Officials in California have been meeting with Michael Fullan of Ontario to learn about the impressive improvements there.
Fullan wants to turn the state of California away from the carrots-and-sticks of No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top.
The story linked her says:
“I want California to become an alternative model to No Child Left Behind; that would be a great thing to aspire to,” Fullan said last month during an interview in Sacramento. Instead of improvement through the “negative drivers” of standardized testing and quick school turnarounds, he would shift the focus to improving instruction through “motivational collaboration” between teachers and administrators.
Fullan believes that data should be used to improve, not to punish. What a novel idea! What would our Broad trained superintendents do if they were told to help teachers and schools, not to punish them?
Good grief! Fullan’s philosophy could cause the whole miserable, mean-spirited farce of federal policy to collapse.
Want to know more about Fullan? Read this.
His ideas might be powerful enough to beat the Billionaire Boys Club. They have this one important advantage: They work.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Hi Diane,
Thanks for posting this story. I have been a big fan of Fullan’s for a long time. I interviewed him for Ed Week a few years ago. Here is the link so people can learn more about him. http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/finding_common_ground/2011/09/impressive_empathy_an_interview_with_michael_fullan.html
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Michael Fullan is fantastic, and an inspiration. He was in Maine nearly six years ago and gave a huge boost to our move towards proficiency-based/learner-centered education (see the videos at http://maine.gov/doe/cbp/videos.html for what our teachers and kids are doing). I have trouble (and I think Michael would, too) with seeing Fullan as a Knight riding in to save California. He is a powerful inspiration and advocate and ally. But many individual districts have been doing good work there for years. I would point you specifically to the Lindsay Unified School District — populated by all of the “troubling” demographics of poverty and ELL — which has done miracle level work, shifting its culture and performance.
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Whoever invited Fullan deserves credit as well… and the very fact that CA is considering abandonment of waivers is a tribute to someone with authority… my guess? Jerry Brown
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How is the US different from Ontario in other social aspects? Is the main issue why some children have issues in school poverty or not? Is this just another Finland story?
I hope he can make changes and I hope one of the changes is a great reduction in the amount of testing and how testing is used – that would be wonderful.
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I like Fullan’s four principles of positive change.
They would be more effectively implemented at the local level.
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I lost my job as a teacher after I spoke to an administrator about your book on the great American school system.
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Constance, this is not the first time that I heard that a teacher–even a principal!–was punished for talking about my book. A principal told me that he was denied permission to attend the NASSP conference because I was the keynote speaker.
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There simply are not words.
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I am in love, professionally of course. Can’t wait to read more. Thank you for sharing him with us.
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I am from Ontario, but live in the U.S. now. Many things have changed since then. There is universal health care and recently junior kindergarten is going from half to full day. There is also at least 8 months of parental leave at 3/4 pay for either parent. My nephew took it when his first child was born so that his wife could complete school to become a teacher.
Bottom line…..the government assesses the needs and provides necessary services. Also, teachers are highly unionized and are paid well. It should be no surprise that there is a lot of competition for teaching jobs. I’m sure their teachers must be horrified at the thought that anyone with only 5 weeks of training would ever be allowed in one of their classrooms.
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While trying to find out more about Fullian, I came upon the below quotes, what do you make of it?
“Fullan, the Godfather of standardized testing in Ontario, has the unmitigated gall to say “most school systems make the mistake of loading up on testing as the driver of reform. They install too many tests, too narrowly conceived, with punitive consequences- a recipe for failure.” Maybe Fullan is slowly trying to wipe his fingerprints off a failed policy but, under his advice, Ontario has too many tests, too narrowly conceived.”
http://www.thelittleeducationreport.com/TheGlass.html
“According to USA Today, Michael Fullan Enterprises Inc. received $250,000 for a five month contract in 2009 to provide professional development and long range planning to improve literacy and numeracy in Louisiana.” (http://content.usatoday.net/dist/custom/gci/InsidePage.aspx?cId=thenewsstar&sParam=30335373.story)
http://www.dailycensored.com/the-global-privatization-of-education-policy-lorna-earl-conflict-of-interest-is-the-tip-of-the-iceberg/
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Yeah. I quickly read one of the articles linked by Diane, and it seems he still ties test scores to teachers, although in a supposedly nonjudgemental way. Perhaps I read it too quickly, but the impression I had was that he was looking at test scores to inform about weaknesses a teacher may have so that the teacher can receive help. How about seeing test scores as a reflection of what is going on with the child, so that the child can receive help? I hope I just misinterpreted what the article had to say. If not, it seems to be some improvement over NCLB and RTTT, but still missing the mark.
