This is a sad story. From 1981 to 2009, nearly 30 years, Checker Finn was one of my closest friends. He was like a brother. Our families were close, and we almost telecommunicated about issues. We wrote article and reports together. we wrote a book together. We cofounded the Educational Excellence Network, and I was a founding member of Checker’s Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, as well as a colleague on the Koret Task Force of the Hoover Foundation.
But when I turned against testing and choice, our friendship deteriorated. I asked him if he would write a blurb for my book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Undermines Education,” but he said it was impossible. That book announced my break with the corporate reform movement. Or as I now know it, the privatization movement. He never forgave me for breaking ranks.
Readers of this blog have never read criticism of Checker here. I could not bring myself to speak personally against those who were once close friends, even though our disagreements are philosophically and politically profound.
Checker, however, has finally expressed his anger towards me in print. He slammed David Denby, who has written for the New Yorker for many years, for having written a tribute to teachers. He thinks Denby has turned into a defender of the status quo, which is apparently the worst insult a “reformer” can imagine.
But the privatizers ARE the status quo. How else to describe a “movement” that includes the President of the US, the Department of Education, the Council of Chief State School Officers, ALEC (which Fordham joined), all the red-state governors plus Governor Cuomo of New York, and Governor Malloy of Connecticut, the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, the Bloomberg Foundation, about a score of other foundations, and dozens of hedge fund managers who can raise a million dollars in a few hours. If this is not the status quo, I don’t know what is. They are actually quite few in number, but their wealth and political power are immense.
Checker trashed David Denby’s paean to teachers because Checker holds teachers in low regard, especially if they belong to a union and work on a public school.
I suspect this is the paragraph that Denby wrote that most angered Checker:
““A necessary commonplace: Almost everyone we know has been turned around, or at least seriously shaken, by a teacher—in college, maybe, but often in high school, often by a man or a woman who drove home a point or two about physics, literature, or ethics, and looked at us sternly and said, in effect, You could be more than what you are. At their best, teachers are everyday gods, standing at the entryway to the world. If they are fair and good, they are possibly the most morally impressive adults that their students will ever know. For a while, they are the law, they are knowledge, they are justice….”
But there was something else that unsettled Checker. He suspected that Denby had turned against “reform,” and it was my fault!
He writes:
“If he had stuck with his abiding affection for great literature and his analysis of the difficulties of teaching it to contemporary young people, I’d have nothing but positive feelings. But along the way, besides deploring kids’ addiction to video games, cell phones, television, and ear-bud music, he’s turned into an anti-reformer. This turned up first (to my knowledge) in his loving word portrait of (the new) Diane Ravitch, published in the New Yorker in 2012. Now he’s back in the same publication with a denunciation of what he sees as the teacher-bashing ways, false allegations, and misguided ideas of education reformers. Here’s a sample:
[Denby writes]:
“Our view of American public education in general has been warped by our knowledge of these failing kids in inner-city and rural schools. In particular, the system as a whole has been described by “reformers” as approaching breakdown. But this is nonsense. There are actually many good schools in the United States—in cities, in suburbs, in rural areas. Pathologizing the system as a whole, reformers insist on drastic reorganization, on drastic methods of teacher accountability. In the past dozen or so years, we’ve seen the efforts, often led by billionaires and hedge fund managers and supported by elected officials, to infuse K–12 education with models and methods derived from the business world—for instance, the drive to privatize education as much as possible with charter schools, which receive public money but are independently run and often financed by entrepreneurs. This drive is accompanied by a stream of venom aimed at unions, as if they were the problem in American education.”
Finn resumes:
“On reading this, a colleague speculated that perhaps Ravitch had written it for him as a kind of reward for his earlier tribute to her. The more important point is that he has now lent his talented pen to the anti-reform movement, which (of course) it took Ravitch just minutes to note: “David Denby,” she blogged on Valentine’s Day, “has joined our movement to restore common sense to education.”
“And a movement of sorts it has become, including not just teacher unions, polemicists, and high-powered (if, in my view, sorely misguided) intellectuals, but also opting-out parents, unrelenting education progressivists, and a bunch of folks whose latest cause célèbre is that kids are under too much stress.”
A quick rebuttal:
No, I did not ghostwrite David Denby’s tribute to teachers. He did it all by himself. He is quite a prolific writer, and he doesn’t need my help to think or write.
Yes, Denby does admire teachers. Many people-including those at the Fordham Institute, ALEC, and other outposts of corporate reform—don’t. They think they are lazy and self-serving. They can’t understand why anyone would want to be a teacher when they don’t make much money, ever.
Yes, as Denby writes, there are many good schools in America. There are many excellent public schools in America. The privatizers and public school bashers seem to have mostly gone to Exeter (like Checker) or Lakeside Academy or Andover or some other elite private school. They feel sorry for those of us who had to go to public schools.
Although I am now diametrically opposed to everything Checker believes about education, teachers, and children, I have an abiding fondness for him and his family.
I will continue fighting the terrible policies that he espouses because I know they have proven to be failures. He was and is a promoter of every imaginable alternative to public schools. So far, none of those alternatives has been successful. There comes a time to recognize that the theories you have been promoting since the early 1980s have been tried and have failed. I had that realization about 2005 or 2006 as I saw the damage done by NCLB.
I don’t think Checker will ever admit that he was wrong. But some day, maybe after we are gone, wiser heads will review this era and judge us all. I am glad I shook myself free of the delusion that schools could operate in a free market, that teachers could be treated as interchangeable widgets, and that students learn best in a culture of fear of failure. I will continue to hope that someday Checker and Mike Petrilli will see the light.
Sarah Blaine made a very similar argument from a different direction in her blogpost from last September. She noted:
“Career teachers scare the crap out of the ultra-wealthy. Career teachers scare the crap out of them because comparing the life of a career teacher to the life of an ultra-wealthy hedge fund manager demonstrates how empty a life spent in pursuit of money and power truly is. Career teachers scare the crap out of the wealthy tinkerers, because career teachers are adults who have eschewed the temptation of the private sector in exchange for the opportunity to be of service.”
Read the whole thing:
Thank you for the shout-out, Oakland Dad!
I’m sorry you have lost a friend over fighting for what you believe in, but if it is any consolation, you have gained the respect and admiration of teachers and parents everywhere. On two different occasions I mentioned that I was excited to be attending the NPE Conference because you and some of the other prominent leaders fighting for public education would be there, and people not only know who you are, but speak of your books and work with great reverence.
I hope your friend comes around.
I don’t think Checker Finn or any of the other reformers will come around. Because they have thrown in their hats with the people who give them money and so-called “prestige”.
I think if you track how rich think tanks pay and promote scholars to adhere to their views you will understand how someone like Finn and others actively look the other way at abuses. Those people have let their egos and their pocketbooks get in the way of their ethics.
That is why they will never speak up when they see abuses like the “got to go” list and the appalling high attrition rate of exactly the kids they claim they want to help educate at certain charter schools. If they dare to criticize it, they are treated like Rishawn Biddle and are pariahs and don’t get the big bucks.
There is no doubt in my mind that these faux reformers have let greed guide their views. Greed for money and for influence. They want the respect of the billionaires who write the checks. There are reformers out there who genuinely care about education but they don’t get the prominent place in the billionaire club that Checker Finn and the faux reformers like him get. And to keep it, he will happily look the other way at any abuse of any charter school that those billionaires like. Even if it means that vulnerable kids suffer. Apparently, that is just the price you have to pay for his kind of “reform”. And I hope one day this sullies how history will perceive these men. Checker Finn has time to change his mind and act like a mensch instead of an apologist for greed. Will he do it? I won’t hold my breath because it seems sitting at the table with the billionaires is far more important to him.
NYC Public School Parent, I agree with you. Checkers has stuck to his ill-conceived standards movement from its inception through nearly 2 decades of abject failure to improve or change anything. His theories were the impetus behind many failed reforms like Reading First and despite all the failures he still maintains his theories have merit.
It is the ‘One True Scotsman’ fallacy: reformy/standardsy/acountability nonsense can never fail, it can only be failed by those who implement it without fidelity.
He’s a dog with a bone and won’t be moved.
It is the ‘One True Scotsman’ fallacy: reformy/standardsy/acountability nonsense can never fail, it can only be failed by those who implement it without fidelity.
Exactly Chris.
Sound educational standards do not have large-scale “implementation” problems.
Reasonable, age appropriate tests do not produce a backlash of angry parents opting their sons and daughters out of harms way.
A fair and reasonable evaluation system does not threaten and stress teachers to the breaking point nor would it force them into the worst practices of endless test-prep.
No effective plan or policy can require complete fidelity because it doesn’t exist, at least not for long. Intensity always loses to its evil twin duration.
The OTS fallacy is the bread and butter of hucksters and cowards everywhere.
This must have been hard to write.
I first saw Finn in a PBS video about schools in LA. He was eager to play the role of expert when it was clear that he was clueless about the lives of teachers and students.
A producer enticed him to visit the home of a student who was “hanging in the hood” and near the point of dropping out of school. The family had prepared a meal. Chester had no clue about the food or the social courtesies or the power of peer pressure.
I was amazed that teachers and counselors and Chester all failed to notice what was obvious: This student had amazing talent in the visual and performing arts.
“Ode to Checker Finn”
Some day, maybe even last
He’ll disavow his checkered past
Join the ranks of those who see
Admitting err can set you free
If you are a hedge fund manager and/or a reformer and, you know you’re doing very little, if anything toward productivity, the first insult you would think of, is being “lazy”. It’s convenient to attach it to others, when in reality, it describes them.
Compare the percentage of golfers , among the reformers.
Michael Moore demonstrated the hypocrisy, in interviews with the richest 1% on a golf course, calling other people lazy, in his first film, Roger Moore and Me.
I’ve never met a hedge fund manager who I’d describe as “lazy.” They never turn off. It’s one of the main reasons they’re so horrifying. Like the girl who never slept in that movie “The Ring.”
Hedge fund leaders may never turn off, so in that sense one can perhaps say that they “work,” but that “work” is fundamentally parasitic, as if they were lampreys attached to real economy. Lampreys never turn off, either.
Having endured billionaires parading though my former corporate offices, it seems the obsessive drive for wealth and a barely hidden paranoia produces a creature missing key attributes of humanity.
Wealth obsession and arrogance-masking paranoia, what could go wrong when they design an educational system?…Wait…
Sure they turn off, after they have made enough money in 5 years to support them the rest of their lives.
The culture is all about looking like you are doing something important. Need to check numbers, need to check stocks, need to check this and that and this and that and when it comes down to it, the reason we are making money is that we got someone in the company to whisper to us that their new drug was getting approved after wining and dining him. And if we don’t have that inside information, we could throw a dart at a dartboard of company names and have as much luck picking a winner.
Flerp,
The comparison is an insult to headless chickens, but Wall Street barbarians are unwilling to work at something that generates productivity, instead running around maniacally. If the chicken could, it would produce an egg.
“I am glad I shook myself free of the delusion that schools could operate in a free market, that teachers could be treated as interchangeable widgets, and that students learn best in a culture of fear of failure. ” You said…and we are glad you did, too.
I have had the same experience, Diane, of discovering that people and even family whom I once admired have adopted the rants and bullying behaviors prevalent in the tea-party.
“This isn’t just an American phenomenon. Politics is in retreat and authoritarianism is on the rise worldwide. The answer … is politics. It’s ACKNOWLEDGING OTHER PEOPLE EXIST It’s taking pleasure in that difference and hammering out workable arrangements.
“As Harold Laski put it, “We shall make the basis of our state consent to disagreement. Therein shall we ensure its deepest harmony.”
GUESS WHO WROTE THAT TODAY! don’t have much love for David Brooks (and I think you have his number, too) but he identified people like Chester in that opinion piece. I guess he is as disgusted as we are with verbal bullies.
