Linda Darling-Hammond of Stanford University is one of the nation’s leading experts on teacher preparation. This is her commentary on the report released by the National Council on Teacher Quality, which attempts to rate the quality of the nation’s colleges of education by reviewing their catalogues and course syllabi.
What Can We Learn about Teacher Education Quality
from the NCTQ Report on Teacher Prep?
Linda Darling-Hammond
This week, the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) issued a report titled: NCTQ Teacher Prep Review. Billed as a consumer’s guide, the report rates programs on a list of criteria ranging from selection and content preparation to coursework and student teaching aimed at the development of teaching skills. While the report appropriately focuses on these aspects of teacher education, it does not, unfortunately, accurately reflect the work of teacher education programs in California or nationally.
NCTQ’s methodology is a paper review of published course requirements and course syllabi against a check list that does not consider the actual quality of instruction that the programs offer, evidence of what their students learn, or whether graduates can actually teach. Concerns about the organization’s methods led most schools of education nationally and in California to decline to participate in the data collection. (NCTQ’s website indicated that fewer than 1% of programs in the country “fully cooperated” with the study.) NCTQ collected documents through websites and public records requests. The ratings published in this report are, thus, based on partial and often inaccurate data, and fail to evaluate teacher education quality.
The field’s concerns were reinforced last month when NCTQ published ratings of states’ teacher education policies which bore no relationship to the quality of their training systems or to their outcomes as measured by student achievement. In this study, the highest-achieving states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — including Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, New Jersey, and Minnesota — all got grades of C or D, while low-achieving Alabama got the top rating from NCTQ. It is difficult to trust ratings that are based on criteria showing no relationship to successful teaching and learning.
In this latest study of programs, the indicators used to measure the criteria often fail to identify the aspects of practice that are most important or the actual outcomes that programs achieve. A case in point: Graduate programs at highly-selective universities like Harvard, Columbia, and Stanford got low ratings for selectivity because they do not require a minimum grade point average or GRE score, although their students in fact rank far above national averages on these measures. NCTQ was uninterested in the actual grades or test scores earned by candidates.
In addition, the degree of inaccuracy in the data is shocking. Columbia was rated highly for the selectivity of an undergraduate program that does not even exist. Stanford received low scores for the reported absence of courses in secondary mathematics education that do in fact exist (indeed candidates must take three full courses in mathematics curriculum and instruction) and are prominently displayed, along with syllabi, on its website. UC-Santa Barbara’s three courses in elementary mathematics education, four courses in the teaching of English learners, and full year of student teaching were also entirely missed, along with its entire secondary credentialing program, all prominently displayed on the website. California State University at Chico was rated poorly for presumably lacking “hands-on” instruction, even though it is well-known in the state for its hands-on learning lab and requires more than 500 hours of clinical training during its full year of graduate level preparation.
It is clear as reports come in from programs that NCTQ staff made serious mistakes in its reviews of nearly every institution. Because they refused to check the data – or even share it – with institutions ahead of time, they published badly flawed information without the fundamental concerns for accuracy that any serious research enterprise would insist upon.
In addition to these shortcomings, NCTQ’s methods are especially out of synch with California’s approach to teacher education in two ways:
• First, while the NCTQ checklist is based largely on the design of undergraduate programs (tallying subject matter courses required during the program), California moved long ago to strengthen teacher education by requiring graduate level programs, which require subject matter competency BEFORE entering preparation. The means by which the state ascertains teachers’ competency — through college majors, approved subject matter programs, and rigorous state-developed tests — are ignored in the NCTQ ratings.
• Second, while NCTQ focuses on paper requirements for inputs, California has moved toward accountability based on stronger evidence of outcomes, including rigorous tests of basic skills, content knowledge, and pedagogy. These include California’s Teacher Performance Assessments, required under SB 2042, that have made the state the first in the nation to judge teachers’ skills and abilities in real K-12 classrooms with real students. At least one of these assessments has been shown to predict teachers’ later effectiveness in raising student achievement. These outcomes are also absent from the NCTQ framework. The candidates who have made their way through all of these assessments constitute only two-thirds of those who initially set out to seek teaching credentials.