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“It is difficult to get a man to understand something
, when his salary depends on his not understanding it” – Upton Sinclair.
Educational reformers like Arne Duncan, Chris Cerf, John White, Michele Rhee and others have NEVER understood teaching or learning and have sold their souls to please Broad, Gates, the Walton Clan and the ALEC crew.
Shame, shame shame…
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Good. Now maybe there will be a model state who gets it right, which I have been longing to see. In my state (NC) it still seems full steam ahead with RttT and all that it has mandated and now contracts with Pearson–our leadership seems determined to make it all work. I hear only defensive tones about Common Core and testing from Raleigh. I hear classroom teachers very disheartened, but plowing forward with what they are told to do. Building level leadership seems committed to seeing where the new methods take us and how to make the data work for us–no judgement about it yet, in other words.
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Re: “Fullan reviewed CORE’s waiver application, which cites his writing and says that CORE’s “alternative accountability model and day-to-day work” is motivated by the “changed culture and positive and lasting improvements” in Ontario.”
CORE is the California Office to “Reform” Education, and one of the members is Sleazy Deasy.
http://coredistricts.org/why-is-core-needed/board-of-directors/
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I think Michael Fullan (has he ever taught in a public school classroom?) is an awful lot like the College Board’s products, notably the SAT and Advanced Placement programs…grossly overhyped. Yes, Fullan has been tied to an emphasis on testing and “accountability.” And like a shape-shifter, he’s now engaging in quite a bit of semantical “rethinking.” Perhaps that has something to do with the failure of corporate-style “reform.”
And yet, Fullan is still tied to the corporate “reformers.” He cites McKinsey Consulting. He recently called Jal Mehta’s pathetic, cherry-picked, and ill-informed piece in the New York Times (titled, “Teachers: Will We Ever Learn?”) on school “reform” in the United states a “great article.” He does consulting work for Pearson, which calls him one of “our experts.” See: http://www.pearsonschool.com/index.cfm?locator=PS26S4
Fullan is now saying that the key to systemic reform is to “foster intrinsic motivation of teachers and students.” He’s saying that “teacher ownership” is essential to reform (and it is). But still, according to Fullan, an “effective driver” of reform “is one that achieves better measurable results with students.” In other words, student test scores are the bottom line. Fullan is mostly using some new terminology for the same kind kind of “reform” touted by the College Board, the Common Core enthusiasts, Pearson, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable.
Bill Gates has also been using some new words of late. But does anyone really believe that Gates has changed his spots?
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Michael Fullan is a shape-shifter. He was once dean at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto (prestigious); in his latest incarnation he is an edupreneur for Pearson. His most recent book, “Stratosphere: Integrating Technology, Pedagogy, and Change Knowledge” (2013), is published by Pearson. According to this latest book, Fullan is part of a team funded by Gates to create a “powerful learning product through the development of digital curriculum innovations aligned with the Common Core State Standards in the United States and backed up by a teacher-implementation support system for whole-system reform” (p. vi). I am a veteran Ontario teacher (30+ years) currently writing a PhD dissertation on teacher evaluation (UWO) and I am not a fan of Michael Full an.
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Fullan is working with a government that just imposed a contract on Ontario teachers, essentially revoking their right to collective bargaining. Whoa! He’s no model for us.
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Fullan still supports standardized testing and as a result rules himself and his disciples out of the “progressive” camp in Ontario. The teachers and progressive parents support a zero standardized testing position.
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I submitted a paper to the teachers’ unions in Ontario titled “The Glass is Half Fullan”. progresive on easy issues, reactionary when it gets difficult to be progressive.
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