are charters. For the most part, I assume the best about people until they prove me wrong.
Diane,
I’d just like to add that my experience is that almost every teacher, staff member, student, family member, and board member is in a charter because they believe in the best public education for all.
I believe that the fact that some conservative funders support this and some liberal ones do not comes down to politics and adult interests. If someone donates money to my school (a rare occurrence), I see it as supporting my kids, not as supporting privatization. I would imagine you see it the other way, but I’d argue that is looking at this through the lens of the school as an employer, which is not the purpose of public education.
Good points, John.
John and Diane,
Like many efforts to improve the world, those who support the idea of chartering don’t always agree with some who have support chartering.
I think that’s also true for many who oppose the amount of standardized testing that is taking place in many of this country’s public schools. One measure of the cross section that questions CC is the response of Congressional Republicans and Democrats. There is widespread support across party lines, and across ideological lines, for reducing the use of testing.
That does not mean everyone agrees with reducing testing. But it’s clear there are people who disagree with each other about many things, who agree on the value of reducing testing.
The same could be said for chartering – a variety of people across the political spectrum support the idea, while disagreeing about many other things.
John
It is apparent from reading this blog that we come from many anecdotal experiences. There is no one generalization that can be made about charters. However, I would like to point out that they appear to be a band-aid for public schools in general. They serve to separate out the low-performing and poor-behaving.
In my experience, one charter system in particular sent a seriously mentally ill child to his home school after Spring norm day and just before state testing began. The charter did not fulfill any sense of public duty for this child. Do I know why? Well I was told the school did not have the resources to teach him. They could not figure this out in two days? It took nine months? Two others were also sent out at the same time. One had never done any work as a sixth grader in his home public school. I suppose his mother expected he would in the charter? If so, the charter failed. But why did the charter not keep him? Are they not a public school and supposed to solve his problem with their supposedly more concerned and better teachers? And the third, an obviously learning disabled and socially immature student. Why jettison him before the end of the year? It did not take data to know what the charter was doing. They were collecting money but “dumping” low scoring students.
There are good charters in the area, but the data test-wise is low and they do not enroll behavior problems, those appear to go to their home school or bounce from charter to charter just as they did from non-charter to non-charter until a non-public is paid for by a charter willing to do so (as the one in which I assist did for two kids) or the home school does.
The lack of definition for charters is a disservice to parents as well as to students and teachers.
West coast teacher,
I agree that it’s hard to make generalizations about charters good or bad, mostly because a charter grants flexibility, and with that can come good and bad. I’ve seen a lot of excellent teaching and learning, but I also see examples of greed and incompetence. Thankfully, much more of the former than the latter, but that doesn’t mean the latter doesn’t exist.
As for them being a “Band-Aid”. I somewhat agree with that. Some people think that districts operating portfolios of charter schools is the end game here. Some think that if we just create enough to effect change on district schools, that’s enough and charters can go away. I view them more as a lever to create change in public education (primarily around taking responsibility for outcomes to a greater extent than activities). The details of how that happens are evolving.
I could tell lots of horror stories about the treatment of kids at the hands of district schools as well, but I think most people know abuses happen on both sides. Hopefully, everyone knows that the vast majority of educators, both district and charter, behave admirably and conscientiously and take the mission of public education very seriously.
I can tell you that my charter has been accused of many of the same things you’ve mentioned, but completely without basis or fact. The district says we and other charters here make admission decisions, kick out low performing kids, cost them money, kick kids out just before testing time, etc. I can’t speak for the other charters, but I know these things are untrue of mine, and I sincerely doubt they are true of the others given zero evidence: no lawsuits, no documentation, no complaining parents, etc. Maybe all of those things exist in your community (they do in some), but almost all of the negative press I read about charters is from philosophical charter opponents and district employees, not from unhappy parents.
John,
You state, “I’d just like to add that my experience is that almost every teacher, staff member, student, family member, and board member is in a charter because they believe in the best public education for all.”
In the all-charter New Orleans recovery school district (actually many different LEAs), traditionally-trained teachers with experience are in charters because they were fired from NOPS after Katrina. There are no other choices if they want to pay bills and eat.
And do you really think all these people associated with charters are going to say anything different than “I believe in the best public education for all”?
Robert,
“In the all-charter New Orleans recovery school district (actually many different LEAs), traditionally-trained teachers with experience are in charters because they were fired from NOPS after Katrina. There are no other choices if they want to pay bills and eat.”
Fair enough. I suppose some of them would prefer to be in traditional schools. One danger regarding charters is speaking too broadly about them since they, and authorizing environments, are all very different. I wasn’t thinking of NOLA when I said what I said.
Regarding…
“And do you really think all these people associated with charters are going to say anything different than “I believe in the best public education for all”?
I’m not interviewing them ;-), I’m speaking from my firsthand experience. Why would you think any less of the commitment of charter teachers than of district teachers? My kids get 60% more instructional time and our teachers cover each others’ classes instead of having substitutes. It’s more than a job to every one of them.
Rheeality: if the LATIMES and the LAUSD BoE don’t investigate it, it doesn’t exist. *Caveat: except when it comes folks like Rafe Esquith. Then there is a presumption of guilty until proven innocent.*
Reality: the LATIMES and the LAUSD BoE have demonstrated (in practice) extreme reluctance in picking [up on] even the lowest hanging fruit like the long-in-the-making iPad catastrophe. Why would the cheerleaders and enforcers of self-styled “education reform” be remotely interested in making even a feeble attempt to track, say, the charter midyear dump?
To choose rheeality or to choose reality, that is the question…
Let’s fall back on one of the bedrock Marxist principles of the “education reform” movement:
“I’m not crazy about reality, but it’s still the only place to get a decent meal.”
Groucho. Always on their minds. But, I’m afraid, not always to their favor.
😎
KrazyTA:
Reality: that’s a publicly elected school board doing that to Rafe.
Distractors/decoys/misleads don’t work as advertised on this blog. But as always glad to lend a hand…
English-to-English translation: KrazyTA was right about rheeality and reality.
😎
John,
I don’t think any less of the commitment of charter school teachers than I do of traditional district teachers’ commitment. I was just commenting on your singling out stakeholders of charter schools as “believing in the best public education for all.” If they had any other motive for working with charter schools, I just don’t believe they would publically state that.
There are a lot of “Let’s all get along” comments on today’s post. Frankly, I believe the reformers are the ones who drove a wedge between traditional schools and teachers and the chaos shoved down our throats. Wouldn’t it have been more productive and more “all about the kids” for everyone to work together to strengthen existing schools? The chaos and dilution of resources created by reformers and ALEC are not conducive to a unity of purpose (educating the next generation). Imagine a scenario where traditionally-trained educators had not been totally denigrated by those who are new to this business and the energy and resources of the newbies brought to bear to improve existing schools. Traditional schools and local school boards were not all incompetent and “bad,” Why in education do we constantly throw the baby out with the bath water??? Every time that occurs, we have to start from scratch and in doing so, lose and fail kids while we are waiting for new programs to be built and begin to function.
If so much negativity had not been heaped upon existing educators and their spirits crushed and their commitment questioned,, then I would believe that reformers are “all about the kids” and not getting into education for what they can gain for themselves.
Robert,
I agree with what you said, but have two thoughts…
1. You’re lumping an awful lot of people into the “ed reformer” bucket. I don’t think we’re all homogenous. I don’t see negative teacher messages coming from charter schools, do you? I think that’s mostly from politicians and some charter supporters I think there are some that are on this bandwagon because they are anti-union and/or support privatization, but I find almost all in the schools, and many supporters, to be in it for the right reasons. Those people love teachers, want to elevate teaching and learning, think we should be spending more money on public education, etc. Treating all of those people as “ed reformers” might be convenient, but I don’t think it helps anyone.