Accurate, well-vetted information on course requirements and syllabi, plus extensive data on actual candidate qualifications, evaluations of program quality, employers’ assessments of candidates’ readiness, and graduates’ performance in classrooms are available through state and national accreditation records, as well as in-depth studies conducted by researchers. The California Commission on Teacher Credentialing (CCTC) is a ready source of such data, as is the national accrediting body (the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation). CCTC received no request from NCTQ for this information.
Unfortunately, the answer to the question of what we can learn about teacher education quality from the NCTQ report on Teacher Prep is “not much.” Without reliable data related to what programs and their candidates actually do, the study is not useful for driving improvement.
In contrast to the NCTQ approach, researchers and educators serious about improving preparation are focusing attention on developing accurate and reliable data about program outcomes and useful evidence of program quality. In California, the Commission on Teacher Credentialing, like others across the nation, is redesigning licensing and accreditation with these goals in mind. To secure ongoing improvement, teacher educators must pursue comprehensive accountability and increased transparency in data about the outcomes of our programs and the opportunities to learn they provide.
Linda Darling-Hammond is the chair of the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing and the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Education at Stanford University.
They must be hiding WMDs. There’s no other plausible explanation for the war on education.
This report is one more example of the danger of bad data damaging education. When we consider all the time and energy and money invested on data…it’s a shame that we can’t think of any other use for funds that are so depareately needed in schools, for students and teachers.
Philadelphia education activist had a column in the Philadelphia Daily News on June 4th about NCTQ.
Teacher-quality study lacks quality
http://tinyurl.com/lb5ld8h
And so the Information Age became the Age of Data Manipulation…
I wonder if Gutenberg had regrets.
Or if medical science should thank the Civil War generals for advances in amputation techniques and pain management?
I’m impatient for the pendulum to swing back to equity and reason.
I am afraid the pendulum is off its hook.
It no longer adheres to the natural laws of physics.
Well said, Ron!
For a moment there, I thought I found a study NOT connected to the Gates Foundation. That was a funny moment:
http://www.nctq.org/p/about/funders.jsp
Those of us who have paid a lot of money to get certified as teachers, get Masters, and continue our education should really be thankful for Gates for telling us that we suck.
In my seething anger, that post probably came out as incomprehensible and could use some editing. But hey, what do I know…I’m just a teacher.
Makes perfect sense to me, but then again I’m just a teacher too!
I, too, much be one of those ignorant teachers because it made complete sense to me.
Another backer :
The Chronicle of Philanthropy-
No. 3: John and Laura Arnold – Philanthropy 50
Amount donated in 2012: $423.4-million
Top beneficiary: Laura and John Arnold Foundation
Background: Mr. Arnold founded Centaurus Energy, a hedge fund. Ms. Arnold is a former corporate lawyer and former businesswoman.
Mr. Arnold, 38, and Ms. Arnold, 39, gave more than $251.2-million to their Laura and John Arnold Foundation, which they established in 2008 to support nonprofits and programs working to improve the criminal-justice, K-12 public-education, and pension systems. Including their most recent donation, the Arnolds have put more than $900-million into the fund.
The foundation awarded about $70.1-million to charitable causes last year, including a total of $25-million in grants to two groups to establish and expand charter schools in New Orleans: the Charter School Growth Fund and New Schools for New Orleans…”
http://philanthropy.com/article/No-3-JohnLaura-Arnold/137127/
Would love to read Darling-Hammond or Ravitch’s take on why the vast majority of grad schools of education, including their teacher training programs, are little more than indoctrination centers of Leftist political propaganda. I attended a well-regarded ed school and most of my coursework was devoted to reading about 1) Marxist “educators” ie. Paolo Freire, 2) why the so-called Black/Latino achievement gap was rooted in white racism and poverty– without regard to the most important and decisive factor–family/parent VALUES, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender or sexual orientation. Also, the professors had little interest in actually preparing new teachers to teach effectively–most (not all, thank goodness) preferred to pontificate about the evils of racism, homophobia and capitalism rather than on methodology, discipline/classroom management, sharing the most effective/creative lessons or classroom organization. Those matters must have been too mundane. These professor/pontificators and their likeminded policy and bureaucratic hacks would rather keep their ivory towers in a
bubble. The politicization of education from the Left and insistence on incessant testing from the Right have dismantled public education. Common sense, not Common Core will save public education.
