Last week, I posted a comment from a teacher in Louisiana who watched the first segment of Oprah’s “Blackboard Wars” and was pleasantly surprised to see that the program showed how hard it is for a novice to teach and that charter schools have the same problems as public schools, that they are not a magic solution.
Gary Rubinstein cautions us to be wary. He notes that the struggling teacher is never identified as Teach for America, and that the struggles may be just a set-up to prepare us for redemption and triumph and the familiar story line.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Be sure to read the comments section of Rubenstein’s article.
Oh my! Oprah possibly a shill? Anyone ever see the clip from the Oprah show when a member of the audience questioned the legitimacy of our going to war in Iraq. Why does this woman possess such suasive power in our society?
Agree…I am most suspicious.
“There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.”
Probably the most sensible thing GWB ever said.
Get her far away from children….she is not mature enough to deal with these kids. It is clearly all about her. This is horrifying to watch.
I was watching that and thinking the same thing. Also, what is the work background of the typical TFAer. Is this their first real job? In that high school class, maybe some of the kids have more hours of paid work history than the teacher.
I would like to know if any of these kids parents saw this and how they reacted. If any of these kids were mine I would be apalled and very angry. None of these children acted in a way that deserved that kind of treatment.
I agree, but you know that the people making this picked the worst moments.
The cheerleaders came off really well.
I used to like Ms. Winfrey and her televised path to self empowerment. Many of us looked, thinking, “I too can break free of this vice or oppressive situation.”
But in the last 8 years, Oprah Winfrey has morhped into one of the biggest narcissists in commerical media.
No matter what message she puts forth about society, her means and methods of getting the message out there are inextricably woven into the fabric of her insatiable thirst for self affirmation. She could not be more cut off from her average duped viewer. Everything has always been about her, and how she’s been through every single thing her interviewees have been through.
Sorry, Oprah. You may say that you closely identify with our plights, but your actions, when it comes to education, indicate otherwise. Open all the schools in other continents that you want, but you’ll never be able infuse an accurate understanding of public education and equity.
And you can’t buy this awareness with philanthropy either . . .
Yes, I remember that Oprah was at the forefront of the teacher bashing. I remember watching one of her shows before she had the OWN network. It was the same week that the movie about Mark Zuckerburg came out. She had Mark on and he donated a bunch of money to some education endeavor that was suppose to remove all the bad teachers from our classrooms. She is in cahoots with Gates.
She had Bill on many times (well, at least twice) on her old show.
Oh that is probably true. The story of the novice teacher who works through the pain and leads her students to the promised land (If only all the other lazy teachers were like this, blah blah blah). Same story second verse.
She’s TFA in all but name. Take a look at the bio:
http://www.oprah.com/own-blackboard-wars/Blackboard-Wars-Baye-Cobb
Baye Cobb is a first year teacher in the Math Department at John McDonogh High. After graduating from Duke University in Spring 2012, she veered away from a path to corporate America in favor of a career in education. Ms. Cobb was drawn to teaching because of the positive influences she experienced during her own educational upbringing in Raleigh, North Carolina. She has a commitment to paying it forward and a strong conviction that every child should have access to the best instruction. Inspired by the leadership of Dr. Thompson and his vision of bringing out the best from every student, she accepted the position at John Mac understanding that it would be the biggest challenge of her young career.
Let’s see: Young, from prestigious university, not one of those awful ed majors, totally unqualified. Yep, she’s TFA or from similar outfit.
She should get out now….too self absorbed….she will never have what it takes. Even this show will end up being all about her. Is this the best you got Wendy? P A T H E T I C !
Cobbs is definitely TFA and so is the other first year teacher, Wilcox. It says TFA on each of their LinkedIn pages.
Thanks for that info. I didn’t think to look at her LinkedIn profile.
It also says on the LinkedIn page for Cobbs that the industry she’s in is “Public Policy.” The LinkedIn page for Wilcox says the industry she’s in is “Primary/Secondary education,” while the OWN bio for Wilcox says she “found herself gravitating toward education policy.”