2. That said, I think that the teaching profession and teachers have to up their game on teaching and learning, and also have to become more student-focused in their organizations and professional development, and I do see a lot of dysfunction in how schools operate. I think a lot of the negatives and what many here refer to as “test and punish” is due to an institutional reluctance to change, especially as it relates to adapting to the students of today, especially in low-SES schools, plus the new reality of employment. The top-down “solutions” imposed by legislatures and state ed departments are mostly good in intent and horrendous in implementation. I think teachers unions and other organizations of school employees need to take more ownership for self and school assessment, continuous improvement, and professional development, as well as adjusting some employment terms towards being more student-focused.
I think there’s a happy medium here, but it seems both sides are pretty dug in and afraid to give an inch for fear of losing a yard. It’s disappointing to see such conflict, but my personal opinion is that there’s blame to go around on both sides and that both sides have to give some to get to a good place. The vast majority of people love their individual teachers, but don’t respect the institutions. That’s why I think teachers, and the organizations that represent them, have a great opportunity and vested interest in leading the effort to reform.
I’m still disappointed though when teachers support opting out, fight evaluation systems without providing alternatives, etc. To me, that’s no better than the other side insisting on an end to tenure, etc. We should be all working to improve professional development, assessments, and evaluation systems instead of trying to get rid of them or make them meaningless.
John, saying that “opt-out” was because of teachers is just not true. Opt-out was parent-driven and your claims that it was teacher-driven make you look very dishonest. If you want to attack public school parents because they don’t like making the scores on a state test that is poorly designed being the focus of learning, then attack public school parents. Call us idiots and claim that we don’t deserve good schools for our children and our school budgets should be slashed even more because we object to our 3rd graders being taught to put aside their ability to reason logically and instead choose a “best” answer when there isn’t one. Call us names and tell us we don’t deserve to be parents because we dare to question why private school children are tested with CTP-4 exams and public school children must take different tests designed to insure that a good number of children will choose a wrong answer. But please don’t blame the teachers because parents understand that doing well on a poorly and politically designed state test proves nothing. Please don’t blame the teachers because parents see that children taught by rote only how to do well on state exams cannot pass the SHSAT and children who AREN’T taught by rote to pass the state tests perform much better on the SHSAT. Opting out has nothing to do with teachers and everything to do with parents who know what good teaching and learning is. (Which is why it is far more prevalent among college-educated parents.) If you want to tell us we are idiots, then please do. But don’t blame the teachers. It makes readers question your agenda.
NYC public school parent,
Once again, you have strung together a bunch of things that have nothing to do with me or what I said and ascribe them to me.
I am a public school parent as well. I think the tests need work, and that will hopefully be the one good thing that comes out of opt out.
I stand by what I said. How much of an opt out movement was there before APPR? How much outcry by teachers, parents, or anyone else? Even now, most opt-outers talk about “high stakes”‘ but there aren’t high stakes for their kids.
I’m sure there are parents who opted out for reasons that had nothing to do with teachers, but you’re naive or just attempting to mislead if you say this wasn’t about teachers and evaluation.
“you’re naive or just attempting to mislead if you say this wasn’t about teachers and evaluation.”
Again you are pretending I am saying something I am not in order to not address any of the issues I brought up. I agree the fact that the tests are simply terrible has EVERYTHING to do with teachers and evaluations. If you want to pretend teachers are terrible, you design tests that most students will fail. And that is EXACTLY what happened with the NY State tests. A number of years ago, the students kept performing better and better and schools were NOT focused primarily on test prep, but the “reformers” (i.e. “privatizers”) were APPALLED — they insisted the tests were too easy, not that the students were learning more. And since they wanted more students to fail, the tests became more and more terrible because stupid people think that having an ambiguous question that will confuse a student into picking a wrong answer means a test is more “rigorous”. Now if the children of the rich in private schools were forced to take the same test as the public school students, a test like Pearson designed in NY State would not have lasted a year and the scores would have been thrown out. But since virtually every expensive NY private school “opted out” of the state test, it was fine for Pearson to do the bidding of the “reformers” and force public school students to take their atrocious exam.
By the way, the true “proof” that the state tests are nonsense is the fact that Success Academy’s students do well on it but can’t score very high on the SHSAT, which private school, parochial school, and public school students take. Success Academy’s claim is that those public school students — including many who are low income and African American and Latino — “prep”, as if their own students aren’t prepped as well. In fact, students taught to “choose” right answers when there are none will have a much harder time unlearning those terrible “testing” skills. And that is why middle class parents are opting out. We don’t want our children to put aside their own logic to perform well on a state test so that reformers can replace public schools with charter schools who train their students to do exactly that.
Without the PARENT-led opt out, next year our public schools would be forced to do even more “teach to the terrible test” education, and it would all be for naught because the test would just be made even more incomprehensible so that more of our students can fail. Suburban parents know that and are often leading the opt out campaign — their students are learning plenty but they are being told they are wrong, because look at little Joey’s state test score. It seems as if reformers WANT to turn those good schools in Success Academy test prep charter schools, and are desperate to convince the suburban parents that their child’s public school is terrible. It hasn’t worked so far BECAUSE of the opt out movement. So far, public school parents aren’t buying the reformers’ dishonesty and that terrifies the people who are desperate to get affluent parents out of public schools and into charter schools. But first the reformers need to “prove” to happy parents that their public school teachers are terrible, and the opt out movement means they can’t!
And it’s all a shame because early on, charter schools really did want to help the at-risk kids living in poverty who had failing public schools. But at least in NY State, the biggest charter chains given the most money are expanding far more quickly to teach middle class students and have abandoned giving priority to poor kids — why? If you have so many millions, why are you using it to market to the parents who are affluent and whose kids don’t need “the best free private schools money can buy”? Why aren’t you using it to make sure the struggling low-income kids STAY at your charter school? The fact that you keep avoiding answering that question — as all the charter folks do — because you are terrified of offending the most powerful charter school CEO in the country — speaks volumes. When you pretend that opening up a charter school that is 75% middle class kids and 25% very lucky low-income kids who must keep up with the program or get suspended or “counseled out” is really about helping kids living in poverty, then it is YOU who is being very, very dishonest, John. Why?
Your very informative comments made me realize why I love to write at OEN, (aside from the ability to edit an correct typos) where attacks are dealt with swiftly by Rob Kall, the publisher. it makes discussions so interesting, and there are plenty of arguments and disagreements, but the kind of conversations that do not denigrate into Buckly -Vidal ego battles.
Thanks for taking the time to tell us about this…I never knew!
Excellent posting and comments.
I would add—
1), One of the characteristics of trolls is their inability/unwillingness to engage (for long or at all) in whatever is being discussed. On this blog, it often takes this form: whenever someone writes about a pedagogical issue, or what is actually taking place in the classroom, the trolls attempt to turn the conversation to ‘standard business practices’ or ‘is that affordable?’ or ‘everyone knows’ or ‘common sense would dictate’ and the like. In other words, what in the lingo of their beloved standardized testing is known as “misleads/decoys/distractors” so as to avoid having to deal with whether or not they have any sort of satisfactory answer to the topic at hand. In the same vein, they will attempt to pass off their “not best answer” as the “right answer” even when they have nothing to say—again, just like on a standardized test when none of the answers really fits but one comes closest to not being the worst choice.