He wrote:” We live in a big, diverse society. There are essentially two ways to maintain order and get things done in such a society — politics or some form of dictatorship. Either through compromise or brute force. Our founding fathers chose politics.Politics is an activity in which you recognize the simultaneous existence of different groups, interests and opinions. It involves an endless conversation in which we learn about other people and see things from their vantage point and try to balance their needs against our own. Plus, it’s better than the alternative: rule by some authoritarian tyrant who tries to govern by clobbering everyone in his way.
“Over the past generation we have seen the rise of a group of people who are against politics…They delegitimize compromise and deal-making. They’re willing to trample the customs and rules that give legitimacy to legislative decision-making if it helps them gain power.
“UltimatelyTHEY DON’T RECOGNIZE OTHER PEOPLE. They suffer from A FORM OF POLITICAL NARCISSISM , in which they don’t recognize the legitimacy of other interests and opinions. They don’t recognize restraints. They want total victories for themselves and their doctrine.”
It tickles me that Brooks love of the GOP is tanking as reality sets in, but what disturbs me about your piece on Chester, is watching the same behavior in what seems to be the ‘republican base’ , as they respond to that liar and bully Trump. People are so mean.
The premise of change in the 1990’s and early 2000’s was to create innovation within public education. I argue that the leadership of the reform movement is not connected to the actual practitioners in the classroom. Education reform is no longer focused on students or teachers. It is focused on ancillary issues, folks who profit off the system. I have travelled a similar path. I wrote about it here: http://www.educationnews.org/education-policy-and-politics/jc-bowman-reform-the-education-reformers/ It would be nice if we could be civil in disagreeing with people. It would be better if we understood that educating all children to their full potential benefits all Americans. Thank you for your continued work.
I’m not a teacher. I’m a taxpayer in Ohio, that thinks the fight over education is a fight to protect community resources, children and, to eradicate the political corruption in my state capitol, caused by the privatization and corporatization of OUR schools. Civil regard for the barbarians at the gate, from Wall Street and Silicon Valley, does not meet the necessity for equal measure of response.
You got it right.
I agree with Linda. The struggle for public education is about communities and democracy. It is about self determination and the common good. Public education built this country. Destroying public schools is attacking the democratic principles and foundation our our system. An important function of public education is to produce responsible citizens. No private school assumes this function as well.
“Reform” has morphed into this ugly teacher bashing, anti-union money making machine for corporations and billionaires. There is nothing innovative in their plans or dubious “results.” While “reformers” bask in their soft bigotry sound bites, I have one of my own. Charter schools and vouchers are a current form of taxation without representation. The taxpayers fund private entities, and they have no say in how those funds are spent. They have no say when corporations use their tax dollars to feather their own nests.. They have no say in all the waste and fraud that complicit policymakers enable by their lack of oversight and accountability. Charters and vouchers are taxation without representation!http://populardemocracy.org/news/report-millions-dollars-fraud-waste-found-charter-school-sector
JCBowman,
Should community members be civil before or after they are “blown up”?
Quoting Philanthropy Roundtable, website article written by an employee of a Gates-funded organization, “…reformers…declare ‘We’ve got to blow up the ed schools.’ “
Gates’ end goal is to have all students sitting in front of computers all day feeding his data machine. That does not mean it is what is best for students. Parents and teachers need to make it clear that they reject this idea. Gates is trying to shape policy to fit his agenda. He even got “competency based modules” written into ESSA. http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2016/02/more-micromanagement-than-ever.html
retired teacher: if you would permit me to add to your excellent observations, when it comes to the heavyweights and enablers and enforcers of corporate education reform—
What you describe is for the vast majority aka OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN.
When it comes to THEIR OWN CHILDREN—
Check out, just for starters, athletics at Lakeside School. Bill Gates. His two children.
Link: http://www.lakesideschool.org/podium/default.aspx?t=121590
😎
Diane, I know this was painful to write and I hope it is cathartic and healing for you.
It brought a tear to my eye, remembering the old EDDRA days and how Gerry Bracey would deflate Checkers (and, sometimes, you) over the standards and accountability arguments.
It is sad that we have reached a point in our political history where differing viewpoints are verboten and ideology trumps longtime friendship.
You showed grace and class with your response. Thanks for modeling how to do life right!
I was thinking about Justice Scalia and Justice Ginsberg. Political adversaries, but good friends.
The Fordham Camp members feed off each others’ lack of knowledge, experience, and lack of compassion toward children and their teachers.
Their members exhibit characteristics of AFFLUENZA.
AFFLUENZA is a complex condition because it pays the sufferers extremely well, blocks their ability to see their ignorance, over estimates their intellect, makes them say and do STUPID things, and their vision is so limited that they are only able to see down their noses at almost everyone, especially teachers – peripheral vision is not available to them at all. Intuition has a default built in…set to immediately “toot their own horn” at every turn.
Sufferers of AFFLUENZA spot each other quickly, form tight groups, live and communicate mostly via twitter and Facebook.
One other condition similar to AFFLUENZA is the Peter Pan Syndrome. The biggest difference that tells them apart is the size of their……wait for it……
paycheck from richer folks also suffering from AFFLUENZA.
A long and severe history of this condition may classify those who can’t recover or respond to rehab, as having a “Checkered Past”.
Teaching, like nursing, is a “high touch” profession. Business people are looking for “scalability” of products–find a good idea and replicate it to bring to the market place. They don’t understand that “high touch” the most effective ways of impacting students is NOT scaleable. It drives them crazy that they can’t make money from creating standardized educational approaches that also improve education. Ultimately the lesson will be learns, educated human beings must be hand-crafted. They are not fodder for the assembly line nor for standardized, boring, educational materials.
I think what really scares Finn and his fellow charlatans is the simple fact that the just about every single reform policy or program now has a record of FAILURE. They do not have one shred of evidence that supports their reform hypothesis. The curtain is being pulled back and Finn has no answer. He could always steal the original line, “Oh no I’m not a bad man, just a very bad wizard.”
Punitive testing: FAIL
NCLB: FAIL
RTTT: FAIL
PARCC: FAIL
SBAC: FAIL
VAM: FAIL
Pearson: FAIL
Common Core: FAIL
Charters: FAIL
Vouchers: FAIL
TFA: FAIL
And let me save them some time:
Personalized Learning: FUTURE FAIL
Finn and company now own this record of indisputable FAILURE. No wonder he is in such a grumpy mood.
This is an astute account of “reform.” Unfortunately, the people behind it all have very deep pockets and a high level of arrogance. They refuse to change their game plan, and they just keep coming like the terminator. They refuse to see the evidence.
Shows you how little they understand teaching. The golden rule for implementing any new idea in the classroom is very simple: if it doesn’t work, STOP doing it.
They are policy wonks who think that children in a classroom are the same as motivated adults in the board room. They couldn’t be more clueless.
But the Band plays on . . . .
Florida’s Education Commissioner Pam Stewart today released the names of teachers who are “high impact”. The letter claims that because they have shown consistent growth in test scores over three years through VAM these teachers deserve high praise.
We’ve only had the Florida Standards Assessment given ONCE.
Before that is was FCAT 2.0, which was fiddled with and the cut scores changed every year since FCAT 1.0.
How they are claiming, with straight faces, to have valid data, which they argue again and again, to determine ‘high impact’ teaching is beyond me.
The FL education emperor has no clothes! VAM is a sham!
And the best part is that they only credited the teachers in testing grades and subjects despite the fact that all other teachers’ VAM scores are tied to those very same students. Nothing for them, however, since they aren’t ‘high impact’, I guess.
Embarrassing, ludicrous, and insulting, to say the least. No links publicly available yet but I will repost when the media picks up on this travesty.
Chris,
Are the high impact teachers teaching the same demographics as the low impact teachers?
Abigail, there is no rhyme or reason that I can see. Some are in Title I schools but most are not. Most seem to be high school with a few elementary. My district had less than 200 on the list out of about 3000+ teachers.
There is a reason… the oligarchs need the schools to fail, so the legislatures can take them over. This is all part of a plan to end democracy… children are not children!! They ae the citizens who vote in a few years. Look at the grown-ups who think that critter Trump should lead this nation at the most dangerous time in history! Imagine when we, who know what real government looks like–are gone, and the schools have put out the most ignorant citizens in our modern times.
It is sad, ironic, and profoundly disturbing that at a time when promoting science and engineering literacy is de regueur, the core values of science and engineering–change your idea when evidence suggest you are wrong– is so routinely rejected.
The most egregious example of this is VAM, which has only the flimsiest, completely superficial relationship with real science and real engineering.
It’s a fraud and so are its practitioners.
But the latter folks nonetheless have the audacity to “lecture” teachers about the wonders of STEM (some of them on this very blog) when the reality is that they have no clue what STEM is about (Hint: it ain’t about VAM and other cattle-growth-model-derived econo-mathturbation)
It would be hilarious if the ramifications of VAM were not so serious.
“But the privatizers ARE the status quo”
I find this to be doublespeak of the highest order. To think that the lives of students are impacted more by the reform agenda of the last decade than they are by decades of practice, policy, and law is just not credible.
I understand how those who support the actual status quo (e.g. little accountability, ever-increasing spending without changes in results, having other countries rapidly surpass our outcomes, etc.) feel that they have powerful folks lined up against them, but the idea that somehow they are the reformers trying to overcome what’s happened in the last decade is delusion.
All that power is putting small dents in the status quo. Sometimes misguided, but clearly not very effective as can be demonstrated by the turning back of many reforms.
John, every student in grades 3-8 spends their school days taking tests and preparing to take tests. That’s reform.
Well, Diane, Hillary has the answer to this… make the school day longer; this will give them time to do real learning… although as Anthony Cody points out. http://www.livingindialogue.com/hillary-clinton-pushes-for-extended-learning-time/#comment-6899
“According to this 2014 report, Mayor Emanuel’s extended school day program there was no silver bullet. The report states:
…longer hours (along with a pension-driven budget crisis) have created new problems:
Lost collaboration time. Teachers no longer must arrive 30 minutes before students do, so they struggle to find time to meet with colleagues. “There is no common meeting time, none,” said one principal.
Overworked students. Some teachers say the longer school day is less engaging for students. “It’s double-period English and double-period math,” said one English teacher. “How are they going to be interested in school?”
Lost extracurriculars. To parents’ dismay, the longer day has led some students to opt out of traditional afterschool activities. “I stopped [sports] last year as soon as the whole extended day started,” said one high schooler.
Uncertain value. One principal filled out the new schedule by adding five minutes to every period. A teacher responded: “I haven’t been able to get further ahead in the curriculum. There’s no way anyone can tell me kids are learning more.”
Overworked staff. After hiring hundreds of new teachers in the extended day’s first year, Chicago laid off almost 1,500 (along with almost 2,000 support staff) in the second year, due to the budget crunch. That’s left some teachers feeling more stressed than ever – and, according to Hechinger Report, less likely to take on extracurricular activities like coaching or drama even when extra pay is available.”
Hillary has yet to show us teachers that she has any idea other than those espoused by the ‘deform’ movement.
Hohn is clueless…he bought the propaganda.
Test-and-Punish reform (NCLB/AYP/RTTT/CC/VAM) has controlled public school life for the past 15 years. It has dominated nearly every PD, nearly every faculty meeting, nearly every education headline and discussion. It has narrowed the curriculum and it hs suffocated ideas beyond improving test scores. We have been worshiping on the data altar for far too long. It has FAILED to accomplish anything positive. And it is taking to long for many to learn this lesson.
NYS Parent,
Do you truly think that testing (and basically we’re talking NCLB/AYP since the others were basically barely implemented and are being rolled back) has more impact on classrooms than collective bargaining agreements, school district bureaucracies, and the management/labor/government relationships in education?
There is no surprise here. The MEDIA is owned by those kings and barons of the EIC Here is a piece in The NTY Times… (surprising in itself as they never mentioned Bernie for six months. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/us/politics/bernie-sanders.html
“More than three decades before he became a familiar face on Sunday morning shows, cable television news and the late-night comedy circuit, Bernie Sanders made no secret of his contempt for commercial TV.