These are strong indicators of how early on TFA steers TFAers to become policy-makers. What a ridiculous joke. We have all been on the receiving end of doctors, dentists, etc., but it would be like, without ever having had any formal training in medicine, we just wake up one day and say, I want to set medical policies.
I think Cobbs is a prime example of why people with no formal training should not be left alone in a classroom with kids, let alone setting policies for everyone else.
That I believe is the whole point of TFA these days is to influence policy (besides, of course, the money angle) and not for the better.
It needs to be outlawed because it does violate the civil rights of students to have fully certified, experienced teachers.
Ms. Cobb may have the best intentions at heart, wanting to offer quality education to the nation’s underpriviledged youth. The TFA knack is to make young idealists (*not critical thinkers) believe that their model is the way to do this. It’s not.
She and other young people who genuinely want to be teachers for the long haul should consider the damage their organization is doing to teaching as a profession by contributing to the dissolution of teachers’ unions, pensions, certification requirements, and public schools etc. Consider as well that while first year teaching is difficult for anyone (even teachers who have ed degrees and traditional certification) the problem with TFA is that it promotes disinvestment in teaching as a career in the first place. No young person in a TFA job could ever imagine doing that for their entire lives. The internet is littered with TFA teacher blogs lamenting the long hours (plus saturday’s in KIPP) and the difficulty of teaching kids who are years behind in their subject areas. Many of these people end up feeling like they’ve failed the world and those kids who they realize they can’t really help in their 2 years there. On the flip side those who feel like they have done a service to America’s children are woefully mistaken. We’ve got 300,000 teachers dropping out of the profession each year and TFA provides 4,500, many of whom drop out after their first 2 years. The federal government is funneling billions of dollars in grants to this outlier. We all know that outliers don’t make good policy. Not to mention the problematic colonial undertones of TFA’s role in New Orleans whereby young elite-educated people come down south to ‘civilize’ the city’s young people of color. Let’s be honest, this model is flawed beyond repair.
Read my article in the Tulane Hullabaloo about it.
http://www.thehullabaloo.com/views/article_4155e568-7166-11e2-b98b-0019bb30f31a.html
Does anyone know the specifics about the background of Steve Barr, the CEO of the FIN management organization that’s running this school? He founded Green Dot charters in CA and claims a high success rate for over a dozen high schools. Can anyone point me to any research or state report cards for those schools verifying this?
On one of the videos on the OWN website for this TV show, when parents were protesting the charter take-over, he made a comment about how everyone thinks they know how to run schools because everybody went to school. So I did some checking to see if he has any formal training in education, but I can’t find anything indicating that this man even graduated from college. Anybody know?
In an article in the Times Pic today, it was revealed that FIN’s Charter board had no say in agreeing to let Oprah make a reality tv show inside John Mac. Two board members are demanding new bylaws that allows them to vote on new contracts.
In a community meeting last night with CEO Steve Barr and the infamous Dr. T, outraged parents and alumni expressed concern about the psychological fall out after these shows air. Folks were heartened to know that Dr. T has thought of everything, even that.
He has arranged for shrinks to be available to students and parents who maybe didn’t plan on, for example, how their friends might react to say, being labeled as “bipolar”. Or for instance, how giving birth on camera may have seemed like a good idea at the time… but no problem amigos, Dr. T, he’s the man!
Will the professional help be available three weeks from now when the shows end? Who is paying for these doctors and are they coming from LA or maybe Chicago? Because in most Charters here, the social workers are about as old and experienced as the teachers, who come from, you guessed it… I guess these saviors will come from Shrink for America.
That Steve Barr is something else. According to the article,
“Students in New Orleans are different from the children Barr formerly served in Los Angeles. Almost all his Los Angeles students were first-generation immigrants. They had troubles but they were optimistic their lives would improve. That doesn’t exist in New Orleans, he said. He got here and thought, ‘This is what seven generations of crap looks like.’ ”
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2013/03/steve_barr_defends_decision_to.html
Did anyone else notice that in the OWN webpage bio for Steve Barr, it refers to Barr’s expansion of Green Dot charters and says this, “Green Dot New York, a school founded by Randi Weingarten and Steve Barr.”