Which leads me to—
2), Their profound lack of an historical sense. What’s said and written yesterday is now buried and gone. Today is today. Tomorrow is an eternity away. They take little or no responsibility for their own words and deeds and their consequences, in imitation of the rheephormsters they feel so proud to be a part of.
But just to be applied to themselves. For anyone else, especially those for a “better education for all,” the standards are different. As in: double, including “think” and “talk.” It is deeply self-wounding when rheephormistas demand, e.g., civil dialogue on ed issues, then a heavyweight like Sarah Angel puts the rheephorm ‘sneer, jeer and smear’ in high gear. If the leaders and enablers and enforcers of self-styled “education reform” were literally sincere about what comes out of their mouths, this blog would be flooded with rheephormster disapprovals and condemnations. Not to be expected, unfortunately, but their historical memory—most especially of their own “principles”—is self-servingly selective.
This includes their constant touting of bidness practices—no change in their discourse when it is pointed out, over and over again, that they defend, promote and practice worst business practices, especially as applied to educational settings. And rheephorm math is legendary for massaging, twisting and torturing number & stats into anything that fits their selling points, made even more shameful and immoral by the unrelenting use of mathematical intimidation.
As Andrew Lang put it: “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts – for support rather than for illumination.”
Bottom line: everyone will respond to trolls as they see fit [within the sensible Rules of the Road on this blog]. However, I don’t respond to well to those that think the beat down is the best way to promote their POV. They think fear is the same as respect.
Please excuse the long comment. Just my dos centavitos worth…
😎
P.S. Quite obviously I am making general statements. Unfortunate that I have to add this but it is in line with what I have written above…
P.P.S. Lloyd Lofthouse: what you said!
KrazyTA,
Is referring to us as “rheephormistas” and “ed deformers”, putting “principles” in quotes, etc. not ‘sneer, jeer and smear’? That’s the general feeling I get from many of your posts.
I’m not saying that you don’t frequently make good points, but certainly the sneer and jeer come through loud and clear.
Pot, kettle, black. Most people make their points without resorting to that. I think the conversations are much more useful when they aren’t turned into personal attacks.
I get that you disagree with me frequently, but I act and speak in what my experience over decades tells me is in the best interests of the children and families that I serve, as I assume you do.
Comment. Mine. On this blog.
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2015/07/26/los-angeles-the-charter-empire-strikes-back/
Clues: Diane Ravitch. LATIMES op-ed. Sarah Angel. CCSA.
[start excerpt of my comment]
So here’s where the champions of charters and vouchers and privatization that frequent this blog get to demonstrate the presence and depth of their moral fiber:
Let’s see them use their usual language and tone to decry the written equivalent of road rage—even if it hurts because it’s by one of their own “thought leaders.” And no “explanation is exculpation” deflection because, dontcha know, you’re part of the “no excuses” crowd.
Walk your own talk. Get with the program: SLANT. NNN. Let’s see some rigor and grit.
One last point: Y’all shouldn’t even need my prompt. This blog should already be flooded with your furious disavowals.
Silence is compliance. Compliance is consent.
[end excerpt of my comment]
I just rechecked that comments section. The silence is deafening. The compliance is complete. Consent: box checked off.
I am a big fan of John Steinbeck: “Man is the only kind of varmint sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it.”
I am also partial to Dorothy Parker: “Trapped like a trap in a trap.”
😎
For decades some of us have suggested giving teachers the chance to create new public school options. This is part of what happened with some alternative schools, some of the the Boston (district) Pilot Schools, some chartered public schools. There is increased interest in this idea about some teacher union leaders and members, as well as others.
This fall, a national conference will be held in Minneapolis. Speakers include teacher union leaders, & classroom teachers who have helped develop and work in such schools. This might interest some people who read this blog. More details here:
http://www.teacherpowered.org/conference
Joe, thanks for posting. Lots of good materials on the site. I’m a firm believer in building-level control of schools and strong academic leadership. Will read more on how shared decision making, etc. can work in that model.
Does “building level” control of schools mean that you can get rid of any student that doesn’t “fit” from the first weeks of school onwards? If so, the charter school that gets millions to subsidize education can easily get rid of those (very often) at-risk kids and not worry about losing state funding since they don’t need the money. And the charter schools with the least money who are most desperate for any children to fill their seat will accept them. So the haves — the affluent college educated parents whose kids are easy to teach — will be taught by the charter schools with the vast amounts of money, and the have nots — the at-risk kids with little parent support or with lots of parent support but who struggle to learn — will be taught by the charter schools with the least amount of money. I realize that is what many people who don’t care whether at-risk kids in under-funded schools rot might think, but I’d think you would not be one of them. Wouldn’t it be great if the charter schools with the MOST money actually used it to educate the most difficult and expensive at-risk kids? If you object to that, then you can proudly call yourself a “reformer” and ignore what your “reforms” really mean.
Have you read this article? It explains quite a bit.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/your-online-secrets/201409/internet-trolls-are-narcissists-psychopaths-and-sadists
Oops. Forgot the link! D’oh!
I’ve only banned one user from my own journal for repeatedly and insulting demanding I make public declarations on matters that are not related to the content of my blog. It was a blatant attempt to throw my character into question and my explanation of that only resulted in more insults.
That said I do not enjoy even a fraction of your reach. But it is often important to distinguish between genuine trolling and simply horrendous argumentation. A troll acts in blatant and persistent bad faith in order to rile a community or to achieve an end. In offline life, consider the steady stream of blatantly false information that Campbell Brown or Eva Moskowitz present via their PACs and front groups. They know, for example, that proficient on the NY exams is not a proxy for passing or for grade level achievement but they repeatedly present it as so for gain.
TIRL: Trolling In Real Life.
Daniel,
But, state exam results are correlated with high school completion and future education attainment level. And those are correlated with unemployment and incarceration.
Believe me, it makes me equally unhappy when people don’t acknowledge that when talking about state assessments.
And in the correlation between grades and state assessments, why do you assume grades are somehow “correct”? As I’ve pointed out before, 95% of my incoming students have never passed a state exam and many can’t read or do 2nd grade math. But, they have “B”s on their report cards from previous schools and have been promoted each year. I find those grades to be as meaningless.
IMO, at least in my community, state test results are a *much* better proxy for educational progress than grades. Yet, I don’t consider your opinion to be “blatantly false” or consider you a troll for expressing it.
John,
I was very specific in what I cited. Would Moskowitz and Brown be correct in noting that concentration of lower proficiency levels on state exams (before and after adoption of the Common Core exams) in very specific and segregated communitues represents an unacceptable opportunity gap? Absolutely. Are they correct in calling the results of those exams “grade level” measures and insisting the correct answer is to break teacher unions (Brown) and increase the foot print of no excuses charter schools (Moskowitz) ? No. There is a giant unexamined middle that they deliberately leave out and leave out at least in part because it profits them.
It is dishonest and deliberately so for far less than altruistic reasons. Hence, I am comfortable calling it trolling.
Daniel,
“Grade level” is pretty meaningless as an objective measure, but referring to children as being “below grade level”, while perhaps not technically meaningful, means roughly the same thing as low norm referenced percentiles to the average audience, so I don’t have a problem with it.
I think people are entitled to their opinions that breaking teachers unions or increasing no excuses charters is a solution. I can agree with them or not. Certainly there are people who think closing all charters is a solution, and plenty of people who won’t even acknowledge any problems at all. I don’t consider these people dishonest, I just disagree with them.