It was not just a profit-making enterprise, he wrote in a 1979 issue of The Vanguard Press, an alternative weekly, but an opiatelike vehicle to subjugate the masses with “lies and distortions.”
And that was just the news programs. Commercials, he went on, employed “Hitlerian” tactics in which the public is “bombarded” with short, simple messages in keeping with the owners’ mission to “create a nation of morons who will faithfully go out and buy this or that product, vote for this or that candidate.”
John, Your unabashed contempt for teachers in your statements is evidence of what Diane is stating. Great job confirming her views.
John, you prevaricated:
“I understand how those who support the actual status quo (e.g. little accountability, ever-increasing spending without changes in results, having other countries rapidly surpass our outcomes, etc.)”
Prove it. With actual, peer-reviewed research data. Not some manufactured think tank studies that had foregone conclusions before they were pasted together.
Gerry Bracey proved over and over again the fallacy of international tests indicating we were being surpassed by anyone. Diane Ravitch herself has done so with excellent proofs.
Repeating the lies and talking points doesn’t make them so.
I am a scholar. I want hard evidence that what you claim is true and you can’t produce it because it doesn’t exist.
Grift away and support your reformists, but I will oppose you with truth and the truth ALWAYS wins, eventually.
Chris in Florida,
The truth is that we *are* being surpassed by many other countries. The only differences between reformers and anti-reformers is the answer to why and whether we can do anything about it.
Supporters of the status quo say that the results are due solely to differences in economic status and schools are fine and need no changes or improvements. IMO, they basically say that there is nothing we can do about the lack of educational attainment for kids from low SES families.
True reformers (and I don’t count those cutting education spending or in it just to weaken unions in that group) acknowledge the role of socioeconomic status, but recognize that these are the students we have and we have to do better by them. We are now a majority minority country. Most of our students are not doing well, with high drop out rates in urban and rural areas and extremely low levels of college completion.
To say all is well because well-off white students are doing as well as those from other countries is just not defensible. Schools haven’t gotten worse over time, but they have failed to adapt and are failing to educate the least well off among us, who are a huge and growing population.
Exhibit One is the CREDO Urban Charter Schools study. The data is there that charters are doing better with this population with traditional public schools. Longer days, more time on task, emphasis on culture, etc. is working. I’m curious to hear what you make of that data? To me, that will tell me whether you are as objective as you claim or merely using data to support your positions.
John, what other country is “surpassing” us? We have the biggest economy in the world, the biggest military. Our biggest problems are inequality, poverty, racial injustice
Diane,
You are looking backwards. We are still reaping the rewards of what this country looked like during and after WW2.
We are in decline while other countries are ascending. We’re behind in quality of life, infant mortality, etc.
We’ve lost huge numbers of high paying jobs, we can’t fill positions that require higher levels of education with our own citizens, etc.
We relied for the longest time on things like Microsoft Windows coming out in the United States years before foreign language versions came out. Almost all technical innovation used to happen here. These things are simply no longer the case.
We are no longer earning those things and are rapidly losing them. For sure, not the only problem that we face (e.g. increasing wealth gap), but still a big part of the issue.
John,
I disagree with your characterization of the US. We are most definitely NOT being surpassed by other nations. There is no shortage of well educated, highly skilled Americans. American corporations prefer to outsource because they want cheap labor. Apple outsources to China because skilled workers there will work for a pittance. No American can afford to work for the wages that Chinese or Indian workers are paid.
Name a nation that is surpassing us.
If you refer to “quality of life” and infant mortality, you refer to a failure of political will.
Political will depends on having leaders who care about the common good, not everyone-for-himself, winner-take-all. The great failing of our society is the selfish individualism that can be seen vividly today in the GOP party.
Those who push privatization are promoting that philosophy of me-first.
Diane,
I think you admit that we are being surpassed by other nations in things like quality of life and infant mortality.
While I believe we still have the best higher ed system in the world (largely populated by foreign students), we are no longer graduating most students from high school prepared for college and/or the workforce.
I work in a technology field with huge numbers of job openings without qualified candidates. It isn’t about wanting to pay less, it’s lack of talent.
Many kids today are also just not prepared for working hard, and it’s clear that many need remediation in college.
Whether these things are a result of lack of political will, lack of family support, increasing poverty, or whatever, they still exist and can’t be ignored.
You know I agree with you that our politics are driven by money and that the ever-increasing wealth gap in this country is despicable. I also agree that there are some people who push privatization for personal gain, but those aren’t the ed reformers in my circle.
We *have* to do better with children of color and children from low income families, and I believe it’s proven that we can. It includes spending more money, but it also included some changes to education that there are powerful forces aligned against.
Being satisfied with the status quo because it is capable of providing an excellent education to a subset of students who look like the students of yesteryear is just not acceptable to me.
*Part* of working on the challenges facing low income families is working on why the education system fails them so miserably. You are basically saying that they (as a result of poverty) are failing the education system. I think the opposite is true. The urban education system, as a result of failing to adapt to the children we have (as opposed to the children we used to have and/or wish we had), is failing them.
John,
In NJ, “little accountability” has seen 20+ years of state control plus prior years of state monitoring for Jersey City, Paterson, and Newark districts. No silver bullet yet.
booklady,
Those takeovers seem to have greatly reduced the corruption and overspending that was present in those districts. There are some academic improvements as well.
I’m very interested to see what happens in Camden, which seems much more replicable.
Here is the impact of testing on my children’s education in North Carolina. And NC does not have any collective bargaining for teachers. It is not allowed.
I believe that far too much instructional time is lost due to standardized testing, including all the preparation time for such tests, the actual testing, and the time at the end of the year when teachers tutor students who did not pass the tests in the first round of testing.
In North Carolina, every student in K-8 must take a battery of end of grade (EOG) tests every year. The preparation time for these tests beings at least a month before the actual exam. This means that all instruction on new material ends. Basically, it is a lot of review, test strategy lessons, and worksheets. This is largely a waste of time, especially for students who are above grade level.
Then, an entire week is devoted to the testing. After that, there are still two weeks left in the school year. The students who passed the tests watch movies. One time my 3rd grades asked for crayons to take to school because they were going to be coloring. A 3rd grader coloring?! That is complete nonsense.
So, if we add up the weeks we are looking at about 7 weeks out of 36 spent either on testing, test preparation, or doing nothing. Considering that children don’t learn from the tests, above grade level children don’t learn from mindless repetition of grade level material, and nobody learns anything watching Disney movies, it turns out that the current testing regime at North Carolina public schools is a waste of 7 weeks of instructional time. 7 out of 36 comes out to 19.44%. Let’s round up and call it 20%.
So, in North Carolina one-fifth of the entire school year is wasted because of the current testing regime, and this doesn’t even count all the benchmark tests and so on.
The idea that testing only takes up 2% of the school year is just not true. In North Carolina, it uses up 10 times that amount. This is educational malpractice. This testing regime needs to stop as soon as possible. We need to test less and teach more. Children learn when their teachers teach; they don’t learn from this testing and the associated activities.
Eric,
I don’t disagree with anything that you said. I believe there are much better ways to institute accountability systems than multiple choice test and the test prep that results from there being too much focus on them.
I’d like to see an accountability plan driven by the profession so that a lousy one doesn’t have to be applied from above. Accountability isn’t going away (and shouldn’t), but there are better and worse ways of doing it.
My sole point was that the idea that the last 10 years are a measure of what reformers want to see in the classroom and therefore a failure is ludicrous. Classroom life is 90% driven by the same factors that existed before NCLB/AYP and perhaps 10% driven by reform factors, and event those are warped, crappy implementations of what reformers really want to see, cobbled together by a dysfunctional management/labor relationship and the conflict of interest inherent in public sector unions negotiating with publicly elected school boards largely influenced by public sector unions.
They(private Ed deformers) ARE the status quo.”
It’s been a while since they came in the field to make a lot of mess.
Throwing millions of dollars into useless testing machine(bubble sheets, questions that make no sense, and technically-flawed system that can cause glitch and lose data so quickly) every year is absolutely clueless and dumb. It’s like a 300-lbs macho pro-wrestler trying to pin down his opponent with his muscle, only to get his butt kicked in the end.
Why do I read “Diane Ravitch’s blog A site to discuss better education for all”?
Because of postings like this. And their accompanying threads.
This leapt out at me:
[start]
Yes, Denby does admire teachers. Many people-including those at the Fordham Institute, ALEC, and other outposts of corporate reform—don’t. They think they are lazy and self-serving. They can’t understand why anyone would want to be a teacher when they don’t make much money, ever.
[end]
A genuine insight in the rheephorm mentality. And a very telling example of why they can get very very simple things very very wrong.
Such as?
From an articulate spokeswoman for corporate education reform, Amanda Ripley, THE SMARTEST KIDS IN THE WORLD AND HOW THEY GOT THAT WAY (2013, p. 164):
[start]
What did it mean, then, that respected U.S. education leaders and professors in teacher colleges were indoctrinating young teachers with the mindset that poverty trumped over everything? What did it mean if teachers were led to believe that they could only be expected to do so much, and that poverty was usually destiny?
[end]
To keep this comment short, I will briefly make only two points re the above two excerpts:
1), Note how the “lazy and “serving-serving” of the first resonates with the second, and
2), Note how the rheephorm understanding of OTHERS is merely a projection of THEMSELVES.
I conclude with a very direct observation about the many many people I worked with in two public schools: whether I liked them or not, the vast majority were spurred into GREATER, not LESSER, action because of the often difficult circumstances in which the students and parents and their associated communities found themselves. Assertions to the contrary are, to put it bluntly and directly, lies that serve the rheephorm propaganda machine.
That’s the way I see it…
😎
If Finn fails to condemn those who label our schools, “human capital pipelines”, it is clear what kind of man he is. Lincoln warned us of the ever present danger of the divine right of kings, kings who keep the best for themselves and, who starve workers, of their opportunities and wages.
.
To be clear: The “Reformers” are not intent on disrupting the inequity status quo. They are intent on disrupting the school funding and governance status quo. They want to privatize education based on a market ideology.
Those of us who oppose this ideology need to be clear. The current status of education is not OK because it perpetuates and exacerbates inequality. We have different solutions.
http://www.arthurcamins.com
Arthur,
Would you acknowledge that reformers run the gamut from those intent on disrupting current funding and governance to those intent on fixing inequity on a continuum?
Lumping those together leads to inappropriately calling the latter obstructionists or privatizers depending on which “side” they’re on.
Where do reformers fall on the continuum ..outright actionable fraud … legal political bribery for gain, at the expense of taxpayers and students…….portrayal of Black children, dressed in business attire, to promote their snake oil ……compensated niche for those that don’t want to do the real work of classroom teaching, preferring pontification to adults, instead?
Arthur Camins: thank you for your comments.
Today, this blog—
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2016/02/26/edushyster-remind-me-what-are-charters-for/
Leaving aside anecdotes and outliers, this is the main thrust of the self-styled “education reform” movement—
Charters. Privatization. Vouchers. $tudent $uccess. Worst pedagogical and management practices.
No Rheeality Distortion Field, however powerful and self-delusional, can Trump reality.
Thank you for keeping it real.
Not rheeal.
😎
MathVale,
I have great respect for teachers, and my opinion about where “reform is the status quo” has absolutely nothing to do with that.
Trotting out the “teacher bashing” meme on anyone who doesn’t think all is perfect is politics, not reason.
Repeat of my 1:58 comment, zeroing in on the 4th item on the continuum.
END LYING NOW!
I just posted this at Oped..(click on GO TO comments, to see it,and to respond there!)
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/As-News-Media-Changes-Ber-in-General_News-Bernie-Sanders-2016-Presidential-Candidate_Lies_Media-And-Democracy_Media-Bias-160226-816.html#comment585175
I am asking you, if you are reading this, to begin a campaign of demanding punishment for lies that destroy lives!