Randi Weingarten is in the business of founding charter schools? She has written a foreward to a book that supports VAM; she speaks positively about TFA because, she said, they are union members, too (right, in districts where they have no other choice); she travels across the country with Arne Duncan; and on top of all the other hoops people have to go through in their formal preparation to become teachers, including taking state tests, the Praxis, etc., she wants teachers to be required to take a bar exam.
Why on earth do teachers continue to vote for her to be their union president? She is playing for the other team, folks!
Oprah is not making this film herself, so we have to wait and see, but Oprah’s history is clearly in favor of the dismantling of public education.
While I am not an expert, I just published a book which one reviewer on Amazaon (the only one so far) said was ‘new’ because I blamed Oprah. “No kidding, Oprah is all over this book, but we’re not about to see that ‘O’ for the Oprah Book club on the cover anytime soon. He puts Oprah right in the middle of a coordinated effort to discredit and, subsequently, dismantle, public education. Her cohorts: Michelle Rhee, Bill Gates, Arne Duncan
and a bunch of academic researchers.” S/he titled his/her review “Blaming Oprah — Great book about education, celebrity and beyond.”
I would like to think it does more than that, but it does document some of the appearances of Bill Gates and, esp. Michelle Rhee, on Oprah. Remember, MR announced the formation of StudentsFirst on Oprah.
This is an excerpt from the book — it is long, but it shows where Oprah stands and who she cheers for:
. . . the status quo was also of interest to Saul Alinsky, the man who almost single handled developed the former profession of President Obama, community organizer: “All societies discourage and penalize ideas and writings that threaten the status quo.” (Rules for Radicals) Strangely, because we see those who attack the status quo in education are not penalized, they are encouraged. Stranger still, because the attack on the status quo in education is coupled with considerations on the value of the status quo in other spheres. The problems of schools plagued by poverty –a significant portion, but only a portion of the system– are used to propose a massive overhaul that adopts methods from other sectors. The question that comes to mind: What would Saul say?
According to Alinsky, writings in support of revolution are few. In education, however, when Michelle Rhee announces that she is starting a revolution – the Students First Revolution– she does it on Oprah. Oprah tells everyone that some call her a hero and others call her names she won’t repeat, but she calls her “a renegade on a mission to fix the education crisis in America while showing a clips, some from Waiting For Superman. There she is, all action, people and consumers, striding down halls, firing principals, saying that students are all that matter. She calls their education ‘crappy,’ says that we have to turn around this idea that teachers have tenure and it is a job for life.
. . .
The impression that teaching is a ‘job for life’ comes largely from the fact that districts have not wanted to fire teachers because they have trouble filling vacancies. Oprah, however, does not question Michelle Rhee’s characterization of tenure, but reinforces it, “after two years you have a job for life and you can’t be fired?” Then she appeals to the audience, “ Who does that?” And what does Michelle Rhee tell us? “I’m going to start a revolution. I’m going to start a movement in this country on behalf of the nation’s children. [Robust applause] Because our country’s education system is broken. It is failing our children.” Oprah adds, “Shame on us,” adding later in tandem with Ms. Rhee, that the lack of academic achievement is “not because of the child, it is because of the failing school system.” (“STUDENTS FIRST REVOLUTION,” as first introduced on Oprah on December 6, 2010.)
. . .
Failing schools fail because that is where we warehouse poor students. That, however, is not taken into account. Michelle Rhee, on the same Oprah program, said “there was a study recently that showed [if we removed] the bottom 6 to 10% of teachers [with average teachers] we could propel ourselves from the bottom to the top totally.” Never mind that [Eric] Hanushek’s analysis was not a study so much as a thought experiment based on extrapolating from questionable data using questionable methods, forget that 5 to 8% inched upwards, ignore that both Oprah and Michelle don’t mention the challenges of poverty. Forget that Hanushek’s oft-repeated statement is that the average teacher in the US is quite good and US teachers compare favorably to teachers anywhere in the world.