If you think that CB and EM *know* that these aren’t solutions and are peddling them anyway, I would have to differ with you on that.
I think the line should be drawn when someone is deliberately trying to mislead people, though I acknowledge there can be a fine line between advocacy and that and that we can’t truly know what motivates people.
As for the “great unexamined middle”, I absolutely agree with that. Discussing the gray areas is not something happening often in the education debate. I think that has a lot to do with vested interests, the length of time that the institution has existed, and the lack of mechanisms for more cooperative change.
While “grade level” may have very nebulous meaning, I believe John Q Public has a very clear layman’s definition in mind, and when presented with exam results as meaning “below grade level” assumes a level of performance far lower than can be inferred fromt these exams and their cut scores. Simply, it is fundamentally dishonest to frame that way, and it is dishonest in a deliberate manner to misrepresent the problems that our schools actually have. It is disappointing that you express that you “don’t have a problem with it”.
I propose that Moskowitz and Brown are presenting their limited agendas as THE answers. They express no nuance about the full complexity of these issues and promise easy solutions – even as data demonstrates that Brown is focused on the wrong staffing issue for urban schools and that Moskowitz requires the fully public schools she derides as dumping grounds for children she refuses to accommodate.
If they both demonstrated the least amount of nuance I would not label them trolls. As it is, they argue in bad faith for narrow “solutions ” that profit them.
Daniel,
I respect nuance as well, but it is frequently lacking in these debates from both sides. It think CB and EM counter equally strident voices from the other side. I prefer in-depth discussions that beneath the sound bit arguments, but unfortunately, for a lot of our fellow citizens, sound bites are the news.
As for those voices, I think there is some truth to just about everything they say. I might not take it as far as they do, but frankly, I agree that there are some teacher protections that go too far and I think it’s unfair that low income students who want to work hard or respond to that environment are in low performing schools (grouped with students who don’t care as much) because they can’t afford to exercise the same school choice that suburban families have.
Frankly, I feel the same way about our host. I respect her opinion, and there is some truth in all she says, but I feel she overstates the case and ignores the nuance frequently as well.
As to whether we have a problem in public education, I would say we absolutely have one in urban schools. You can argue about the source of the problem and/or the solutions, but my neighborhood high school with a 50% drop out rate is a problem, whether you acknowledge it or not. We are consigning generations to failure. If you feel we’re doing every thing we can to get better outcomes, I’ll have to disagree with you.
Allow me to be one definition of being a troll and hijack this thread from being about trolls/trolling and turn it into one on grades, unless of course John lays claim to that honor-ha ha!
“As I’ve pointed out before, 95% of my incoming students have never passed a state exam and many can’t read or do 2nd grade math. But, they have “B”s on their report cards from previous schools and have been promoted each year. I find those grades to be as meaningless.”
All grades, including standardized state exam scores are by definition COMPLETELY INVALID, mythical falsehoods and, yes, meaningless due to the inherent epistemological and ontological errors, falsehoods and fudges by psychometricians and teachers as proven by Noel Wilson.
You all didn’t think I could work Wilson into a post on trolling-ha ha, I get the last laugh. However to not totally string bean (Chiletize) this thread I’ll post the summary below.
Duane, I thought of you (and Wilson) as I posted this ;-).
I think I should point out that state tests and grades generally tell me little about a student. I have taught sixth graders who were deemed proficient on state fifth-grade tests but who could not add. I have seen kids with decent “c” grades who were certainly below average in skill acquisition.
As a teacher, I tried to be honest with students. That can be defeating because the child’s view of himself is threatened. There is no real answer to this quandary.
Bottom line, know your students. Pray for support from aides or parents. Hope that citizens will eventually understand what will really help public schools.
Charters and tracking and vouchers are band aids to help students escape low-performing or low-behaving students. Removing tenure and due process won’t change this.
Really rich environments are necessary–which is why the big money sends their kids to expensive private schools.
John, very few leaders of the charter school movement are willing to stand up and acknowledge that the charter schools who do best on the mandated state testing you like are also the ones who mysteriously have large cohorts of at-risk students who disappear from their rolls and are not replaced (or sometimes replaced by higher-performing students because they tell parents of potential replacement students in older grades that their child will be held back if they want to enroll and aren’t up to snuff). In fact, one pro-charter organization – Democracy Builders – tried to highlight how a 97% “pass” rate on standardized tests is misleading if there is no backfill and a school goes from 80% of 100 students passing to 97% of 50 students passing.(Not the actual statistics, but you get the picture.) Dead Silence from the charter school organizations.
I happen to think there are some good charter schools who educate and keep almost all the high needs students who win the lottery, but none of them are getting miraculous test results that are any better than public schools. So they will remain underfunded while the big donor money goes to the schools that get rid of the at-risk kids that need that money the most. Until people like you are willing to address that dishonesty, you are doing a great disservice to all the at-risk students trapped in underfunded public schools who the best-funded charter schools just don’t want to teach anymore – as noted by the fact that they dropped priority in their lottery for at-risk students and spend tens of thousands marketing to affluent parents.
NYC public school parent,
I know you’re not a fan of SA and I’ve heard your (and other’s) allegations about them. It’s fair to ask good questions about their results and how they get them. I think some other charter folks are asking as well.
I do think that people can differ on their view of what an unfair practice is. They, like most charters, don’t “socially promote” as it is against what most of us stand for. You may consider it inappropriate to require that a 7th grader be remotely prepared for 7th grade in order to be in it, but some of us do not. As I’ve mentioned, less than 5% of the kids coming in to my school have ever passed a state test and almost none of them are what one would consider on grade level, yet they have been promoted every year and will be placed in a grade based on their age in the district school.
Re SA, I think they’re doing a lot of things right. I also think that you’re not being objective about the data on NYC charters. No claims for miracles, but the CREDO study shows significantly better results and the DOE report shows it’s being done with the same or lower cost.
“You may consider it inappropriate to require that a 7th grader be remotely prepared for 7th grade in order to be in it, but some of us do not.”
Are you saying that you truly believe that parents and teachers celebrate when below average students are placed in their own children’s class? Are you saying we should be ashamed because as parents of average or above average students we aren’t clamoring for all the struggling students in our child’s class to be forced back to be in classes with children 2 years younger? Are you implying that if we attend YOUR charter school, our 11 year old children will have as classmates all the 14 and 15 year olds you don’t believe deserve spots in the 9th grade because they struggle to learn? What did you do with the 95% of your students who came into your high school reading at 2nd grade level? How many of them got to stay? And did you separate them from the high achievers so they didn’t have to suffer those poorly educated children in their midst? Did they spend the year in a class with children 3 or 4 years younger than they are?
If a charter school gets a child in Kindergarten or first grade and he isn’t learning fast enough for the charter school’s agenda, who is responsible for that child’s education? If the charter school makes that child MISERABLE because that child isn’t learning fast enough, is that okay with you? If the parents aren’t “doing all that they are asked to do”, is that a reason that an elementary school student doesn’t deserve a place in your charter school anymore? If the parents constantly bring the child to school late, does that mean the child no longer deserves a spot? And what happens if all schools follow those “best practices” and get rid of the slow learners or behavior problem first and second graders? Do we let those kids rot?