to mention producing more effective teachers. Teaching isn’t exclusively a science or an art, but a profession/craft built on common sense, content knowledge, superb communication, empathy and morality.
to mention actually focusing on effective teaching stategies and classroom management/discipline–practical matters that are apparently too mundane for the indoctrinators. Lest you think I’m only attacking the Left (which has been far more effective at dismantling the teaching profession and public education in general), I have no use for the NCLB bs and incessant standardized testing, favored mostly by the Right. In short, stop the politicization of public education and the teaching profession. Teaching is not a science or an art, but rather a profession/craft with a foundation of common sense, content knowledge, superior communic
to mention actually teaching about how to be an effective teacher. Teaching is not an art or a science, but rather profession or craft that first and foremost, operates on a foundation of common sense, morality and intellectual curiosity. By constantly politicizing the teaching profession, whether from the Right (incessant standardized testing, scapegoating teachers for parental/societal breakdown) or Left (elevating race, gender, class, sexual orientation, ad nauseum, over VALUES, ignoring the elephant in the room about the so-called “achievement gap”),
I was never indoctrinated and never indoctrinated anyone myself.
I can’t respond to a claim lacking evidence.
You are doing so here, Diane, on this blog, by lending your immense prestige to an approach to the problem which cannot succeed, thereby encouraging many confused teachers to hug to themselves their confusion and call it holy.
As for not responding, the Achievement Gap is the elephant in the room. That’s a “fact” at least. The claim is that the Achievement Gap reflects a cultural difference in attitude toward academic work between white and black students, specifically a values difference, or a moral difference. Is that a claim without evidence? I think you are sliding away a bit too easily here. At least recommend to her the book you recommended to me, Rothstein was it?
I’m disappointed in your terse, dismissive response, especially since I’ve read and enjoyed several of your books and have always admired your insight and cogent analyses of education issues. I could always rely on you for clear thinking. My evidence isn’t merely anecdotal…simply look at the syllabi of the classes at almost any graduate school of education, especially the reading lists–they are rife with Leftist politics and philosophies. Disagreement is often met with ad hominem attacks, rather than reasoned arguments. . There are few, if any, non-Leftist professors in the Education departments of the majority of grad schools of education,let alone “conservative”. Are the ed school professor/pontificators interested in actual inquiry, discussion and debate–especially opposing views? I thought that was what the university was all about. The late Allan Bloom nailed it in “The
Closing of the American Mind” back in 1990. I just never thought that you would fall prey to the oppressive political correctness that has the grad schools of education and the rest of the social sciences.
Methinks that Rachel is one of the people who believe that the achievement gap is caused by inferior cultures that do not value education. Unfortunately she is a representative of the genus ” HomorItaintourfaultthestudentsareproductsoftheirgenesandhomelife. ” I often wonder why people take money for teaching if they are sure that the students they are teaching are fatally flawed and cannot learn, sounds like stealing to me. There are only two reasons that could possibly explain the achievement gap, either blacks and other people of color ( we might stir in low income white students as well) are inherently dumber than white and Asian kids ( has anyone done study of how less affluent Asian students like those from Laos or Hmong students do btw?) or the system is flawed and does a poor job of educating those students. Not because of cultural dysfunction in the student’s family but at least partially due to cultural discontinuities among the teaching and administrative staff of the schools. A good teacher can teach anyone. I poor teacher needs a new career.
You go, Girl! Love, love, love your book. It’s informative, fair and shocking, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. A must read for everyone who’s attended school or knows someone who does, which would be everyone.
“International tests show achievement gaps in all countries” – See: http://www.epi.org/blog/international-tests-achievement-gaps-gains-american-students/#sthash.T83nfw1C.dpuf
I don’t recall being indoctrinated while obtaining my teaching certificates.
And, BTW…I haven’t noticed that the values of the low SES families I now serve are in any way inferior to those of the very upper crust types at a past school…if that is what you were trying to imply.
But I have noticed how the very real incidents of racism, sexism, homophobia I have witnessed have negatively impacted my students. It does not hurt prospective teachers to investigate bias ( including their own…everyone has them), and the impact of those biases on the students in their care.