CALL OUT THE LIARS, demand THAT they go to jail for crimes. Call out the media, when they disseminate ‘lies’ and call it ‘balancing news.’ Write and call in your outrage.
As I said in the introduction: Anyone who, in the 1960s, read Vance Packard’s ‘The Hidden Persuaders’ are not surprised, but it is time THE current media propaganda IS RECOGNIZED as creators of fear-mongering and promoter of lies that was prevalent in 1939 Germany. click here
http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc1004/article_903.shtml
We need to end this AGE OF MENDACITY where people plea that “everyone was doing it” (business as usual)!
THIS WAS the “reason’ that the guys at Libor and Standard and Poors,’ gave. They figured it was OK to sell junk to our people. Their values. After all — they lied, got away with it, and never went to jail! In fact the CEOs were rewarded for their mendacity, walking away with millions, while their companies settled and paid a pittance for penance.
And the media sold this to the people. Look, Bernie and I graduated HS together. It does not surprise me that he recognizes what I do. We were there when things were different… not perfect… but without tv and thus without the incessant noise and demands on our attention and our values! That ubiquitous screen, which sells ON HUGE SCREENS, THEIR VERSIONS OF THINGS… IN HD was ABSENT!
Many of us, with a decent and free education (Bernie and I graduated in 1959) had some prior knowledge with which to analyze what we heard on the radio. And, we had time to think critically. We heard Nixon and listened to the news. Today, people can barely have time to relax; many hold down 2 jobs and have to meet the needs of kids.
I have written for years about what I KNOW — how studies show that fast images, and sound-bites changed the brain or our citizenry. Images enter the brain on a different neurological path than do words. Sustained attention is difficult for many. Bits of information, and loads of misinformation at blistering speeds compete in a 24/7 static field.
Humans simply tune out the noise, and this is what the oligarchs need to happen — ALL THOSE TALKING HEADS EMITTING LIES… and the studies show how maths and lies become TRUTHS with re-telling.
For a very long time, I have written about the corruption of the media, and in fact, I WROTE A MEDIA UNIT AT EAST SIDE MIDDLE SCHOOL IN THE NINETIES, which introduced 13 year old seventh grade students to THE SUBTLE MESSAGES IN THE COMMERCIAL.
How else, I asked, can you KNOW if the VALUES THAT ARE OFFERED are VALID and productive ones for your own well-being and that of the society which you love. “DO THEIR VALUES contradict what parents or community value?”
In their weekly LETTERS these children wrote about what they saw and heard, and many related that they recognized the importance of KNOWING WHO IS PAYING for the message. They became critical of ads!
(OHMYGOSH! OK, so you know why I had to be removed from talking to our future citizens!
Well, THEY AINT KIDS ANY LONGER! They are ALL in their twenties and thirties now, so I wonder if they remember what they learned WITH SUSAN LEE SCHWARTZ?
I have at THIS blog, many times recommended this NOT TO MISS book,”IN THE ABSENCE OF THE SACRED,” by Jerry Mander; (YES, that IS his name!) IT IS NOT ABOUT RELIGION! The warning is implicit, as he describes the way it was before tv. Good values are those that benefit a society. That is, as my former students know, an EQ… AN ESSENTIAL TRUTH. http://www.scottlondon.com/reviews/mander.html
Elders passed on those things that benefited a society.
Lies hurt tribes because knowing what lurked ‘out there,’ was the secret to success and a survival behavior! Which begs the question: HOW CAN WE SURVIVE if our leaders and legislators and our justices lie with impunity?
I am not saying that it is merely television lies are what is killing democracy.
I am saying that LYING by those when trust to ‘promote the common welfare,’ is INTOLERABLE because it is DESTRUCTIVE.
That is why dictators ultimately destroy their states, and why our founding fathers created the document whiter legislature has made unrecognizable to bernie and I, and anyone who knows what it actually says and what it MEANS for a democracy to EXIST!!
The reason that lies are hurtful is easy to comprehend. In the real world, what you DON’T KNOW MAY KILL YOU, and thus, built into the human genome is the desire for FACTS… well, until the advent of television and that screen… that window onto the world… not the real one, but the one that the puppet-masters of media want you to believe. Like a world where a bully should have THAT PARTICULAR finger –THE ONE that pushes that RED button. OY!
Several years ago I attended a conference on school vouchers at Catholic University in Wash DC. Finn was one of the main speakers. He declared that he was “ashamed to be a Jew” because the main Jewish organizations all opposed vouchers. I prominent Reform rabbi was present and responded appropriately. Finn has always supported the diversion of public funds to sectarian and other private schools through vouchers. — Edd Doerr (arlinc@verizon.net)
The irony of Fordham, whose rolls are nearly completely devoid of teachers, decrying a non-teacher’s holding an opinion (gasp!) of public education, is rich indeed.
I felt as though I needed hip boots and a shovel to wade through Checker’s screed.
And this is the guy who is now our State Superintendent – appointed by a governor who ran in part on an anti-Common Core platform. -_-
“…and high-powered (if, in my view, sorely misguided) intellectuals”
Not sure if I’d be one of those “high powered” intellectuals, but I’ve heard the “misguided” line of attack over and over again, so let me defend against it.
One is not “misguided” if one is guided by Justice (for all.)
The status quo is “justice for a few,” which is not Justice at all.
Change is needed in our schools and society — anyone who disagrees is disagreeing from on top of their golden throne, out of touch with everyday life and everyday people. “How” we change it, though, is incredibly important. It makes all the difference.
What we need is a social and political reckoning so that the rules of the game are not rigged for those at the top.
Strictly in terms of education, what educators need is higher awareness of better philosophy (and thus practice that aligns with it.) Imagine this scenario: tomorrow we remove all restrictions on teachers, and “let teachers teach.” What would schools look like? Better, yes. Still not nearly good enough, in my opinion. If that is true, then we TEACHERS have a lot of room for growth. Even in the midst of this “battle” for public education, I think this is foolish to deny.
What I imagine in my scenario of “letting teachers teach tomorrow” is that the majority of them would still give grades and homework in K-12, although there exist very strong arguments and evidence against these practices. I imagine many if not most classrooms would still be “teacher-centered,” with the students passively regurgitating/repeating the teacher’s information/instructions, though science and philosophy debunk this model. I imagine we’d still be breaking up high school students’ time into short periods of “disciplines,” although again we can break apart this idea by applying what we already know. I’d imagine we’d still have lots of teachers trying to control the classroom through fear rather than through “respect” and “curriculum,” though it should be obvious the latter is a better approach in virtually every regard. I imagine we’d still be giving students not enough choice in what to learn, when, and how — though “choice” is one of the strongest drivers of learning and one of the most fundamental necessities for health.
My list of gripes goes on. Education needs real “reform” — not rephorm, but a better way of doing things.
So the question is “where do we go from here?”
“The market” is not the answer because it will not address social and economic inequities and injustices — nor will it allow the most qualified to lead — nor will it allow us to collaborate instead of compete.
Taking the “public” out of “public education” is not going to give us what we never had: equal opportunity for all. Change cannot be for the few. It must be for the public.
It sounds to me like Checker Finn is misguided.
“Although I am now diametrically opposed to everything Checker believes about education, teachers, and children, I have an abiding fondness for him and his family.”
This is what integrity looks like. I see it in you, Diane, and I see it in Bernie Sanders. Standing on principle has become a rare thing in public life and we are the poorer for that.
Thank you.
Christine Langhoff: you wrote—
“This is what integrity looks like.”
Someone needed to say it out aloud. Not surprised that you are the one.
😃
Which is why I have written before that one of the invisible subtitles of this blog concords with this sage observation by some homegrown talent:
“Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” [Mark Twain]
Having followed this blog since its inception, color me gratified—but, after almost four years of visiting this online living room to discuss a “better education for all,” not surprised in the least.
I am being presumptuous, but I think many others would agree with me.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
Thank you, Christine.
I know Checker Finn via the Math Wars, so I am never shocked (but often appalled) by the nonsense that comes out of his mouth and keyboard. He’s wrong about math education, wrong about testing, wrong about just about anything of importance to do with education and children. That aside, I find his style obnoxious, smug, and petty, and far too many of his admirers seem to me to be elitist types who would never last 15 seconds in a classroom in any of the schools they think they know how to fix.
Checker Finn, I and several of my colleagues have TFA profiles: we went to elite colleges, had high GPAs and aced the GREs. We have stuck it out here in a blue-collar community’s public middle school. We work our butts off. Yet we know we can barely budge the achievement of a large segment of our students for a variety of reasons you can only understand if you’re down here in the trenches. The union is not the impediment. One giant issue is generational intellectual poverty. Yes, some poor Jewish and Asian kids have rocketed to the Ivies in one generation. But that doesn’t mean all poor kids can. I see the faces of Russian serfs, Oklahoma Dust Bowl refugees, African slaves, Maya peasants in many of my students –their parents have good brains, but they are not stocked with the same knowledge and cultural software that the kids whose roots go back to busy, urban capitalist places, or from cultures where books and learning have been esteemed for a long time. The Russian writers’ woes about the herculean task of “raising” the serfs come to mind frequently when I talk to parents who have less world-awareness than I did when I was 12 years old. We try and try and try with these kids –but their knowledge deficit keeps them from grasping large swaths of lectures and readings and videos, and their cultural software does not direct them to prioritize studying and doing homework –so their gains, with some exceptions, are slow and unimpressive. You are blind to what it takes to make a bourgeois like yourself. We bourgeois who have put in the hours with these kids eventually get some glimpses into the black boxes that are their minds. The no-excuses charters that “prove” that poor kids can be turned into Ivy material in one generation in fact skim off the most bourgie members of the ghetto –those who have the software that says “School is #1”. In fact they may be poor immigrants who had been part of the bourgoisie in their home countries. Thus the no-excuses schools deceive you. You are like Bernie Sanders –you think a revolution is possible. I am like Hillary Clinton –I know, from hard won wisdom, that progress will be a slow, difficult process –trench warfare against entrenched forces like intellectual poverty, economic poverty, drug addiction, mental illness (source of today’s strife in 8th Period), organic brain damage, custom, almost omnipotent peer pressure (negating learning for a bunch of my students right now), etc. Bash this unionized public school teacher if you will. I doubt any facile edupreneur is ever going to do any better. (One thing I do agree with you on is that public schools should adopt a Core Knowledge curriculum!)
I woke up last night and wrote this note to myself : Teachers are on the front line in this real revolution to take back our country from the corporate barons and kings who have made war on democracy. THERE IS A FRONT LINE IN ALL WARS, and it will be TEACHERS who are on that line.
Bernie knows it will take time, but he also knows that it must begin…Hillary is one of ‘them’/She will never do anything to return this nation to the people. Never, ever!
Hillary has said she’ll only nominate prospective justices who promise to overturn Citizens United –many a progressive’s dream of dreams. Contrast that with what a Republican president would do. There is a radical difference, and the Berniacs who don’t understand that are woefully deluded. I like Bernie but I think he’s naive about rallying the People to push a bold left wing agenda. The People won’t show up –I know, because I was one of the few who kept showing up for Occupy Oakland rallies while the majority of Bay Area liberals opted to Netflix and chill. But the main reason I oppose Bernie is that I think he’s more vulnerable against a Republican and I don’t want to risk a Republican in the White House. People said Gore was the same as Bush. Do you really think a Gore presidency would have been like the Bush presidency turned out?
ponderosa,
All of the polls show Bernie doing better against Trump than Hillary. I think that’s because people are disenchanted with government and want change. Hillary, while vastly preferable to any republican, is more of the same. I think Bernie does better because he taps into that desire (which I think underlies many of Trump’s supporters as well).
Trump says “Make America Great Again”. Some hear a message about American Dominance, but I think most hear a message about lost jobs, loss of the middle class, etc. Many of those blame those below them on the economic ladder, and they will vote for Trump. But the more people hear Bernie’s message, the more they recognize that he actually has policies that will help these issues.