By the way, I am shocked at the fact that you just implied that Success Academy is not using “social promotion” like public schools do. Are you saying that the reason so many kids leave is that Success Academy is unable to teach them what they need to know in their year of schooling and those children need 2 years to learn the material that other children do in 1 year? Hooray! Honesty! What you are saying is that even with all their resources, Success Academy fails to teach many at-risk kids what they need to know each year, even when they get those kids at 5 years of age, and must ask them to repeat a year. Perhaps if Eva Moskowitz went around the country saying THAT, there would not be the pressure for students and teachers to teach in one year the material that Success Academy very often needs 2 years to teach when they have at-risk kids who struggle to learn. How about it? A little honesty would do wonders in this debate. The DISHONESTY that we have been hearing from charter schools about this hurts those kids.
I know you support Eva Moskowitz, and if you are friendly with her, how about asking her to use those many millions of dollars she has to reinstate priority for at-risk students so that they get first crack at the spots in her schools that you so admire? How about asking her to use that money to do everything in her power to KEEP the at-risk kids who struggle by making them feel happy about learning instead of feeling misery because they can’t do the work? How about if she uses that money to advertise the idea that many at-risk kids in her excellent schools can’t be taught the material in one year and need 2 and even 3 years to master 2nd grade work, so why not slow down the curriculum for them instead of making them feel like failures by having them be 10 years old in 2nd grade? Wouldn’t that be something we can all agree on? Think how much good honesty would do.
Thanks, Daniel Katz. It is important to read all comments, as we both do. Otherwise, the comments section becomes akin to Twitter, where anyone can write anything, true or false, anonymously. I don’t check the veracity of everyone who comments, but I do know an insult when I see it, and I don’t tolerate them.
“. . . face-to-face contact tends to dissipate the rage that anonymity and facelessness promote. There is no way to make that happen, unfortunately.”
Perhaps there isn’t a way, but I think something that would go a long way towards increasing civility would be to insist that all who post use their “real” name/identity. Some of us, Diane included, choose to use our legal/real names, which I believe can help mitigate most of the obnoxiousness. Granted, some of us, well actually mostly me, can be a tad overboard with language usage that touches up to the edge of impropriety and base crudeness but I do so in order to “shake things up” in the public education discourse realm. Because I’ve seen too many “niceties” used in public education sector discourse that tends to gloss over real, very real problems that harm the children that too many accept as “just the way it is”-an attitude I deplore.
I feel a need to verbally swat those GAGAers up side the head and scream “WAKE UP, GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER, HELP FIGHT THE INSANITIES (that you so deplore in private conversations), STAND UP AND PUT A PUBLIC FACE TO YOUR PRIVATE CONCERNS! QUIT BEING A NAMBY-PAMBY AND STAND UP FOR WHAT IS RIGHT NOT CONVENIENT FOR YOU!
And those of you who can, might want to consider using their real/legal name as a moniker.
Okay, ready for the “I have to feed my kids” responses.
Duane, I would prefer to use my real name, and the reason I don’t is about kids, but not the feeding of my own, since my income has nothing to do with this.
This can sometimes be a hostile environment for those with opposing viewpoints, and I can’t see how it would benefit the kids in my school to identify myself. I try to make every decision on that basis.
I already had one person from this blog (who appears to have disappeared; an oxymoron, I suppose) track me down in IRL and hurl personal insults based on the experiences she had with charters on the other side of the country. Not anxious to repeat that experience.
I’m sorry to hear about your “encounter” with someone who, perhaps best said, lacks a sense of proportion as the the importance of blogging dialogue.
But in the end she tracked you down anyway, eh! So, how secure is one and one’s privacy anyway? (rhetorical) I guess I just don’t worry about someone tracking me down (since I’m just an old fart Spanish teacher-retired now-who isn’t anything of much importance), hell I’ve given out almost all my contact information
before on this and other blogs.
And I’ve never worried about how my thoughts and writings would effect my students as they pretty much already knew as any discussion of their learning would inevitably lead to quick discussions about the teaching and learning process as might be discussed here. I prefer to be upfront with all of this!
To each his own, I guess, but I still think some of the nastiness would be eliminated if all were truly identified.
“I still think some of the nastiness would be eliminated if all were truly identified”
I certainly agree.
It’s not that I care if my students know what I think. In general, they are blissfully unaware of the charter battles, and it should be that way. I just want to focus on being the best possible school for them, and making enemies (which is apparently possible here), just doesn’t seem prudent.
Call me out if I say something you think I wouldn’t if I were anonymous.
Thanks.
Oh, I think you know if I see something that doesn’t jibe, I’ll comment. Take care!
John, if you don’t mind my asking, in what way did this person track you down and insult you? I mean, in what medium? Message boards, social media, e-mail, telephone, showing up at your school or home? I understand if you prefer not to answer.
FLERP,
I think I’ll pass on details, but it was not in person as the person lives half a continent away.
That’s comforting in one way and disturbing in another. Thanks.
What I found disturbing was how personal it was. I thought it was someone local, who I felt I had an obligation to respond to, but then found out it was just someone who was upset about some perceived slight to her children a thousand miles away. She felt charters were taking away resources from her childrens’ district school and apparently held me personally responsible.
While I agree to an extent about stating our real names, Duane, I have had a terrible experience with an anonymous colleague who recently sent me a letter at home detailing some of my comments on other blogs (not the username I use here). This person somehow found out my username and accused me of lying in my posts. This person supposedly also sent this letter to my entire district superintendency and school board. I have no idea why this person is being so nasty, but it happens.
Duane,
Since I am half way down the road to being brought up on tenure charges, I am accepting your challenge to post my comments using my real name.
Abigail Shure
Thanks, Abigail!
I hope all works out well for you as you wish it to happen. I have felt the sting of being falsely attacked and know it can/is a very trying time. Sending you good karma!!
Duane
“Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine.
1. A description of a quality can only be partially quantified. Quantity is almost always a very small aspect of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category only by a part of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as unidimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing the descriptive information about said interactions is inadequate, insufficient and inferior to the point of invalidity and unacceptability.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. And a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it attempts to measure “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
]
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
I think you should summarize what’s most important to you in this ( perhaps in every numbered section) at the top. Let that commentary evolve and/or relate it to a current post, and include the rest below it.
Duane likes laying a complete thesis on us from time to time. I find that the best posts are the shortest ones and to the point. Mark Twain once said that “No one was ever converted after the first twenty minutes of a sermon.”
Some posting on here are extremely long.
Joseph,
You are correct in my postings being long at times, ay ay ay 20 minutes, oh no. As far a that goes it takes one about 5-6 minutes to read the post.
I happen to expect the readers here to be able to read for 5-6 minutes at a time without burning/freaking out. Too high a standard?!? One can decide to read or not read my posts as they wish. There are times I don’t read “real long” posts if I’m not that interested in the topic (except Laura Chapman’s, always read hers).
But I continue to re-post my Wilson post mainly for those new readers that come here to “discuss a better education for all”. And to see if the altered aphorism “Tell the truth often enough and people will believe it” works.
Duane summarized a 255 page report in just over 1200 words. Pretty good, if you ask me.
Thanks, Vladimir, for the support! I hadn’t even thought of it that way.
Seems like trolls can not even stay on the topic (of trolling itself), one sign is to digress extremely, where none is required, another sign is taking a stand that is anathema to the policy of the entire group. I have seen some participants demand censorship, when someone disagrees with them, freedom is speech is important and Diane is tolerant in that area, some disagreements force us to revisit our own thinking, that is why I like to be challenged, not everyone is like that, or they prefer to see the world as one dimensional. I have seen trolls that take one particular issue and drive it home in a dozen ways, they are professionals with a PR company and just download their scripts
in opposition to bedrock principles that are the foundation of the site. I am seeing that here currently.