Forget all that and just listen to Oprah: “That’s a gargantuan task. , , , God bless you for this – this is really the Lord’s work you’re taking on. . . . I know, really, I’m not going to cry, but I could, the little hairs on my head are raising. You know, I don’t have the know how to fix it . . . I’ve been saying someone needs to fix it and the fact that you’ve stepped up and said, ‘I want to be the person to do it,’ God Bless you for that.”
After a hardy high five that turns into a thumb circle handshake, Oprah continues, shouting and clenching her fist as the audience applauds, “Somebody needs to fix it! You can do it! I am behind you! We are behind you!” Oprah finally says that today her show is a platform for “an urgent call to action.”
The whole thing looks like an infomercial to advance StudentsFirst. Michelle Rhee reports, with a saddened countenance on the results on one international test. The tests results are not representative, but she is not questioned; Oprah repeats the results and says they are not acceptable. Michelle Rhee says tenured teachers have a job for life and Oprah tells her audience they have a job for life. Plus, her audience is America. “America, hear me now,” Oprah says looking into the camera,” this is a seminal moment for us . . . we, the citizen of this country [are] either going to fall further behind or choose to move forward.” (Oprah on December 6, 2010.)
[Adapted excerpt from RESPECT FOR TEACHERS or The Rhetoric Gap and How Research on Schools is Laying the Ground for New Business Models in Education, https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781475802078 or http://www.amazon.com/Respect-Teachers-Rhetoric-Research-Education/dp/1475802072%5D
Brian, I’m confused by your subtitle. Are you referring to the research primarily of economists, such as Hanushek, which corporate “reformers” such as Gates, Rhee, etc. cite so often, rather than the research of educators, such as Berliner?
Great! I have a prompt to talk about my work.
The idea is that there is a huge gap between the rhetoric supposedly based on research and what that research would actually support.
I look mainly at VAMs, but there are sections on international test scores, charters, creativity declines, etc.
It is mainly about the economists. Rick Hanushek is one, although my point about him is that he says some very positive things about the quality of US teachers. Thomas Kane would be a better example, as would C. Hoxby.
One argument is that the same research studies (eg. Gordon, Kane and Staiger, Brookings 2006 on ‘top quartile teachers closing the achievement gap’) are mentioned again and again by the ed-attackers (can’t bring myself to say ‘reformers’) such as the MET project, the NTP and Students First, that the research is of limited application and is then misrepresented and stretched to cover their political aims.
So, to make the long sub-title longer, but clearer, it might read
How Research on Schools and statistical analysis is being used by the those who are attacking public education to Lay the Ground for New Business Models in Education
As for David Berliner, he was a bit of an inspiration for the book and was kind enough to write a recommendation.
His older work is cited in passing and his more recent work is discussed at length:
David Berliner reports that one teacher was concerned
“that lunch at her elementary school was less than 15 minutes on many days so that more time
could be put in on the rigorous curriculum areas.” Rigorous curriculum areas is code, meaning
the areas that are tested. Anything else (social studies, history, government, art, music, physi-
cal education) has been defined in her school as inherently a non-rigorous subject. Teachers
are affected, and “the most pernicious response to high stakes testing is perhaps the most
rational, namely, curriculum narrowing.”
. . .
David Berliner, using data from the Center for Education Policy,has documented decreases in instructional
time for various curriculum areas to accommodate increases in time for English language arts and mathematics. PE
and recess are, of course, included; “time for physical education is down, despite the fact that our youth are more
sedentary than they should be, are quite overweight, and Type 2 diabetes is becoming more common. It is easy to
argue that physical education is more important today than ever before, and it is acknowledged as one of the most
important ways to keep medical costs down as we slowly move to universal medical coverage. Yet physical
education is sacrificed for the possibility of a few more points on state tests that have to rise continuously to satisfy
the requirements of NCLB.” . . . he argues the short-sightedness of NCLB, saying that science, “a
field that probably will be even more important in the 21st century than in the 19th and 20th centuries, ” is also down
in average instructional time, because “Science, like social studies has been robbed of minutes to expand time for
reading and mathematics. Thus curriculum that might help insure American economic competitiveness in the future,
and surely will contribute to intelligent citizenship in our science- and technology-rich future, has been sacrificed. ”
(David Berliner, “Rational Responses to High-stakes Testing and the Special Case of Narrowing the Curriculum” paper presented at the International Conference on RedesigningPedagogy,NationalInstitute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, June 1, 2009).