Hillary won’t put a financial transaction tax on Wall Street. She won’t back off on free trade agreements that costs jobs and quality of life in the US. In short, she will continue in large measure the overvaluing of corporate interests and those of the rich vs. the interests of citizens. Again, I would vastly prefer her to a republican who will keep their foot on the gas leading to oligarchy, but I view Hillary as a holding pattern rather than a step forward.
I teach in a small rural community in transition to more suburban. When Ponderosa used the phrase “generational intellectual poverty ” to describe the forces pushing back on educational success, it reminded me of the past 30 years. Over the years, we have had some success and some failure, but we have been a pretty good place. The constant pushing has tired me a bit, but I still love the kids, and I hope I have done some good. The fight has led me to a basic belief about education. Unfortunately, no one really believes me, so educational discussion is generally light years front me.
I believe that I am not teaching the children in front of me. Rather , I am preparing them to be parents. I am teaching their children. Along the way, some of them have become Doctors, Professors, Engineers, and such. They did that, not me. When I try to impress upon the students how excited I feel about an idea, it is for the sole purpose of allowing me to see what that looks like, so that , when they see it in their children, they will unconsciously recall where they have seen it before. So I try to move them my direction a bit.
I can understand resistance to education. For generations people have watched their more educated brothers and cousins come back from Texas, Michigan, or whatever other distant place they went to use their new education. They come back changed. Different. When you feel inferior, different looks arrogant. It turns your stomach and makes you react against the thing that took these people out of your life. What good is a fancy education if it makes you move. I like it here. That is a hard attutude to erode.
The most insidious force facing me has been high stakes testing. We used to engage the children in dialogue on subjects tangential to the subject at hand and it would make heads come off the desk. After the push to test, students have learned to ignore that which is not tested as an unconscious response. Thus high stakes evaluations have been the most insidious influence in our school of all. Perhaps they are even worse than substance abuse, for they become the all consuming desire of every top down reformer. Soon there are no teachers teaching who have not made their peace with testing. Some of these teacher might even exult publically that they have made testing fun for a kindergartner. Soon, teaching becomes outcomes on tests rather than passionate seeking for knowledge and understanding. Soon the reformers are right, nothing good is going on I those schools. If only there were superman. Der Hauptmann.
Roy,
I understand what you’ve written here, and you make a lot of good points about how it may take multiple generations to instill a desire to learn and an understanding of how it can lead to success and choices in life.
But, is it really the students that have “learned to ignore that which is not tested”? It seems to me that there really are no “high stakes” for children. The stakes are for schools, and in a few places, for teachers. Assessment in and of itself shouldn’t be the problem. The system’s reaction to assessment that actually counts for something is.
It is true that any act of assessment is likely to have some measure of undesirable side-effects, but if Starbucks measures it’s employees on how many lattes they serve per hour, you don’t see their cashiers rudely dismissing customers and herding them along to get to the next one. One expects that a conscientious employee recognizes that there are multiple aspects to doing a good job and that the employer is emphasizing one to try to improve it. Employees are evaluated on *all* of the measures, not just that one.
It should be possible to have accountability and legitimate evaluation without the overboard response of “test and punish”, shouldn’t it?
performance assessments are what teachers have done for ever, and will do forever.
The bogus testing to makes smoking of evaluation of a teacher or a school has removed from the classroom the LEARNING THAT ONCE WAS THERE.
It’s all bogus. How did anyone know what school was a ‘good ‘ school before these tests made Pearson rich, and gave the oligarchs a chance to call schools failures an d replace them with the Orwellian choice.
EVERYONE in the town knew which teachers enabled kids, motivated them and prepared them.
The entire conversation about ‘evaluation of schools’ through ‘testing’ is bogus.
You have nicely encapsulated much of my 25 years of experience Ponderosa, I can’t add a thing except thank you for sharing your cogent thoughts.
Roy:
Interesting points. My students learn about China and the Islamic World –two subjects on which many of their parents know little and have deep prejudices about. Some of these students literally try to block out hearing anything positive about these societies, but even these kids will take a little fresh knowledge on board. And so they’ll impart slightly different attitudes and maybe a bit of background knowledge to their kids. So, yes, we are teaching our students’ not-yet-born kids.
You make a very important and, to me, fresh point about tangents. The standards movement and the tests ARE exterminating tangents. It’s easy to scorn tangents. I remember a high school Spanish teacher who was ALL tangents –we learned almost no Spanish that year. It seemed to me he was just bantering with the kids the whole time. This is an abuse. However, in retrospect, it probably wasn’t as much of a waste as I thought, as I’ve come to understand almost all talk with adults has knowledge-transmission value. One gleans, infers, a lot talking to an educated human who has been on the planet a lot longer than you. That Spanish teacher talked (in English!) a lot about current events. The kids were adding to their general knowledge base –at a better-than-average rate perhaps because the teacher picked tangents that he knew would engage the students. This is an extreme example. But I think teachers should be free to deviate from the plotted direction if they sense that it could be fruitful for the students. If the teacher smells interest, it might be more profitable for the class to spend time on Topic A even if there’s no chance it will show up on the test. The learning will be more meaningful and indelible. It occurs to me that I was told this by my student teaching evaluator twenty plus years ago. Back then it was considered best practice –it was seizing teachable moments. Now it’s malpractice and, in VAM states, could cost you your job.
OT: thanks for the kind words.
ponderosa,
I think you make a lot of good points, but miss a key opportunity. You mention that many economically disadvantaged students don’t have the “School is #1” mindset, and you also mention the “almost omnipotent peer pressure”.
I find that the best charter schools have placed huge emphasis on culture, and the purpose of it is to instill the first and refocus the second. Where it is successful, I think it advances the accomplishment of the very issue you identify.
Anyone who thinks it’s easy or a silver bullet is mistaken, but I do think it can be focused on to have an effect on individual students and an even greater effect over generations.
John
You are right that polls consistently show Bernie doing better against Republicans (including trump) than Hillary and have for several months now. If anything, the spread is getting bigger.
The same polls also consistently show Bernie with a better overall favorability rating (Hillary actually shows an “unfavorable” rating).
I think the latter may be even more telling than the former.
There are lots of people (Democrats and independents included) who simply will not vote for Hillary if she gets the nomination. many of them will vote third party (eg, Jill Stein of the Green party) and many will simply will not vote at all.
The claim that a vote for Bernie in the primary means a Republican win in the general election (or even increases the chance of that relative to Hillary) is not grounded in fact. It’s a myth perpetuated by those who either are not aware of the reality or who actually know and merely wish to spread disinformation to discourage people from voting for Sanders in the primaries.
John,
You put your finger on the reason I’m ambivalent about condemning the “no-excuses” charters. They are indeed making a gambit to supplant one culture –the Lord of the Flies youth group culture that would emerge spontaneously in a less-controlled environment –and replace it with another. This is an incredibly hard task (cf.: American efforts to Westernize Afghanistan). It is not pretty. I’m not sure it’s advisable. But what I can see down here on the ground amongst the Real Students of I.S. 101 is massive effort by teachers to get the low-achieving kids to study and do homework with paltry success. And massive efforts by teachers to counter the peer pressures to bully, deride school, deride learning and disrupt class for kicks and social bonding currency…with paltry results. To move the needle significantly for this subset of kids, we need stronger medicine than what we have. Success Academy’s strong medicine is like chemotherapy –it IS toxic. It does destroy a lot of the things we love about schools –playfulness, warmth… It would be rotten for the civil, academically-inclined kids. But I KNOW the SA kids are learning more academics than a lot of the kids at my school, who are learning almost nothing academically (they are learning a lot, however, about their peers –to whom they give their riveted attention). An exasperated parent of one chronically misbehaving boy recently told me she’d love to ship him off to a private military school; she would if she had the money. Home discipline is not working any better than our weak school discipline. I suspect SOME of these kids would benefit from that. Right now it seems they’re just wreaking havoc on themselves and others’ learning and psyches. On the other hand, I wonder if the sturm-und-drang of public middle school, while inefficient at academics, may yield unmeasurable benefits in the development of kids’ souls. Regardless, the kind of strict discipline the “no-excuses” schools impose is absolutely not an option for public schools, I hope you realize. Community members would balk, and government policy punishes schools with high rates of suspensions and expulsions (unless they’re charters, of course). We must do what we can with the weak medicine we’re allowed. I would welcome a unionized charter school that offered military style discipline for the wayward kids. But KIPP and SA don’t cater to the most wayward kids –because these kids would drag down the all-important test scores. Maybe if we quit using crude measures of accountability such schools would emerge.
Ponderosa, the lowest-scoring students don’t survive long in no-excuses charters. Teaching them a new culture is not what they do.
The only charters getting better results aren’t educating the kids who are performing poorly in those failing public schools. They are cherry picking the ones who very likely would have done fine in public schools if they had been put together in a special class of well-behaved children.
I find the research on this to be shockingly inept. All a researcher has to do is look at the children who won a random lottery for Kindergarten and see how long they lasted at the “no excuses” schools. Any child who comes in a later year doesn’t count because those charters have sneaky ways of discouraging them that they can’t use with Kindergarten kids. It is very clear that the kids in those failing schools are rarely going to be allowed to stay in no-excuses charters unless they are among the small number who would have done well in a public school that had resources to teach them and didn’t have to use them to educate the other 90% more expensive kids, including the many charter school drop outs.
If charter schools were working, they would be expanding in the low-income neighborhoods where their wait lists are longest. If they were not working, they would desperately try to get middle class families to fill spots and make sure kids zoned for failing public schools — mostly at-risk kids — didn’t get any preference.
If charter schools were working, their apologists would not suddenly be saying “hey, what ‘s wrong with being just for the strivers?” I suppose we should thank them for honestly acknowledging that charter schools aren’t doing anything for kids who aren’t strivers, but thinking that strivers need no excuses discipline to achieve is nonsense. The no excuses discipline just provides the cover to weed out the kids they don’t want — they ones they do want can forget to have their hands in the lap and will be gently corrected instead of punished and humiliated.
I am flattered that my response to ponderosa got response . You folks are obviously a step ahead of me. John’s suggestion that we should be able to have accountability and interested students is a good one, but a test that makes the kids accountable is how we used to do that. Under no child regulations, graduation rate trumped everything, undermining teacher authority. Teachers under the gun to get good test scores were routinely told by savvy students that they could ruin them. Rumor is they did more than once.
The point is that we were doing a lot better job before the word accountability entered the vocabulary of the politicians. That includes tangents.
You bet. ‘accountability ” became their narrative, but it is ironic, because the test measure nothing of value. The only lack accountability is for the liars and charlatans that took out the real teachers so they could perpetrate the testing hoax on American schools. No texting here http://blip.tv/hdnet-news-and-documentaries/dan-rather-reports-finnish-first-6518828
Susan,
“Tests measure nothing of value”
I get so tired of hearing this nonsense. One can argue about whether a “3” or a “4” for a single student means anything, but I can assure you that a “1” means a hell of a lot, including a huge increase in the likelihood of a child dropping out, being unemployed, and going to prison. Please spare us this rationalization for poor performance.
Dismissing testing is luxury of the affluent and an excuse for lack of action for those less well off.
John,
I see. You are tired of hearing WHAT YOU BELIEVE is nonsense.. and YOU have a very strong OPINION about testing based on YOUR experience. Did I get that right , sir?
Well, you are certainly entitled to have an opinion, but you are not entitled to change THE FACTS, in an argument… AND THAT IS WHAT YOUI DO…YOU argue based on a total MIS-READING of the “conversation about tests’ which is ongoing in this TEACHER’S ROOM— where you have CHOSEN to speak out with YOUR take-away, offering as a reason— YOUR own experience. We all do that, of course, use our experience to guide us… but a few of us actually have a different, and valid experience.
Well, I hear you. John! You argue that tests are ‘incentives for some kids!