Asking about their credentials and background is always helpful, and a link to such.
GREAT POST, Diane!
My wife was a teacher/student of behaviorally disordered and emotionally disturbed kids for 30+ years. A starting point she offered me was that the former group especially need and love attention, & negative attention will do just fine. If you’re angry they’ve won and feel in control. In my response, I try to draw on a phrase from a movie title: trolls are dead people walking to me. I will give them no affect at all, neither sympathy nor caring, neither anger nor defensiveness. I simply no longer acknowledge them as members of a once-shared species. That isn’t an irreversible state, as they can recover humanity thru civility. Odds tend to be small or nonexistent, and small is usually leaving town in a hurry.
Mike Sacken: well put!
Thank you for your comment.
😎
In the Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic & Stastical Manual, (DSM V) if my memory serves me, there is a new diagnosis for the constellation of behaviors (or “symptoms” as a psychiatrist would characterize them) that Dr. Ravitch limns here: “Internet Disinhibition Syndrome.” The term is self-descriptive, I guess. Does this “disorder” really exist? My own sense has confirmed it does, but I concede a tendency to confirmation bias. Anybody else find that people who protect their real personal identity are prone to say the most vile things on the internet?
There are differing troll behaviors and goals.
The just plain nasty (even sociopathic) trolls are easy to recognize, and those who are certain that they know insider info are another group.
The most dangerous are those who function as paid interlopers and can be the young lawyers and law firm underlings who support the billionaires in privatizing for profit. They are smarter and more devious than the first two types. These very skilled trolls can actually achieve some mind bending results. For many years, political candidates have been buying the time of these professional trolls…so these are the ones to watch carefully.
Trollage and trollology in the trollosphere.
Now you’re talking my lingo, TC!!!
I’m a troll. I skim this blog time to time. I wrote a troll like thing about a month ago and stated I wouldn’t revisit but I was bored, so I punched up this pathetic site. Again, after a month, same stories, different states. Nevada did this, Georgia did that. So funny. Diane, no one is changing anything. You will be writing these stories for the next decade. Congratulations, you have a ton to write about. All for nothing as its getting worse but hey, at least you put all the headlines together and reprint in an organized way for people to complain about. This is the most depressing blog on education, you’re welcome for the compliment.
I will check in on September 1st to read the same headlines, same stories, same waste. Troll, signing off. This blog is so funny, I’m literally cracking up from all the same stories over and over and over and over again. Pathetic!!!!
Just like Jason I love to see other points of view not just one side. I am not the only one whose facts are always put down. I am always trying to discuss only facts. I am also learning a lot of in-depth information from some of the bloggers. I love honest discussion.
Raj,
You don’t always know when your facts are debatable
Sorry to disappoint you, Jason.
There are surely other blogs to make you happy.
The same story of NCLB for over a decade? Yes, “depressing”, said the nattering nabob of negativism. But ECAA will pass, and things will change for the better.
Agreed. I promise not to get trolling unless I veer off onto another bad action taken by LAUSD. To all my colleagues, in advance, much respect.
How is it that certain topics attract trolls?? All of a sudden new names pop out of nowhere with faulty information and attacks on someone’s blog or Facebook page.
Is there an app just for trolls?
Yes, it works by wave-frequency code set to Mr. Trololo:
TAGrO!
Ya gotta luv that!!
One way to deal with trolls is to have an “Ignore” option, where someone you don’t want to deal with is filtered out of all the posts that you read under your particular account. Lots of forums have this feature. I don’t know whether is possible on a blog, however.
What gets to me more than anything else about all the debates concerning public education and the “reform” movement is that so many people who are involved in the debate have no first hand knowledge of what’s really going on in the classroom. From Bill Gates all the way to Joe Blow, sitting at his computer and trolling away. And everyone in between.
I came to teaching from a corporate managerial background. Avoiding my mid life crisis was very easy because I was actually doing something with my life at the time. And it was such a pleasure having a degree of autonomy given me so that I could reach the individual needs of the kids in my classes.
So much of that has changed. I saw it coming, too, and it was so obvious, having come from that corporate world of management vs union. I can’t even begin to tell you how wonderful it was when I found this blog. Here’s someone who had been inside the machine, saw it for what it was, and came out to walk the talk. And everything she was writing about was (and still is) what I was seeing occurring in the schools that I and my colleagues work in.
Validation.
Charters as public schools? What public school takes needed space from another, sets up and sections off state of the art classrooms, art rooms, tech rooms, etc that the already existing school can only dream of having, sending them to the supply closets for their art classes? What public school, despite having millions poured into their operation from private sources, insists on being given a free rental ride at the expense of the existing public schools? What public school takes over another public school, filters out the undesirables, and sends them packing to already crowded schools that, inevitably, suffer the consequences of closure as well?
Teachers work in very different circumstances. Some have full support of an affluent community base. Others do not. Those in the former group do quite well. The latter have been getting steamrolled for a very, very long time, now, by people who have little to no experience of what’s involved in running a classroom, school, or district.
Gitapik,
I have the ability to block any obnoxious blogger or to require their comments to be approved by me.
I use that authority sparingly to encourage discussion.
And you have my respect for that, Diane.
Forgot to mention: What public school refuses to open it’s books to state and city inspectors?
I believe that I came close to trolling because I did not understand the required etiquette.
However, I have always considered myself a gadfly because I bring a very different
experience to the table. I’m a 30 year retired veteran who is quite annoyed that teaching is being de-professionalized, and I find the focus of this very important blog a distraction from that most important issue, which is that the administrative authoritarian school culture is destroying and demeaning teachers from within. I believe that it is more important to widen the discussion to include flattening the administrative pyramid, and replacing them with support personnel culled from the senior staff on a rotating basis, so that they can never develop an adversarial relationship. I know it’s controversial, but surely it can’t be considered trolling, even though it doesn’t address the prevailing issues. I fully get it that Diane has the ear of more teachers than I will ever be able to reach, and I am still waiting for her to address these issues with the same amount of intensity that she gives to these external ones. I’ve said it many times, if not her then who?
Ian Kay
” the administrative authoritarian school culture is destroying and demeaning teachers from within. I believe that it is more important to widen the discussion to include flattening the administrative pyramid, and replacing them with support personnel culled from the senior staff on a rotating basis, so that they can never develop an adversarial relationship.”
You are quite correct in what you wrote, Ian. Public school administration was going in that direction in the mid to late 90s, early 00s. At the time there was a change in the administrative literature that said schools and districts should have “strong leadership” and that those supposedly “strong leaders” needed to get everyone on board with what they were “leading”. It seemed to me as a prelude to the whole NCLB, dubious data driven pseudo-metrical accountability that followed.
The cooperative approach that was still in its infancy was swallowed whole by the “strong leader” and the false accountability mantra.
and occasionally, gitapik, people who are labelled ‘trolls’ are actually:
highly-educated Joe Blow parents who have experience with the education systems in three countries;
who have a broad understanding of political and economic systems;
who have a clearer view of what is happening here than those people who were indoctrinated/programmed by osmosis growing up within this system, and
who are saying something that is TRUE, but is hard for educators to hear, and harder still to accept….
Robbie Burns said: “O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!”
Pasi Sahlberg has often been quoted on this blog, detailing what works in public education in Finland/Europe…. We’ve seen plenty of examples of what doesn’t work in this country – both in the old model and in what deformers are peddling/pushing/pimping…
i have yet to see educators out in the streets, demanding that the US public education system take on board some of the strategies and processes that have been proven effective – and no, charter schools are NOT the answer in this regard…
using the IF – THEN model of logic:
IF educators care about, are committed to providing the highest quality of education to children….