There is nothing wrong with “investigating bias”, but when that becomes the raison d’etre of the entire program, to the detriment of other aspects of the program, ie. student teaching.mentoring, effective classroom management, etc., it’s a problem. The Leftist professor/pontificators had a clear bias themselves, but often were not open to dialogue or debate from their captive student audience. There are other points of view, ie. values determine behavior far more than race, gender, class, sexual orientation, etc.–and I would have like to heard competing perspectives. I remember several times when I made cogent arguments against bilingual education and was demonized with ad hominem attacks, rather than actual cogent arguments, as in a great debate. The university should be about a marketplace of ideas and inquiry–when today, it has become the exact opposite. The Left is all about free speech–until they are actually challenged and have to respond. Facts and common sense to a Leftist is like Kryptonite to Superman.
Can you name some? My grad school was not an indoctrination center.
Some? I don’t thinks so. She generalized her experience at ONE grad school to “the vast majority.”
I would venture to guess that they did not do so well in teaching her proof-reading and editing skills, too.
JustCareAlot–
Having trouble with computer connection to this blog and editing problems (my screen jumped a bit and I was having trouble scrolling) is not the same as not having proofreading/editing skills. I assume that your errors, “proof-reading” and “I don’t thinks so” are for the same reason, not that you lack basic skills. Your ad hominem attack on me obviously substitutes for a cogent response to my arguments.
I’m not only referring to my alma mater (CSUN), but to many other schools. Here are some other schools, whose teacher education course syllabi I have observed to be filled with Leftist dogma–based on reading lists and the published articles by professors in their departments. Reading lists give you an insight into the core curricula of the respective program. This is the tip of the iceberg, out of the hundreds of universities across the country.
Arizona State, U of Ariz., Columbia, Miami U of Ohio, Penn State, Temple,UCBerkeley, UCSantaCruz, UCLA, U of Colorado Boulder,
U of Wisconsin, Michigan State,
Syracuse, Portland State,
Cal State Northridge, CS Dominguez Hills, CS LA, Cal State Humboldt, CS Long Beach.
USC, U of Pittsburgh,
of Missouri, U of Pittsburgh,
“The Indoctrination Myth” http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/04/opinion/sunday/college-doesnt-make-you-liberal.html?_r=0
You didn’t read any Foucault, Derrida, Lyotard or Irigary. If not then you certainly didn’t attend a “leftist indoctrination center”
Harlan, is that you dressed up a female?
Irigaray.
Like!
LMFAO, Duane!
No Derrida? What a pity! He was without a doubt–there’s no contest there–the greatest humorist of the twentieth century.
Agree with you on Derrida!
I was thinking the same thing.
At last, my long lost daughter, RachelM has shown up on this blog. I WAS successful in raising a sensible child. Welcome home, oh great and sensible soul.
Foucault and Derrida are best suited for other disciplines, ie. philosophy, and I read plenty of Derrida’s deconstuctionist bilge for other courses. Foucault would, no doubt, justify the bloody excesses of the French Revolution. He was also read and admired by Pol Pot, who unfortunately, acted on his “egalitarian” impulses. Being on the Left means never having to say you’re sorry.
In my graduate education programs I did have to read books and articles by Jonthan Kozol, Angela Calabrese Barton, Paolo Freire, Eric Gutstein, Gloria Ladson Billings, William Tate, Bill Ayers, Maxine Greene, Howard Zinn–those are just ones that quickly come to mind. They are all on the Left. I have no problem with that, but it would be nice to have had other reading lists by non-Leftist thinkers, ie. Samuel Huntington, Allan Bloom, Diane Ravitch, Dan Willingham,
Stephan and Abigail Thernstrom, etc.
It is the obvious Leftist bias and lack of multiple perspectives in these grad school programs that is one big factor of declining teacher ed quality.
Rachel,
“. . . that is one big factor of declining teacher ed quality.”
And your source for that statement please. Who has determined that teacher ed quality has declined? What parameters are being used when in determining that there is a decline in teacher ed quality? If you did not agree with the program you were in why did you continue? Did you challenge your profs on the readings? What exactly is your masters in?
Gracias,
Duane
Rachel,
So, wait, let me understand….