What you ‘argue’ is that some kids are really motivated by tests, and this is true. My grandson who has an astronomical IQ, loves tests and goes to a private school with 15 kids in a class, so his teacher does not need a test to asses what he can do… but the SATs did. Yeah… they know what this boy who read ally second grade books when he was 3, can do.
But , a five year old is NOT rewarded by a test grade. Children need to LEARN social skills and play!
(DON’T MISS; Michael Moore’s’ “Where DO WE INVADE NEXT,” where teachers in Europe talk about what schools do and what young kids MUST HAVE.
Oddly, in these nations they took the American idea of public education as a road to opportunity for all, and they copied the way we help children succeed, and applied it.
Whereas, we in America, had real education eradicated by untrammeled consumerism. The media sold the lie, and our schools went down. Bernie, addressed the way our people are sold:
John, The13 year old who needs to learn how to apply what he learned in math or writing class, don’t need tests TO ASSESS EVERYTHING!
Kids can FEEL GOOD, put in effort, and WORK HARDER when they develop hits of mind, in places where learning is possible. Children ARE REWARDED, intrinsically, when they MEET THE CLEAR expectations for OUTCOMES! Kids know what is expected IF expectations are clear, and RE SET EARLY by teachers, and PARENTS.
ALL the tv ‘reality’ shows these days, and the endless sports events and celebrity awards shows — ALL reward winners!
In the constant competition to be top, the winner, (and trump all) they create LOSERS— which is ‘entertaining’ to some … but IN A CLASSROOM… creating losers (when there are better ways) is not a great idea!
It is so much better to PROPERLY assess those who need to move to a higher level, and help them to perform up to standards. In the end, when everyone in my class could write, even the kid who came from the inner city, they KNEW THE EARNED THAT GRADE… their portfolios made their parent’s cry, and visitors to my class ask :” How did this happen?”
HERE in Diane’s ‘Teacher’s Room’ we experienced professionals grasp that THE TESTS THAT CAME OUT of the NCLB — and which continue in the ESSE — assess nothing that permits the evaluation of ‘schools’!
We ‘get it’ that only these tests never existed before, and are bogus, and were created so that PUBLIC EDUCATION CAN BE UTTERLY DESTROYED!
This plan, conceived by the EIC in the eighties,
wanted more than the windfall for the corporations that privatization creates.
Here at the Ravitch site, John, truth reigns… which may explain why your truths have trouble growing roots.
You would hate Oped, news where I write, and were Rob Kall insists on links and facts.
http://www.opednews.com/author/series/author40790.html
We get it…. that …..IF…. failing schools in almost sixteen THOUSAND districts could be SHUT DOWN then the THE STATE INSTITUTION OF PUBLIC EDUCATION could finally BE RUN by LEGISLATORS* who could , now, MANDATE POLICIES for instruction! THEY COULD NOW TELL educated professional teacher-practitioners… who love the kids, and know exactly HOW TO ENABLE LEARNING… WHAT THEY HAD TO DO!
*(i.e LEGISLATORS—those corrupt critters that defunded public education so they could fix their austerity budgets)
The concept of an INSTITUTIONS that “PROMOTE THE COMMON WELFARE’ works in Finland and many European nations… but our press uses the Duncan vocabulary of ‘schools,’. We gotta fix those schools… the problem of failing schools is ‘yooooooge’!
Wow! I get it. Only our citizens DO NOT KNOW WHAT HAPPENED, as it happened behind closed doors (as Gore once warned. The media is silent ABOUT THE NEED FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION FOR ALL… a real INSTITUTION run by experts in LEARNING, not merely teaching…. both!. They are far for silent about the ‘reform’ tactics sold by the EIC!
The wealthy 1/10th of 1% run the show, and in the case of the schools, they ran them into the ground!They invented failure so they could make health care their cash cow with disastrous results for the people.
Your particular reading of the conversation here seems to MISS this point being made by all of us who accept the view of the site’s creator, Dr Ravitch –who knows what the research shows; she also knows exactly what the tests were designed to do, as she looked Bush in the eyes, and told him what she felt about his plan for ’standards’. You have read Diane’s book? She was under-secretary of education for 2 administrations….knows a thing or two!
That, John, is the interesting thing about education, that someone pointed out to me , years ago— real research on how the brain learns, and real knowledge about education theory, DISAPPEARS when someone comes along and says; “Hey, I think that….!” So, word walls, replace real language acquisition in Osh Kosh, and suddenly, it is the fad in NYC, and teachers who used the real methods to promote language are ‘documented’ for insubordination… or harassed, like Pi Lian TU was. In a single year, Ms. Tu taught 8 & 9 year old Chinese immigrants to speak and write English, and did this successfully for 15 years, and her students actually aced all standardized ELA tests! Ah, but Miss Tu refused fad methods, and boy did they go after her!
Learning, not testing is the way, and certainly using tests to evaluate teachers and schools failed.
Not sayin’ …. that objective assessments for schools are not necessary — just sayin’ that everyone in a neighborhood, and a city, knows when a neighborhood school needs HELP…like more money for teachers, support staff, and for neighborhood reach-out to parents! If one moved from one place to another, the schools there WORKED , ALSO. Kids learned skills and to think, and to be decent citizens…. before tv changed everything.
http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc1004/article_903.shtml
The ‘testing ‘ narrative disseminated by Duncan and put into practice by Gates, Pearson Broad and friends offered a tactic to label schools as failures, and they did not care how miserable they made the kids… who are not kids for long, but voting citizens. In North Carolina those ‘kids’ get to have history and science as it is seen through the eyes of Oligarch Koch. https://dianeravitch.net/2014/12/05/north-carolina-plans-to-adopt-koch-funded-social-studies-curriculum/
If nothing else wakes you up to what those tests did to evaluate children teachers or schools, that little link should make it clear!
Well, I have been reading Diane’s posts for 1 1/2 years now (although I have read her work for a decade or more) , and, in fact, use the facts that she reports here, at the News-site where I write, to show the evidence—you know PROOF—like all FACTS of the FAILURE of tests to properly assess the quality of the teacher… let alone the performance of the child.
I would like, John, to put some emphasis on the word PERFORMANCE, but one cannot use boldface or italics here.
I will get back to that word in a minute, after I make it clear HOW IT IS THAT I CAN SPEAK WITH SOME AUTHORITY ON THAT SUBJECT, as I actually WAS the NYC cohort for the real Harvard PERFORMANCE STANDARDS RESEARCH! Yeah, Harvard, the University of Pittsburgh and PEW said; Let’s see how Susan did this since she uses performance, and does not use tests! I participated for 2 years in that 3rd level research on PERFORMANCE, 20,000 teachers in 12 districts across the nation that made it CLEAR what MUST BE PRESENT in any CLASSROOM where LEARNING takes place. YUP!
Let me also be clear about MY definition of test; as a teacher in many schools over 40 years, and a participant as the NYC Cohort in the real, authentic, genuine NATIONAL STANDARDS RESEARCH — WHICH DEFINED ASSESSMENT AND EVALUATION, i have a very specific grasp of TESTS & testing!
OH YEAH, JOHN. Harvard and the LRDC of the Univ. of Pittsburgh, actually did address Genuine Assessment and Authentic Evaluation! …GOTTA LOVE THE ADJECTIVES in that PRINCIPLE OF LEARNING, one of the four directed at teacher performance. To prove the theory put forth by Harvard Professor Lauren Resnick, about EFFORT-BASED LEARNING, the LRDC designed research to SHOW EXACTLY what LEARNING looks like in classrooms where the PRINCIPLES OF LEARNING operate to evaluate performance — places where there are REWARDS beyond test grades… classrooms where students get pleasure when they reach goals and work hard.
You are going to love what they discovered in that HUGE Research about TESTS.
OH….They did not use that word ‘tests’, FYI.
Ya know…. I never gave a test, John… oh a few vocabulary quizzes… but I NEVER even PUT A GRADE ON A PAPER, until the MIDDLE OF THE YEAR — when the kids and parents were CLEAR about what an E or a VG stood for, in terms of performance.
Learning PRINCIPLE 1 clear expectations
Learning PRINCIPLE 2 REWARDS FOR PERFORMANCE & ACHIEVEMENT.
And yet, according to the LRDC — all children (and their parents, too) KNEW EXACTLY their PROGRESS, as writers. MY evaluation tool for writing, was unique, BTW, and my WORK, (curricula) traveled around the nation with the staff developers from the LRDC because I was one of six teachers nation-wide who had developed a unique way to both REWARD & ASSESS children’s writing and comprehension skills.
I had really hoped to offer everyone at the NPE conference, a look at what THE real PEW THIRD LEVEL* RESEARCH revealed. I think all teachers, would be astonished by the hundreds of pages in the volume for PERFORMANCE STANDARDS (PS )in High School, or the volume which clearly shows what performance in mIddle school MATHEMATICS looks like.
*I am sure, John, that you are familiar with the term, ‘third level.” But for those here that do not know, it simply means IT HAS TO WORK EVERYWHERE. Seriously… it is possible!
FYI, John,, long before Bush imagined the NCLB, or Gates came up with the CC and Pearson with VAM, the LRDC wrote the final Performance Standards for the Pew funded research! (zillions of $$$)
I am so tired of magic elixirs, sir, and “nonsense” that CONTRADICTS THE TRUTH… about how learning takes place, and what kids need in a classroom to motivate them… they ain’t machines! http://www.opednews.com/articles/Magic-Elixir-No-Evidence-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-130312-433.html
Facts rule, John, and opinion lays by the wayside. Tsk, Tsk.
But, as hard as this is to believe, you are NOT the only one in this room, and those of us who have an eye on exactly what is happening are pretty tired of people who rant about things which seem to disconnect from the truth.
YOU SEE, IT is ALL ABOUT LEARNING, JOHN, not testing. I AM KIND’A TIRED OF HEARING ALL THIS NONSENSE ABOUT TESTS AS MOTIVATORS or real assessments of anything except memorization.
….just sayin’’ — that here, misinformation and/or outright mistruths (i.e. lies) lies are not the new truth
and I have a thing to say about lies and misrepresentations in the comment I added to this post at Oped.
http://www.opednews.com/Quicklink/As-News-Media-Changes-Ber-in-General_News-Bernie-Sanders-2016-Presidential-Candidate_Lies_Media-And-Democracy_Media-Bias-160226-816.html#
I wrote ABOUT MENDACITY IN OUR CULTURE TODAY when I posted that article. THE PUBLISHER has flagged it..he wants me to develop my comment as a full article because it so addresses the culture today, where verbal bullies take over conversations .
Susan,
You attributed “‘incentives for some kids!” to me when I didn’t say any such thing.
I stand by the fact that test scores are not “meaningless” as you originally said. Show me data that says they are not correlated with dropout rates, unemployment, college attainment, or prison and I will concede.
One can argue about the relative efficacy of various assessments, but to say they are meaningless just doesn’t pass the sniff test. I can appreciate that a test doesn’t do a good job of differentiating writers in your class (and I made the point about the difference between a 3 and a 4 for an individual student being near meaningless), but I assure you that the students coming into my school with their “1” scores are in a whole different ballpark than the students getting “3”s or “4”s.
Yeah, you did talk about test grades as incentive without saying the word, when you described the kids who strove for higher grades.
It is not that I don’t get the need for schools where students can strive and achieve in an atmosphere where learning is enabled and supported. I could never teach when there were disruptive students. Even one was enough to derail the lessons ,w which were so unfair to the children who were there to learn.
But, those disruptive kids will not be KIDS FOR LONG, they will be adults with no future and no way to enter the workforce. Smaller classes, where teachers can get to know all students, and s we need schools that have services and policies in place to help poverty stricken kids to learn social skills –that takes investment.
If instead defunding our neighborhood schools, they built more schools in the hood, and ensured decent after -school activities and help, and had out-reach programs for parents… there would be no need to punish and embarrass children so they behave.
You just don’t get it.
OK, so now that you’ve backed off on what you quoted me on, please point out where I even talked about kids striving for higher grades. I don’t believe in grades for grades sake, nor do I believe in test scores for their own sake.