AND there are models that have been proven to be highly effective available in other places…
THEN why are educators not doing all they can to move the US public education model to emulate that being used in those other places?
Most of the arguments about why that is not possible are invalid, because in the first place, no one has TRIED to do this (no, ESEA won’t do that), and in the second, there are mechanisms in place to get past/around most obstacles/objections people raise… which leaves one with the question —- why, if there is a better model available, will people not move towards using it?
some of us who come here to keep abreast of progress on the issues and to participate in dialogue, are frustrated by the inertia, and by what appears to be the propensity for people to use this space as an echo-chamber in which to indulge in perpetual hand-wringing and justification why they personally can’t take any risks in confronting and challenging what’s been foisted on them (and on defenceless children)….
How often is this blog being used to discuss, foster, unite people in ACTION? Hardly ever, from my observation of it since its inception…
Quit shooting the messenger (whom you choose to call a troll), quit being passive — if you care about your students, it’s time (past time) to walk your talk and FIGHT BACK…. and fighting back means you’ll have to get your hands dirty, RISK something, maybe suffer the proverbial bloody noses…. and in this ‘troll’s’ opinion, if you’re not willing to do that, you have no right to call yourself an educator….
from: “A Talk to Teachers” By James Baldwin
(Delivered October 16, 1963, as “The Negro Child – His Self-Image”; originally published in The Saturday Review, December 21, 1963, reprinted in The Price of the Ticket, Collected Non-Fiction 1948-1985, Saint Martins 1985.)
“Let’s begin by saying that we are living through a very dangerous time. Everyone in this room is in one way or another aware of that. We are in a revolutionary situation, no matter how unpopular that word has become in this country. The society in which we live is desperately menaced, not by Khrushchev, but from within. To any citizen of this country who figures himself as responsible – and particularly those of you who deal with the minds and hearts of young people – must be prepared to “go for broke.” Or to put it another way, you must understand that in the attempt to correct so many generations of bad faith and cruelty, when it is operating not only in the classroom but in society, you will meet the most fantastic, the most brutal, and the most determined resistance. There is no point in pretending that this won’t happen. ……”
You will meet determined resistance — from the plutocrats running the state, using all the tools they have at their disposal…. and yet, what are you really, if you refuse to step forward because you are afraid of that resistance?
Are our children worth enough to you, for you to take whatever risk is necessary to do right by them? Or are you merely a pretender, an imposter, wearing the costume/crown of ‘educator’ for the prize of a monthly pay cheque?
~ Sahila
Come help us, United Opt Out at http://unitedoptout.com/ metaminduniversal. We’ll be happy for any support and work that you will do to fight against the things that you write about.
i already help out …. have been helping OptOut and other initiatives for several years… ask Peggy Robertson…
Great! And Thanks for the work! Don’t be afraid to mention the group as a means of spreading the word! Again, thanks, I thoroughly agree with you about the fact that a lot of the problems in public education stem from a lack of cojones of many of the GAGA educators.
I hear all you’re saying and agree with much of it, Ian.
I’m perfectly aware that there are some extremely intelligent people both in and outside of this blog who have extensive knowledge of the ins and outs of education both here and abroad. Why not start with Bill Gates? He’s no dummy. There is, however, one extremely important element that’s been left out of his and many other reformer’s agendas: the voice and experience of the teachers who are actually teaching in the schools. And the voices of many of the APs, Principals, and Superintendents, as well. They might not know the exact percentage of dropouts in the USA compared to Peking, China. But they know their kids and what makes them tick.
I’m sure it’s no news to you that our country is very, very different from Finland and many of the other high performing (aka: high test scoring) countries in the world. But somehow we’ve managed to do very well for ourselves over the years. Not only have we looked at other country’s models and successfully incorporated them into our own, but those other countries have looked to our nation as a model that they want to emulate and follow, as well.
We’ve actually done very well for ourselves over the decades/years. While there’s always room for improvement, the concept of the USA as a “nation at risk” due to a broken education system is simplistic at best.
And please don’t discount the concept of paying the bills as a reason not to “stand up and be heard”. It’s a HUGE stick that’s been (and is still being) held above our heads and it’s just now getting worse. I’ve got no problem getting my nose bloodied. I do have a problem with not being able to meet my monthly payments, though. So do a lot of my colleagues. We voice our opinions…but the road can get very rocky when you refuse to do that which is being laid out before you as mandatory.
sorry —- your argument (justification) is not convincing; there is safety in numbers and if a good number of teachers got together and said “enough is enough” the system would be unable to handle that rebellion and change would happen…. teachers (and students) in other countries gather/work in the hundreds of thousands to push back at this GERM (global education reform movement)…. see France, Mexico, Guatemala, Australia for recent examples…
dont know why you refer to Bill Gates – some of us here in Seattle (including me) have been targeting him and his foundation’s toxic activities and disrupting the implementation of his/their agenda as much as we can since around 2008…
and Finland only tests kids ONCE, at the end of high school….
i have never seen other countries (except china – recently, which is hardly a recommendation) wanting to take on board american-style education….
in fact, much of what is considered best practice school models originated in other countries – Waldorf (Steiner), Montessori, democratic schools a la Summerhill (A S Neil); non-american educational philosophies underpinning public education come from Plato, Socrates, Rousseau, John Locke, Kant, Piaget, New Zealand’s Marie Clay and Elwyn S Richardson, to name a few….
this is a very young country; great people from much older societies have been thinking about education and how best to teach the young for several millenia…. this web page i stumbled across has some very interesting quotes from some of them —- you might benefit from checking it out…
i particularly like the quotes from Plato and Einstein…
http://www.spaceandmotion.com/Philosophy-Education.htm
I read the intelligent conversation going on here, knowing that sixteen years ago when they silenced me, the process to silence the teachers ( the voice at the bottom with the children in the classroom) so that top down mandates could prevail.
All these years later, the schools have failed, as was THE PLAN.
It isn’t as if the truth was not out there. Perdaily, for example, has been chronicling LAUSD for a decade, and Betsy Combier in NYC chronicled the war on teachers.
The media has ignored the civil rights abuse of tens of thousands of Americans who are teachers, and the schools were emptied of their VOICES.
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
It is nothing new, it is the process!
“We voice our opinions…but the road can get very rocky when you refuse to do that which is being laid out before you as mandatory….”
“we voice our opinions” —- talk is cheap….
“the road can get very rocky” —- oh for the good life, the quiet life, the calm life, the smooth life, the COMFORTABLE life…. you’re not living, you’re existing, you’ve sold out, given away your integrity and your sovereignty….
“being laid out before you as mandatory” —- seriously — you put this argument forward??? what are you? a man or a mouse? Rules are for fools and guidelines are for the wise…. if all the ‘troublemakers’ in history had complied and done what they were told was mandatory, there would be no freedom at all… for crying out loud — americans proclaim to all who will listen that you founded this country on REVOLUTION —- on a desire for freedom from what were seen as unjust LAWS…. you know, those things the authorities, the plutocrats tell you are MANDATORY for you to comply with…
i dont know how you sleep at night….
My reference to Gates was said both with irony and reality. Like many in the reform arena, he’s intelligent but he doesn’t understand education. Especially here in the USA. He’s an armchair quarterback who, unfortunately, has the power and resources to buy all the teams in the league and tell them how to run their programs. You and I are on the same page there.
