A comment on the blog about the state of public education in Michigan:
I am a retired high school English teacher in Michigan. After I retired I served 8 years on our board of education. I retired in 2000 and have a son, daughter and daughter-in-law in the teaching profession.
What has happened in Michigan since I retired is appalling. Our teachers are being demoralized, our school aid fund has been raided to give tax breaks to big business, tenure is gone, and evaluations are being based on test scores. Benefits have been reduced for teachers and right to work is in play.
Our legislators believe the EAA which has taken over some schools in Detroit should be expanded when it hasn’t even been in effect for year and so far doesn’t have a good track record.
The latest I have read is that there in now contemplation to raid the school aid fund again to pay for roads. There is also word that teacher pay will be tied to student performance.
Governor Snyder sends his child to a private school where small class sizes exist, many types of classes are offered and standardized testing is not an issue.
Dick DeVos and the Mackinac Center along with Michelle Rhee seem to have a big influence on our governor and right wing legislators. We need a great deal of help in our state to restore public education to what it once was.
Cyber schools, charter schools and private takeover will destroy our state if we don’t start electing people who can turn it around. I told my son that “this too shall pass,”, but I worry daily.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This seems to be the story everywhere in America, some places worse than others. Does anyone know where the states are that still respect the teachers and are fighting the takeovers.
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Diane,
I came across your blog by accident while trying to find out just how many people live in our school district (Lakeshore – Berrien County). 2,273 people just voted yes on a 37 million dollar bond issue that makes a lot of building improvements at the High School and Middle School, but they turned down a separate proposal that would have allowed for the same type of classroom expansions at the elementary school level by building another smaller elementary school so the older, existing elementary schools could be retrofitted.
I was heartbroken that, once again, our community puts no value on elementary education. I have a daughter in 3rd Grade. I am homeschooling this year. The straw that broke the camel’s back forcing me to make that decision was the elimination of a 3rd Grade class. Kids were being shuffled across the district so that teachers could be repurposed and the maximum class sizes could be achieved all to save money on teachers in the wake of the state budget cuts. There were too many kids in the classrooms.
I see that your blog posts are advocating for teachers and you bring many years of experience to the table. I, myself, went to public school and I loved it. I respected and admired my teachers.I think I received a very good education. We moved a lot when I was younger, but even so, across the nation I believe I learned all I needed to know in the classroom in order to be prepared for college or whatever. I went to elementary school in the 70s.
However, what I experienced in elementary school with my daughter is not the educational experience of my youth. And the differences did not impress me; even in a school district that is supposed to be “one of the better ones”. The teachers were great. The prinicipal was great. There was good parent involvement (PTO). But the curriculum was not great. My opinion, of course.
Whole Language focus, rudimentary phonics, no textbooks, no full-time librarian, Everyday Math, Daily 5’s, movement, movement, movement are all recipes for failure, especially in buildings not designed for it. In fact, the kids who succeed under this model are the kids with parents who spend all their free time with their children working on proficiency in math and language arts after school.
So, while I support teachers, voted yes on both our local proposals (even though I am homeschooling), passed out flyers, reminded people to attend the bond meetings, worked my butt off at the school my daughter attended while she was there, spent all the extra time at home working with my daughter on math facts, writing assignments, reading, etc., my critical observations as a parent regarding the curriculum were politely dismissed.
Do you think it is wrong that parents hold accountable the people in charge of their children’s education? I know teachers get a lot of undue criticism, but we are now in a culture where if a child does not perform at the expected level, many teachers blame a lack of parent involvement. My parents had zero involvement in my education and didn’t have to because education happened at school.
I’m just wondering what you think the solution is. College professors are telling us that high school graduates are awful writers and even poorer mathematicians. The Common Core is being maligned as too draconian, or at least the testing that comes with it. Yet, I didn’t hear one teacher complain when the MEAP cut scores for proficiency were 39%. Only after the cut scores were raised to 69% was there grumbling. I guess my standards are too high and I am a dinosaur.
Nobody is happy, it seems.
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The post could have also noted that Arne Duncan was here last week schmoozing with Governor Snyder at EAA Schools and proclaiming them wonderful.
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Steve,
Both Arne and the President have a bad habit of hobnobbing with the enemies of public education and public school educators. Like Jeb Bush, hailed as “a champion of education reform” by the President. Like Kasich, with whom the President shared a cheerful lunch as Kasich attacked collective bargaining. Like John White, whom Arne described as “a visionary.” Like Michelle Rhee, who earned the repeated acclaim of both the President and Arne.