However, I do believe in assessments as indicators of learning and far from worthless. Sorry, but the kids that score “1” on our state exams will have extremely limited choices in life, and not because of that score; because of what it indicates.
Not interested in talking to you, John.
Bye
Roy,
We were doing fine by *some* students back then. NCLB shined a light on the students that local assessments allowed to fail without visibility. 4% of the student coming into my middle school have ever passed a NYS exam, but they get Bs and Cs in school and get promoted.
Schools haven’t gotten worse since then, we just have better visibility into who they are failing.
Agree with you, Susan!
Diane, I’m glad you are beginning to recognize what many of us have known for years.
Since the conversation here, as always, returns to why and how we teach:
I just read this, and sent it to Diane so that sh can put it up as a post, but for those of you reading this post there will be instant recognition when he says: “I thought, I can do this,” he said the other day, at a coffee shop near the Henry Street School for International Studies, where he arrived as a first-year teacher in fall 2006. “I thought, I want to work on the front lines. I want to be one of those teachers that kids really like and listen to and learn from, and you can turn a kid around. On his fifth day, as he describes it in his new memoir, “The Battle for Room 314: My Year of Hope and Despair in a New York City High School,” his students schooled him in just how wrong he was.”
“The Myth of the Hero Teacher – The New York Times
a few quotes from the article:
“I thought, I can do this,” he said the other day, at a coffee shop near the Henry Street School for International Studies, where he arrived as a first-year teacher in fall 2006. “I thought, I want to work on the front lines. I want to be one of those teachers that kids really like and listen to and learn from, and you can turn a kid around.”
On his fifth day, as he describes it in his new memoir, “The Battle for Room 314: My Year of Hope and Despair in a New York City High School,” his students schooled him in just how wrong he was.
Teaching minority students, especially from poor backgrounds, requires “a particular skill set that you can develop,” Dr. Emdin said, emphasizing that those skills take time to emerge. “But I would not have my internist performing heart surgery. And I would not have Ed Boland teach in an urban school. He’s not trained for it.”
Mr. Boland agreed with at least part of that assessment. “Of all the hours I was at graduate school, I don’t think there was all together an hour devoted to classroom management,” he said. “We were developing beautifully crafted lesson plans that no one could use. I was learning esoteric phrases about test design. I spent two semesters doing a research project. I just wish somebody told me how to get a cellphone out of a kid’s hand.
Teacher training, especially in classroom management, has long been a point of contention between teachers and the city’s Education Department, said Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, the city’s largest teachers’ union. Often, the least experienced teachers get assigned to the most difficult classrooms. Then they quit, leaving vulnerable students with a parade of rookies, falling further behind each year. “We need to move toward having residency programs, like they do for doctors,” Mr. Mulgrew said. “Like you have a teaching hospital — it sounds funny, but you should have a teaching school.”
Others saw Mr. Boland’s failure as a product of a school culture that accepts that teachers will founder for their first year or two.
“There’s a mind-set that it’s O.K. to make your mistakes on the job,” said Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education research and policy group. “Nobody says to an air traffic controller, ‘Everyone crashes a plane their first year; you’ll get better.’ It’s not acceptable that that’s part of the profession.” (Mr. Pondiscio briefly worked for Mr. Boland as a consultant to Prep for Prep.)
ponderosa,
Most real “No excuses” charters don’t look like the caricatures of them that you read about here. The culture that gets substituted is one that values learning and teaches kids that they are responsible for their choices.
We don’t get every student to attend school and do homework every day, but we typically have much higher attendance rate and homework completion rates than other schools.
Other things, like the longer school day that keeps kids in that mode for most of the day, weekend activities for kids and families, a narrow dress code that takes away some of the peer pressure, no lockers to provide distractions, providing school supplies and lunch to everyone to keep money out of school and further avoid competition, etc. All meant to foster an environment that is focused on and values learning.
College visits, bringing recent successful alums back to work with students, trying to create friendly but firm relationships with students, consistent expectations between classrooms…
Asking students and families to commit to things in writing (though completely not enforceable) helps too. Most traditional schools don’t even formally ask for specific behaviors, which is important when families don’t have this behavior “built in”.
I could go on, but you get the picture.
John,
Wow. These are insulting statements. “Asking students and families to commit to things in writing helps too”. Oh, thank you for the advice. We never thought of that! “Most traditional schools don’t even formally ask for specific behaviors”. Good job making up facts. Our school makes families sign a paper testifying that they’ve read and understood the school rules. Most individual teachers do something similar re their classroom rules. I suspect most schools do this.
You don’t think public schools aren’t doing their damnedest to make a culture that “values learning and teaches kids they are responsible for their choices”. Yeah, we tell kids “be slackers” and “it’s not your fault if you don’t do your homework”. Talk about caricatures.
You don’t get it: the crucial difference between your school and ours is that 100% of your kids and parents have signed on to a program, No one who is averse to or ambivalent about that program exists at your school. We take the kids and parents who ARE averse to learning and responsibility and discipline and doing homework and respecting teachers and dress codes (we’ve tried, but the shopaholic families of the community would not have it). And this makes ALL THE DIFFERENCE.
ponderosa,
If I understand it correctly, you are insulted that I pointed out things that your school is already doing and that, to you, are incredibly obvious.
I can assure you those things don’t happen in the urban traditional public schools in my area. Some individual teachers do some of these things, but they are definitely not consistent.
Of course I believe the traditional public schools want a culture that values learning. I just don’t see them doing many of the things, that are within their power, that could influence that. Your school may differ.
Also, you are missing the fact that many charter parents choose charters because of the extended day, which fits their owrk schedules. There are plent of families that are ambivalent about the program and it is, as you say, much harder to work with them.
I didn’t intend anything negative about traditional urban schools. I just think there are things they could be doing about culture that they aren’t doing; consistent expectations being the one that I see the most examples of. If your school is different, great.
The other thing that makes all the difference is charter schools kicking to the curb the kids who aren’t doing the things they ask them to commit to. John always ignores that because he says “well parents choose to send their kids to us”. And while that gives charters a huge advantage, what I find most repellent is that even with that advantage, charter schools still are perfectly happy to make a child who isn’t following their program feel misery until they leave. That’s not a bug, that’s the only thing keeping them going!
What would happen if charters were responsible for ALL the children who win the lottery? Of course, they don’t want to be! Like John says, he wants ONLY the families who “commit” to their school in writing! And if they change their mind, he’s delighted to show them the door.
John,
You really don’t get it.
You think you guys are just smarter and harder working.
I understand now.
No ponderosa,
You don’t get it. You apparently think that my neighborhood school district is doing all of these “obvious” things, yet still getting a 50% dropout rate from high school. If your school is doing them, great, but I assure you there are many that are not.
“I just think there are things they could be doing about culture that they aren’t doing; consistent expectations being the one that I see the most examples of.”
John
It is obvious that you don’t even want to get it.
Ponderosa is referring to behaviors, attitudes, and a culture of ant-intellectualism and anti-decorum. Classroom dynamics that are unimaginable unless experienced firsthand.
She is obviously a no excuses teacher because she would have every right to complain about the pedagogical constraints that these behaviors place on her every day teaching. What should be considered ordinary classroom activities like reading and article or having a serious discussion get removed from her teacher’s toolbox. The limitations that some classes place on teachers only widens the learning gap and the teacher’s hands are tied. Can you imagine a class that is for all intents and purposes is filled with mostly un-teachable students? Of course you can’t because you have no desire to go there. If you change your mind any number of struggling schools filled with failing students would be glad to have you.
Rage…
I’ve seen plenty of classrooms that look like that and certainly see that no learning is happening there. I provided a long list of items that can be done to improve this, some of which are done in some schools and not others.
No student comes to Kindergarten like this. It is learned behavior.
I hear what you say about the well-run charters. When parents are on board, and there is a culture of respect for learning and each other then what happened to this teacher, and to teachers in public schools around America could not happen.
worked in a magnet school, which was a public school, and yes we chose children who were motivated to learn and yes parents were on board and the school worked. BUT we had discipline issues and we could NOT kick the children out, so we found soltuions.
Good schools should be in every neighborhood as it was when I was a child. We moved, and I left PS 161 and went to Ps 192 and my education continued. I did not have to pay more than $35 a semester to attend college.
There is no excuse for defunding public education so that charter schools become a go-to answer.
If you have never seen Finnish First, do. http://blip.tv/hdnet-news-and-documentaries/dan-rather-reports-finnish-first-6518828
This is what schools are all about, childhood learning …and as Mike Moore points out in his file “Where to Invade Next,” Finland went from the bottom to the top by doing what we did here in American when I was young, and when my sids went to school… putting learning first, and giving children a childhood at the same time.
I am sick and tired of this conversation, John.
The simple truth is that there is a conspiracy to end democracy by taking over the education of our children, and in two decades these autocrats did it. I was born in 1941, and I have seen the America that Diane describes… it worked.
You cannot have this, and have schools or a middle class, or a working democracy.THIS IS THE REALITY!
They did it because there are15,880 districts and no one knows what is happening across the country let alone in the schools in the next state. THEY control he media, not just about political news. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/24/us/politics/bernie-sanders.html
Not a word about the destruction of the civil rights of teaches has yet to make headlines,
http://www.perdaily.com/2011/01/lausd-et-al-a-national-scandal-of-enormous-proportions-by-susan-lee-schwartz-part-1.html
Take out the doctors and the hospitals fail.
They took out over hundred thousand teachers and no one blinked, because no one knew that collective bargaining HAD DISAPPEARED from the education workplace.
Local control is the core of good schools, because NO TESTS ARE NECESSARY (except for the use of a teacher to plan lessons to meet the needs of each child). THE COMMUNITY KNOWS WHEN THE SCHOOL WORKS AND SO DO THE PARENTS. THEY KNOW WHEN A TEACHER IS ‘GOO’ because their children are happy and learning!
What our schools needed was INVESTMENT , SMALLER CLASSES, AND MATERIALS FOR THE 21 CENTURY, and instead the oligarchs privatized them as they did health care. We need to fund our schools, and offer a fine education and PRACTICE TEACHING to people who want to dedicate their lives to BE WITH CHILDREN! Then we need to support them in the schools, so teachers can TEACH!
We teachers, one and all , need to walk out and say ENOUGH!
The WOMEN IN THIS NAITON need to do what Iceland did (see the Moore film) and walk out demanding schools for our children.
Of course, this will never work, because our congress AND OUR STATE GOVERNMENTS are corrupt to the core, and our legislators and politicians depend on the corporate overlords to get elected (except BERNIE). The party of NO has ended everything…and that is how the overlords want it….children are not children for long… the Saudis know that… they get ’em young.
Susan,
You place the blame for lack of school’s success on privatization and the “taking over” of the education of our children and that “it worked” in the good old days.
I just don’t buy this. As I’ve said, it worked for some, but failed many. The students that it failed are now the majority of students in the country and the result is that the system, while doing in acceptably well in many suburban areas, is in overall decline. The system hasn’t changed, but the students have.
This failure has *nothing* to do with privatization except that many parents want options other than the schools that are failing their children. I find the idea that the charters or vouchers (which have barely put a dent in anywhere) are somehow responsible for the very problem they are trying to solve completely not credible.
It’s true the students have changed in our public schools. The majority of them are poor and soon, if not already, most of them are Brown and Black. One more reason we see them being defunded and replaced by militaristic, no excuses institutions funded by public monies, yet not answerable to those who pay for them. Schools for other people’s children, because some don’t want “those students” to receive an adequate education, unless they earn it by their compliance.
We get it.
Christine,
The “defunding and replacing” is almost exclusively being done by parents who are opting to send their children to these schools. Again, it is not the cause of the problem, it is the result.
Parents are easily fooled by slick marketing and phony promises.
John – Take a look here:
Calling it a dual language program doesn’t make it so. It’s a yuppie charter that drains away the well to do from the public schools by marketing Spanish language learning for their children, while not actually including any Spanish speaking students.