I would love to follow Finland’s model. Germany, too. We have too few trade schools and, as you know, we rely far too much on testing. Their demographic makeup is much different than ours, however, as is their poverty rate. Not to say it can’t be done, but rather that it would have to be modified. One world size does not fit all.
I don’t know how long you’ve lived in the USA, but it wasn’t always this way. We had many more trade programs in our high schools and way (WAY) fewer tests. This is the model that I’m talking about which countries have emulated and/or borrowed from. Nobody’s saying we’re the “BEST”, but it’s why people come to our universities from other areas of the world. We foster creativity and encourage experimentation. We’ve never been at the top for testing (in terms of average score), but for some reason we lead the world in creation of patents. And we’ve been following, implementing, and adapting models from other countries sources for a long time, as well.
Here’s one example:
NYC set up an arrangement with Australia. Called it the Aussie program.We asked Australia to send teachers to coach us on how to implement an ELA program that they’d developed for kids with emotional difficulties. Seems that our top administration didn’t think what we were doing was “up to snuff’. The man who came to work in our school was a really nice, intelligent guy who was very into his work. We became friends and spent some time socializing after school hours.
After awhile, it became apparent that the program wasn’t working very well, so we spent some time talking about it. Turns out that he had misgivings about the steps and implementation, himself. It also turns out that we had a very good ELA program already in place before he arrived, which he readily acknowledged. So we sat down and tweaked what he was sent to teach us so that it would work more effectively with the students in our school, incorporating pieces from both his and our own school’s programs. Together we made it work, using our combined knowledge of what works, doesn’t work, and might work with the population we were serving.
The vast majority of my colleagues, past and present, are creative educators and we do the best we can to keep it that way in the face of the madness. I’ve been warning everyone who will listen about the attack we’re seeing now, for decades. Not years. Decades. Many thought I was chicken little. Most didn’t even know we had a choice of caucuses to choose from through voting within our union structure. You’ll see a massive push when we receive the full support and strength of our union leadership. Both nationally and local. Until then, due to the numbers, there’s a good chance that we’ll remain fragmented. I don’t say that lightly, Sahila. It’s my opinion but it’s based on years of experience both within and outside of the field of education. It’s why we turn to the parents for support. And lambasting me and the hundreds of thousands of teachers out there as imposters and cowards is similar to the same verbage and attack we’ve been getting from the deformers on the other side for a long time, now.
“Are our children worth enough to you, for you to take whatever risk is necessary to do right by them? Or are you merely a pretender, an imposter, wearing the costume/crown of ‘educator’ for the prize of a monthly pay cheque?”
I think this is almost as insulting as telling me to make a kid take a test that’s 2 grade levels above his/her age group.
Get over yourself and give us the credit we deserve.
most teachers ARE giving tests that are 2 grade levels above their students’ age group, under common core and the testing associated with it; not to mention the teachers that are conforming and testing their special ed students…. teachers want parents to opt their kids out, but teachers wont refuse to test….. hmmmmm…. would that be about retaining the prize of a monthly pay cheque, i wonder?
You’re right. We only want a paycheck and we don’t care about our kids. We are pretenders. Imposters. Now it’s time for me to go to work. I’ll carry that cheery message with me and do all I can to spread the good word to my students and colleagues. Thanks.
here’s a challenge to the regulars on this blog….
have the guts to declare where, outside the classroom, the lecture hall, the office, you are fighting ed deform…. what are you actually DOING to push back this plague?
i’m a parent in Seattle; since 2008, i have:
been one of the first people in the country to opt my child out of standardised testing (in 2009) – anthony cody published my opt out letter to my child’s teacher and principal on his blog…
called to account the Broad super in our school district and the reform block of school board directors…. the seattle times called me a “local folk hero”…
helped to organise activities which forced the school board to back out of closing some of the schools it was threatening to close as part of the BROAD/McKINSEY 5-year plan
signed on as a plaintiff to 4 lawsuits, forcing the district to defend its ed deform decisions on school closures, the introduction of TFA, withholding of information used in making those decisions…
helped to minimise TFA presence in seattle (i believe TFA has left the city for more agreeable southern districts)
created a public online NO CONFIDENCE motion/petition in our BROAD super, which motion gave various teaching staffs at 11 schools the courage to also vote NO CONFIDENCE in her….
with another parent, wrote to every single seattle school district teacher (and to each and every school’s PTA committee) encouraging them to resist the ed reform measures being pushed in the district and promising parental support… we got all of our letters through before the school district could shut down our access to teachers’ district emails
organised public rallies, sent out press alerts, handled media interviews
supported teachers in their contract negotiations
along with a handful of other parents, created the Seattle Shadow School Board (initially as a joke, considering we had just as much legitimacy as all the Gates-funded astro-turf groups, who were messing around in district business), to monitor and comment on School Board decisions and actions and astro-turf organisation activities; the press regularly came to us for commentary on issues
with other activists, shut down the PR value of social media pages/blogs run by Gates-funded astro-turf groups in the city, forcing one blog out of existence and others to shut down their comment sections
with other activists, maintained a presence in the city’s media, making sure to comment on pro-reform editorials etc…
managed – over time – to get rid of reform-minded school board directors AND the BROAD super and her BROAD fellow administrators…
worked online to disseminate information and to connect people together and to support ACTION initiatives of like-minded groups
other stuff too small to itemise….
all of this, while, for part of the time my boy and i were homeless and i was undergoing cancer treatment….
so —- come on…. this ‘troll’ challenges you to stand up and declare just what have you done, what are you doing, to push back against ed deform? what reason do you have for not getting your hands dirty?
~sahila
Amazing and poignant, if true.
A first step is informing others, which can be tricky, because so many are being buffeted from all directions, have woefully inadequate support, are overworked and face compounding stresses at home. And if you come off like a fanatic, you simply get written off as another totally unhelpful, uninformative nuisance or stressor.
it is all true….
“so many are being buffeted from all directions, have woefully inadequate support, are overworked and face compounding stresses at home.” ——- tell me about it….
if people are willing to hurt others’ children (and many teachers have said what’s being done in classrooms today is child abuse) to keep the food on the table and the roof over the head of their own children, then they need to be shamed to stop that….
we appear to be fine about shaming overt racists, and rogue police officers….. we appear to be fine about shaming big game hunters….. but we’re not supposed to shame teachers for enabling the continued daily abuse of children by ed deform?
#LogicFail
Teachers have already been shamed AND demonized.
Many seem to think that’s the answer to everything.
Be motivational, not divisive.
Shame is a poor tactic, extrinsic motivation, which doesn’t work well for the deformers.
The biggest problems in education comes from those who think they know better than anyone else. Don’t get it twisted.
i would imagine asking teachers to stop enabling child abuse is a reasonable request/suggestion…. i dont know how one could consider it divisive….
That would be a reasonable request. But there are all sorts if different things going in in different areas and schools. And many are on the fence about how bad things really are and whether or not to take any action at all. Shame will push them to the opposite side, I believe.
And, hey, some actually buy a whole lot of the deform crap.
Have we gone off of topic, or are we all trolls?
Don’t Open
Trolls Inside
Joe–glad you are on the mend (& probably so because you seem to have a warm heart!).
Duane–If I read it correctly, you are now retired? If so, CONGRATULATIONS!
Discourse–certainly, we can agree to disagree, especially “on a site to discuss better education for all.”
Trolls? It’s fun to see them on people’s front lawns, dressed in amusing garments.
Better yet, even more fun when they “run away,” & send pictures of themselves “on vacation.”
Simple, “off with their heads”
http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0012246/quotes