Are you basing your cogent argument on your personal university experiences? I cannot seem to tell from your several responses.
ie: “I attended a well-regarded ed school and most of my coursework was devoted to reading about 1) Marxist “educators” ie. Paolo Freire, 2) why the so-called Black/Latino achievement gap was rooted in white racism and poverty”
But then:
simply look at the syllabi of the classes at almost any graduate school of education, especially the reading lists–they are rife with Leftist politics and philosophies. ”
So you looked at reading lists of universities you did not attend? And from that you determined how the class discussions went?
“Disagreement is often met with ad hominem attacks, rather than reasoned arguments.” Or were you referring at this point back to your own, personal experience?
Was Marxist philosophy the “raison d’etre of the entire program” at your school or just the other universities whose reading lists you perused or both?
And since you said you were the victim of numerous ad hominem attacks (i.e.: “Your ad hominem attack on me obviously substitutes for a cogent response to my arguments.” etc) do you want to rethink the following:
” Facts and common sense to a Leftist is like Kryptonite to Superman.”
And:
“Being on the Left means never having to say you’re sorry.”
Or do you consider those statements part of a “cogent argument”?
They come across like sound bite/bumper sticker insults to my ears, not so much on the cogent debate/ University level discussion thing you seem to insist others need adhere to.
If you university experience was terrible, I am sorry you did not transfer.
Do you acknowledge that others of us did not experience a leftist indoctrination camp during graduate school?
And, finally,please share the research that suggests that values (I suppose you mean values of the children and their families)are the problem in education. I seem to have missed this, and it does not jibe with my experience. As I said, I haven’t noticed that the values of the low SES families I now serve are in any way inferior to those of the very upper crust types at a past school…if that is what you were trying to imply.
Thank you
Rachel,
How would you change education programs? You mention Allan Bloom. Would programs be improved if teachers spent their time reading Sophocles and Kant? What would you have liked to have learned that you believe you failed to learn? How would it have helped you be a more effective teacher?
I ask these questions honestly. I am a professor in a College of Education, in an extremely conservative state that is far from a bastion of the left. Yet, I am familiar with all of the writers (on left and right) that you discuss. However, what I have found is that few of the writers you have cited on the right have actually conducted research. The work of Allan Bloom, for example, is based entirely on his personal opinion, with no grounding in scientific research.
Also, you should understand that ad hominem arguments are those that attack the person. When someone points out concerns with your spelling or rhetoric, they are not making an ad hominem argument. Allan Bloom, a philosopher, would tell you the same. However, you calling someone an “indoctrinator” IS an ad hominem argument. If you truly understood the philosophy that you claim to support, then you would be sure to understand the difference.
Where is your education degree from? How long have you been teaching and where did you get the information that teacher preparation programs spend an inordinate amount, or even a significant amount of time preaching about racism and homophobia? I would love to hear about that because virtually all of the programs I know about give scant if any attention to who the preservice teachers might be teaching. And do tell me whose “values” we should be teaching in a public school where the parent’s and community values are not all the same.
Rachele,
I’m sorry you personally had such bad experiences. Your reliance on over-generalization and the use of “latius hos” fallacies attest to the lack of critical thinking skills in your preparation.
So the “achievement gap” is actually a values gap? The poor don’t have values? Material values like food on the table for families? Spiritual values like love and brotherhood?
“Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”
I’m mourning because administrators think I teach data not children. I hunger for righteousness for them (I’ve become inured to injustice). I’m a middle child, so I was born a peacemaker but I have trouble making peace with bureaucrats who don’t VALUE children.
Your biblical citation is very touching, but misses the point. Of course every human being should promote the universal values of love, compassion, mercy, peace, etc, and that transcends rich and poor.
I’m talking about values that translate into behavior that either enables or disables school success (this being an education blog): There are dysfunctional familes across the spectrum of race, ethnicity and class. Generational poverty and the values that go with that determine behavior. There are of course, external factors that all groups have had to deal with historically, ie. The Great Depression. But some groups have done better than others. Asian students from all countries (except the Hmong) have academically outperformed all other groups, including “White”, yet many of those people arrived to our country as poor immigrants and faced similiar discrimination and bias. As a teacher, I have had several hundred Asian students, esp. Filipino, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese and Korean, and only a handful have not done well in school. The vast majority have been respectful and have shown a strong work ethic and desire to prosper. Poverty isn’t just economic; there is spiritual poverty, as well, as plenty of wealthy, middle class and poor children aren’t getting the moral wisdom and guidance they need from their families. Hence, a societal coarsening and breakdown. Civilizations decay from within. Cultural values matter.