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As a person that dislikes Duncan, I know. My post was a criticism of Duncan, the equivalent of an Internet eye-roll.
I reached the point of frustration that led me to email the White House to state that I could no longer support candidates that are doing everything they could to eliminate public education.
Duncan’s legacy will be lauded by those who are enriching themselves at the expense of our education system. Unfortunately, it will have dire results.
Thank you for this blog, by the way. It’s a bookmarked daily read.
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This is the very worst thing that the Democratic Party has ever done to its voting base. They smugly believe that there will be no repercussions. They believe the party’s future is secure because it lies with HIspanics. Hispanics only care about immigration policy. So public education, social security, and Medicaid are all open to the mega-wealthy to plunder.
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You misspieled “Nut’s Hell” …
http://www.eclectablog.com/2013/05/after-stripping-billions-in-school-funding-michigan-gop-seeks-to-tie-teacher-pay-primarily-to-student-educational-growth.html
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At least homeschooling is still legal in this state of Michigan and the United States. It isn’t in Germany, and my impression is that most public school advocates would really prefer to eliminate the option of homeschooling. From my radical libertarian perspective, I would prefer each state and the federal government as well, to get out of the business of guaranteeing a free public education to every person. Eliminate the school taxes on real estate, and let each resident buy private education to the extent they can. Anathema, I know. But in the last thirty years public school education has failed to teach and support the nature of true Americanism, which puts freedom first, and has substituted for it a utopian and unattainable vision of equity and egalitarianism. The Rawlsian vision of Justice as Equality has prevailed. Freedom is possible for a government to attain, but equality is not. The Constitution does not guarantee equality of economic situation, only equality before the law. Yet equity is been redefined to mean equality. It is the legal and philosophical corruption of our time, and is destroying us as a nation. Pretty soon the freedom will be gone, but equality will not have been attained. So, tyranny for the masses and elite schools and life style for the demagogues of the masses. It’s not new in history, but it is new in the USA, and public school teachers have been crucial to the philosophic destruction upon which their own justification for existence was based. Most, however, do not realize the extent that they are responsible for the challenges to their own existence. By embracing an impossible dream—educating everyone—they gave up doing well what they could do—educating the educable. Pity though.
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Harlan,
It is hard to disagree with everything you say. I hear you. BUT, I am not anti-public education. I believe we are all better off if Americans are not ignorant. What I can’t abide is ineffective or bad public education, and I see that much too often.
What is new in the equation is that now there is finger pointing at parents. Yet, we have absolutely no say in what or how our children are taught. There are plenty of expectations of us, however. I resented that….A LOT!
And I, too, feel lucky that I have the option to homeschool, but not everyone does, even if it is legal to do so. Public education is not a 21st century or even a 20th century concept. Towns used to pool together to hire their one-room schoolhouse teachers. Today’s local schools, while bigger, are based on many of the same concepts; shared responsibility for the education of their residents. Of course, teachers were more accountable to their employers back then.
I am really looking for some honest answers on how to solve the problem short of being completely beholden to what a union thinks is best for teachers being also what is best for students (no offense to teachers, really). I would like to see compromise and a willingness to reconsider what is not working and I really wish some teachers who do not agree with some of these bad practices would courageously stand beside the parents and say so.
I’ve seen the Common Core expectations for 3rd grade and they do not seem too stringent. I cannot speak to the tests because I have not seen them and they have not been implemented in our area yet. I do not have a problem with standardized tests, but that should not be the entire focus of the school year. On the other hand, if a teacher’s students consistently perform significantly below other students in the same school and/or district, wouldn’t that infer a problem? It seems logical to me that testing for students is beneficial to both guage what they are learning (on their own, not in the new group think environment) and how effective individual teachers are within their own community. But again, I seem to be in the minority among people who are pro public schools and teachers.
So, I will continue to homeschool. If my daughter does not perform well, I will be fairly blamed. But I also have the freedom to switch curriculum and teaching methods in the event she falls behind or, alternatively, excels.
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Exactly. Kids do develop at different rates. Teachers need to be flexible. At some point they will all read and make change, but not all at the same time. Best of luck.
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Speaking of Nut’s Hells —
You can always tell the “educable” by the wealth of their parents, so let’s drop all that nonsense about an educated electorate being essential to the success of democracy and just keep doing all we can to keep the masses dumb and the dumb from voting.
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