My apologies to David — I had asked that this be moved to the text, but much of it is relegated to a footnote. Apparently many of my late changes were not incorporated in the final text, something I have become aware of in dribs and drabs.
Thanks for the detailed clarification!
Baye Cobb was crazy to let anyone see her “teach.” Watching the clips brought back very painful memories about how inadequate I was in my first teaching job with no formal training (I was a psych major). There was no such thing as mentors back in those days either especially in the little private school for multiply handicapped kids where I “taught.” I am fortunate to not have any video documentation of my incompetence. Am I correct in understanding that all of these students and their parents did not really give INFORMED consent to this project?
“Am I correct in understanding that all of these students and their parents did not really give INFORMED consent to this project?”
I can’t figure it out from the article, nor the crazy $2000 pay per episode that the author said Steve Barr claimed the schools is to be get from OWN (She added it in the comments section).
http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2013/03/steve_barr_defends_decision_to.html
I don’t know if it’s just in my state, but I’ve been in documentaries filmed at schools (each in a single day) and the people filming always said that they were required to pay everyone $1 each. Can they possibly have 2000 students, faculty and staff at that school?
Sorry for all my 4 am typos.
It should have been “Steve Barr claimed the school is to get from OWN”
No interested in watching this, as I am sure it will turn into a TFA promo in the end. I’ll bet my bottom dollar that at the end of the series the TFA teacher will be a stellar one and will be juxtaposed with one of those lazy union thugs. I can picture the scene:
Lazy Union Thug stops in TFA’s classroom: “It’s 3:30, aren’t you leaving? We’re meeting for drinks.”
TFA: “Sorry, I have so much work to do and I know that if I stay a few extra minutes, I can boost achievement in my neediest students.”
LUT: “Well, my contractual day is over. See you tomorrow, sucker!”
How can the general public be so gullible to assume that a charter school is that much better than a public school? I guess I know the answer to my own question. I suppose it’s the big money poured into charter campaigns.
I think you would be better to pointing to the concerted campaign against public education that has been going on since at least the 1980s.
When I was young, I thought the value of public education was something all Americans agreed upon. What I did not realize is that what a lot of people meant by value was not the value to the student and the society, but the potential investment value and opportunity for profit.
this show illustrates what many parents are dealing with. immature selfish teachers dressed like kardashians just off a bender or real housewives of the OC.
Oprah is too deep into her tupperware fetish. down the rabbit hole we are.
these student if they are not actors run circles around her and deserve better.
and we are supposed to be hireing thousands more teachers raised in this selfish me generation to teach common core? appalling.
ALL I have to hear is “Gates.” Here in Denver he is really meddling, and things are only sliding downhill. MAYBE just because he probably has more homes than a subdivision, doesn’t make him an educational professor! It might be that the Charter/TFA scam is starting to show that it’s just another Trojan Horse, corporate raid on taxpayers money, and precious little interest in kids, but a BIG interest in shredding teacher’s unions, tenure and pay. This billionaire boys club invasion into everything from wars; Blackwater was such a disaster, they had to change the name to avoid the destruction that overpaid, cowboy group made, to now our public schools, and next in line is the post office! Where’s any improvement in these areas? Kind of like Romney’s “help” to private companies, pick the bones, fire workers, then cash in and call yourself a
beneficial advocate for the company HE destroyed! Just because some “celebrity” advocates for some corporate ploy, doesn’t mean we should gulp down the “wisdom.”
They are all crooks.
It isn’t one Trojan Horse, it is a chain of Trojan Horses — charters, pay-for-performance, standards — linked together, but each appealing to different constituencies. That is what makes it so powerful.
I am so glad I found this discussion amidst the deluge of pro-charter infomercial junk links on the web.