Sorry to pontificate a bit, but to follow up on the causes of the “achievement gap” really being a cultural/moral values gap, as a I have some basic questions. The answers would give me an idea of how much value that family puts on education. We will determine if it is really economic poverty or other kinds of poverty that determine school success. Of course money matters when you want your child to travel a lot, go to expensive private schools or have no concerns about making sure your child eats all meals with organic food. Most of us don;t fall into the above, but we adapt and make do, because we consider education of our children–both at home and in school–to be vital.
1. Does the family value reading? Do parents take their kids to the library or read to them? Do parents consider that important? Do they visit the local museum, national park, that might be fun and educational for their child, or go to Las Vegas or Six Flags often for their family outing? Values determine choices.
Or do they spend whatever disposable income they might have on the latest video game equipment or other electronic goodies? I have Title I students with fancier cellphones and the latest Xbox, who tell me they don’t ever go to a library. or a museum with their family (and most museums have free admission days now).
2. Does the family make sure their child does his/her homework. I don’t mean elaborate projects, I mean a page or two of math, etc.
3. Is the family itself intellectual curious? Do parents engage their child in conversation and wonderment? This builds vocabulary and background information long before school starts.
Generations of poor people have been impovershed monetarily, but were rich in so many other things. Read the primary source letters of Civil War, WW1 or WW2 soldiers (of different races/ethnicities) most of whom weren’t even middle class (by today’s standards) and you will see that poverty or racism ipso facto isn’t nearly the factor that cultural values are in educational success.. The quality of the writing was like Shakespeare, compared to the average student of the same age today. Clearly, literacy has suffered, but economic poverty and racism are not the causes.
Rachel, you outline some interesting (and likely valid) possible familial/cultural causes of “literacy” — however, I think you end with the fallacious assumption that those are the ONLY factors involved in determining a child’s “literacy”.
Why couldn’t family income have an effect IN ADDITION to the probable causes you mentioned? Do you really think that a child from a family that values education and models good learning behaviors, but lives in poverty, is likely to have the same outcomes as one who comes from an identical background with the exception that the household has wealth?
Rachel,
“. . . aren’t getting the moral wisdom and guidance they need from their families.”
And what might be the guide to “moral wisdom and guidance”?
And how does one tell if that “moral wisdom and guidance” is the correct “path”?
“. . . making sure your child eats all meals with organic food.”
Is that one of those bits of moral wisdom?
Nicely put.
And then there is Dr. Ben Carson as an example of how values triumph over economic status.
“Cultural values matter.” Of course cultural values matter and many cultures share the same values – family, respect, compassion, empathy… They also differentiate and separate people based on appearance, SES, religion, etc. The sociological theory of cultural hegemony depends on one social class that manipulates values and societal mores in order to maintain their status. As a part of the hegemonic culture, a privileged white male who went to a private religious school, even I can see that the current “testing culture” of schools does nothing to alleviate spiritual poverty or moral turpitude.
I value education but I find it difficult to find fault with a high school student who stays home to take care of a sick sibling because mom and or dad can’t afford to take a day out of work.
Based on numerous responses from teachers on this blog, poor neighborhood schools lack the resources to address multiple cultural differences. In short, many poor schools have little enrichment for children and this contributes to poor student motivation.
Can we agree that attendance and parent involvement are major contributing factors of success in school?
Schools have to do a better job of engaging both students and parents but they can’t do it by dissing the parents, cutting funding, or closing schools based on test scores.
Perhaps poor and perpetually truant students are resistant to the value of schooling because schools don’t seem to value them.
The New Company Store is from https://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/07/11-9
Perhpas I was pointed to it about a year ago on this blog.
When people aren’t valued or allowed to value themselves because the hegemony thinks they are “worth less”, the civilization they live in decays from within — just as much as the human spirit of those those shackled to the invisible chanis for the meritocracy.