Christine,
I agree that there is a danger that the charter mechanism can be used to essentially create private schools in suburban areas with public dollars.
I consider that an essentially different activity than the creation of charter schools in urban areas, with large minority and low-SES populations and little choice to exercise “school choice” by moving to another district.
I haven’t had to take a position on these schools because there aren’t any in my area and I am focused solely on the urban schools that serve under-served populations.
Hoboken is urban, John.
Christine,
Yes, though largely gentrified, right?
I wouldn’t support a charter that didn’t have a large majority of students from at-risk populations. I think that is our purpose.
“Yes, though largely gentrified, right?”
Precisely. Gentrification and charters go hand in hand, especially in New Jersey. See Pink Hula Hoop to learn more. Or google Newark Teachers’ Village. Exemplars of how charters enable gentrification through real estate deals, all on the taxpayers’ dime. Charters are not an education plan; they are a business plan.
http://www.bobbraunsledger.com/pink-hula-hoop-2-follow-the-money/
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2013/06/who-will-live-in-newarks-teachers.html
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/03/newark-new-jersey-development-what-works-116234
“Parents are easily fooled by slick marketing and phony promises.”
As insulting as it is self-serving.
Exactly Christine.
Not what I said, Der John. I didn’t blame anyone in that post, or talk about ‘the good old days.” Thais what you do…it is YOUR mistaken reading of what people say, whether intentional or jus clueless.
What I was saying was that you are wasting your time trying to convince the professionals and academics here that you know what the heck you are talking about.
You are entitled to your opinion, just not the facts….just saying…
John says:
“You don’t get it. You apparently think that my neighborhood school district is doing all of these “obvious” things, yet still getting a 50% dropout rate from high school. If your school is doing them, great, but I assure you there are many that are not.”
Now I get it! John, I apologize. You think public schools should open special schools that do all those “obvious” things you demand that families commit to before you allow them in your charter school.
Now that public schools are doing that difficult job, what will charter schools do? Will they teach the rest of the kids? You seem to have conveniently forgotten that they exist. It’s almost like they are less than nothing to you. Is that it? Unless you are willing to teach them, you MUST think they are less than nothing since you have just demanded that public schools ALSO refuse to teach those kids.
I love how “reform” now means that if an at-risk 5 year old isn’t showing the right motivation after you do those “obvious” things, he becomes a nothing. Less than nothing. No wonder you can’t offer a word of criticism to the overseers when they allow the schools to humiliate and demean them. It’s almost as if you approve. Or maybe in your world, no humiliation is necessary, just a quick handcuff and escort out the door and don’t come back and it will all be fine.
John thinks that his opinion is based on more than just his belief system… he evils he knows the truth. We have to learn to turn away from those who obscure the real conversation about learning and what works.
“As insulting as it is self-serving.”
Really, John? You think all “consumers” are fully aware and informed, and nobody is trying to fool them?
The goal of marketing is not simply to tell the truth, it typically goes beyond that into tricking people into buying your product.
What is really self-serving is the privatization movement…
Ed Detective,
I don’t believe in the infallibility of the marketplace, and I think there’s plenty of misinformation to go around. For example, parents of students coming into my middle school think they’re doing great because they’ve gotten promoted every year and have gotten Bs in school. This despite the fact that passing rates on exams are in single digits.
But those who attribute parents choosing to leave traditional schools to go to charters (in ever increasing numbers) use the notion that they are being duped to avoid looking at the reasons they are leaving. That is insulting to the parents and self-serving to the schools they are leaving.
Here’s an example of some aspects of a very successful charter being adopted by a neighboring traditional school with great results. Kudos to both of them.
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/richard-whitmire-dogs-cats-working-article-1.2545397
The discussion of this article should be interesting:
And back to Prep for Prep where the motivated and compliant will help restore his super-teaching powers.
Like all the TFAers are discovering, there is a world where good intentions, high SAT scores, elite diplomas, and tireless work ethic get thrown right back in your face.
What people like Pondiscio (“There’s a mind-set that it’s O.K. to make your mistakes on the job,” said Robert Pondiscio, a senior fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education research and policy group. “Nobody says to an air traffic controller, ‘Everyone crashes a plane their first year; you’ll get better.’ It’s not acceptable that that’s part of the profession.” (Mr. Pondiscio briefly worked for Mr. Boland as a consultant to Prep for Prep.), Mr. Boland, and the endless stream of gullible TFA kids fail to understand is that the struggles of first and second year teachers has to be acceptable. That the group dynamic in schools like these will always test the new teacher in a nearly ritualistic manner. That sticking with it does pay off. That the reputation developed over years of hard work with struggling students in high needs schools has a positive effect on many of the behaviors that drive the the less committed (Boland, Pondiscio, et. al.) away.
In the area of education, as in many others, the battle of intellectuals is overwhelmingly dominated by the corporate reformers for obvious reasons. Those systematically ignored who have defended teachers and exposed the misinformation and flaws of the reformers’ plans, do so with a brave conviction and the sad realization of being a minuscule minority with an almost insignificant influence on public opinion. Saddest of all, in my opinion, is that these courageous intellectuals do not even count with the support, or the respect, or even the acknowledgement of the those public school teachers they try to defend. The unions’ leaders of the millions of teachers have timidly and rarely given forum to these people, so their findings, opinions, and causes are still only trivial and scattered topics of conversation of some of those teachers. Unless teachers associations commit to defend public education, and thus unite all teachers around the truth and justice that people like Diane Ravitch, the scholars from NEPC, Deborah Meier, Alfie Khon, and a few others, have spoken of for many years already. there will be no future for public education.
I’m not sure how other state associations do it, but the NJEA is working tirelessly to fight legislation that is bad for kids. That union is doing what you propose. The game of politics is a sticky wicket. Often, legislation is written without any specific plan in place for implementation (our legislators freely admit this), and the real horror is in the regulation, an area where unions have little to no clout. Public education on these issues is paramount, but who in the public is going to listen to unions when their members don’t get involved and educated themselves? I am tired of both the apathy among ranks and the anecdotal coloring of all unions based on singular experiences that is so common today. It’s like saying that an attorney misrepresented you, therefore all attorneys are bad. It’s this rhetoric that allows comments by the likes of John here to “justify” his misguided position that collective bargaining is bad for the schools, never mind the fact that the states with the least successful schools are right-to-work states and the top schools are found in states with unions.
LG,
I didn’t say that collective bargaining is bad for schools, though I think it does not work to advance the needs of students. Interesting article regarding unions at http://educationnext.org/a-different-role-for-teachers-unions/. I think the current management/labor divide and the resulting failure of unions to be leaders in increasing student performance is the responsibility of all involved. Unfortunately, it seems in most places that both sides are headed in opposite directions and stepping on the gas instead of figuring out a way to work cooperatively for improvement.
Education Next is a bought and paid for $12 million extension of the Gates Foundation. Didn’t you know that? They have no creditability here.
Christine,
Yes, I know that. Most sources of information in education come from one perspective or another. Did you even look at the article? I find we learn more from people we disagree with than from people we agree with. The article makes a lot of valid points about how different unions look in Finland and Canada than what they look like here.
I think the same thing is true of European trade unions vs. their US counterparts. There are a lot of historical reasons for these differences, but while I acknowledge the value of public sector unions in the US, I think they are only aligned with the interests of students when those are the same as the interests of teachers. That doesn’t make them evil, but it does make them the opposition to improvement for students in many cases. It looks to me like teacher unions in Finland and Canada, and trade unions in Europe, are more aligned with the outcomes of their organizations and less on management/labor divisions.
LG, I will address your points briefly. 1) I am suggesting that teachers associations do educate members. This must be consistently and with the goals of informing and helping as many members possible to become articulate defenders of public education. 2) You missed the point on the amount or scope. I do not talk about individual experiences to be extrapolated or generalized. Hundreds of thousands of teaching jobs have been lost in recent years; the morale is the lowest and the trend does not seem to change; hundreds of schools have been closed, and charter schools have multiplied consistently despite their failing record, among other things You have to admit that the corporate reformers’ rhetoric and their narrative have become dogma in the US. NEA and AFT have done little or nothing to question, challenge, or refute the false premises, the ridiculous goals, and the ineffective or destructive policies. I do not know what your state organization has done, but I do not see any organized plan to fight privatization. 3) The structural changes made via laws and regulations have happened arguably because of the dogmatic vision that corporate reformers have created. In this case, lobbying or campaigning once the ideas are in place are for the most part futile. Teachers do not have clout on these issues in part because teachers associations leaders have played the game according to the corporate reformers’ rules. Namely, we believe their premises and negotiate the policies. Thus, the end result, even if it is modify with some of the associations’ input, is aligned with the corporate reformers’ agenda. 4) As tired as you can be of the apathy of the members who are not involved, I am of the cycles of power in associations that keep selecting as leaders mostly people who conform with what they are doing. The current toxic environment have teachers intimidated, afraid, and frustrated to the point that demoralization is a constant. To make things worse, the associations have done little or nothing to protect teachers. In fact, by “negotiating” with the corporate reformers the teachers association leaders have keeping teachers obedient, complying, and conforming with the reforms. In closing, that is why I reasonably conclude that it is the teachers associations’ leaders who have to actually lead members. For this to happen, in my opinion teachers associations need to decisively give forum and respect to those intellectuals who have exposed the misinformation, the lies, and the misguided policies. We need them as much as they need us. If we want to save public education, we need facts, evidence, and the will to counter the privatizing narrative that is destroying our public school system.
Susan, you, like NY Parent, are arguing with yourself. I never said that tests are an incentive.
You said tests are worthless. You have not defended that statement in the least except to point out that in narrow context, they aren’t the most appropriate tool.
Susan, you say:
“Not what I said, Der John. I didn’t blame anyone in that post, or talk about ‘the good old days.” Thais what you do…it is YOUR mistaken reading of what people say, whether intentional or jus clueless.”
So, here is what you did say verbatim:
“Good schools should be in every neighborhood as it was when I was a child.”
“The simple truth is that there is a conspiracy to end democracy by taking over the education of our children, and in two decades these autocrats did it. I was born in 1941, and I have seen the America that Diane describes… it worked.”
“There is no excuse for defunding public education so that charter schools become a go-to answer.”
“They took out over hundred thousand teachers and no one blinked, because no one knew that collective bargaining HAD DISAPPEARED from the education workplace.”
“What our schools needed was INVESTMENT , SMALLER CLASSES, AND MATERIALS FOR THE 21 CENTURY, and instead the oligarchs privatized them as they did health care. We need to fund our schools…”
So, this is not blaming anyone nor talking about the good old days? It seems clear that you public education used to be great but was ruined by oligarchs.
I think oligarchs have ruined a lot in this country, and I agree that legislative meddling in schools has rarely been effective, but I stand by the observation that what classrooms look like today are way more similar to what they were a decade ago than different, and way more subject to hundreds of years of history than to a decade of reform efforts.
The effort to paint current results (if one even acknowledges an issue) as the result of reforms is nonsense. The very first years of NCLB uncovered disparities in subgroup performance; to say that it caused them is not credible.
Also, spending per student has gone up faster than inflation in this country for decades; only in the last 5 years did it dip down during the recession. See http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/images/OB-XO227_PUPIL_E_20130521163518.jpg. Don’t get me wrong, I think we need more spending on K12, but it isn’t accurate to say that we haven’t been investing in schools or that they have been defunded.
You are talking to my hand… must be frustrating for someone like you.
No, John, we have not invested in our schools. Funding in almost every state is based on property taxes. There is enormous inequity in funding between haves and have nots. Tell the parents of Philadelphia that their schools are well-funded.
Diane,
We agree 100% on the fact that property taxes result in great inequities of funding and that we should be spending more in urban districts.
This is my favorite piece of writing of yours, Diane, although I’m sorry that such a sad story prompted it.
Your last paragraph crystallized all that is wrong with what is happening to US education with the greatest economy of words I’ve read.