The New Company Store: The Final Step in the Corporate Takeover of America
by John Atcheson
Well, here we are, slouching toward another national garage sale in which corporations bid on and buy candidates the way futures traders bid on commodities – or as our founders used to call it: an election.
As we go to the polls, it might be wise to remember the song Sixteen Tons. Here’s a few lines to refresh your memory:
Another Day Older and Deeper in Debt; and
St. Peter don’t you call me ‘cause I can’t come. I owe my soul to the Company Store.
The original version of the song was written by an ex-coal miner named George Davis and recorded on his album, When Kentucky Had No Union Men.
It is a song about the truck system, and debt bondage. Under this economic model, workers lived in houses owned by the company, shopped in stores owned by the company, and got paid in scrip minted by the company. And no matter how hard they worked, they remained indebted to the company.
The truck system survived in the US until the early 20th Century. This kind of abuse existed because government allowed it to. Then as now, wealth was highly concentrated and government was in the pocket of the plutocrats.
It came to an end with the passage of The National Industrial Recovery Act in 1933.
Since then, the US government and labor moved together to level the playing field for workers. The result was a steady increase in prosperity shared by all Americans.
That is, until about thirty years ago, when Reagan launched what has been a sustained assault on government.
Thanks to thirty years of Republican policies and Democratic complicity, we’re in the process of reopening the company store, only as with all things 21st Century, it’s a national chain.
Today, we shop with credit cards owned by “the company,” live in houses financed by “the company” – often owing more than the value of the home – and get our news and information from sources controlled by “the company.” In short, the company store is back in business.
While Republicans and Tea partiers are all aflutter over government debt, Americans owe some $11.4 trillion in consumer debt. Talk about indentured. Seventy five per cent of us are held hostage to debt.
This spring student loan debt passed $1 trillion, and the average student now owes $25,000 upon graduating, And Congress passed a law making it almost impossible for students to escape this debt through bankruptcy. Right now, it’s far easier for a corporation to default on hundreds of millions of dollars in retirement and health benefits than it is for a student to escape a few thousand in student loan debt.
Congratulations, Grad, and welcome to the company store. Oh, but you corporations and fat cats? No worries. It’s business as usual – your McMansion is protected; you can still screw your employees with impunity.
So how did this happen? How did we once again become enslaved to a system which does not represent our interests; a system which benefits the 1% at our expense?
Well, not surprisingly, corporations and plutocrats used the tools of marketing to conduct a silent takeover of the country, imposing a tyranny far more severe than the imaginary government tyranny Tea-Partiers rail against.
They systematically “branded” the forces that were capable of constraining them while rebranding the very things that worked to enslave so many of us in times past.
Using repetition, metaphors and other figures of speech that form the basis of advertising, corporations and their conservative cronies – the real modern day Madmen – made people believe up was down and right was left. And because they were unopposed by the corporate owned media and the Democratic Party, they succeeded.
Government was branded as the problem, not the solution.
The private sector got branded as the solution, not the problem.
The same private sector that set up the company stores in the 18th and 19th Centuries until the government and unions put a stop to it.
“Liberal” became an epithet – something politicians ran screaming from, and something the people identified as evil, ineffective, elitist … even though, on an issue-by-issue basis, most Americans hold progressive views.
Socialism is now equivalent to Satan worship, and anything but wild, unconstrained capitalism has been branded as socialism – or gasp – even communism. Thus, regulations preventing the Company Store, or the rape of the Earth are seen as infringements on our freedom even though they apply mostly to corporate abuse. Plutocrats must get together at their secret meetings and howl with laughter at the rubes who screw themselves because they’re worried about their freedom, which — thanks to the evisceration of government — is now essentially the freedom to be exploited.
Exhibit A? “Keep your government hands off my Medicare.” Or take this gem: “Don’t steal from Medicare to Support Socialized Medicine.”
The result of this massive con? Income mobility in the United States has all but stalled, especially in States with Republican governors. Income disparity, on the other hand has exploded and the top 10% of Americans now control 75% of the wealth. The United States now ranks behind such luminary examples of shared prosperity as Cameroon and Iraq, according to the CIA.
So now, as corporations impose an economic tyranny not seen since the 19th and early 20th Century, many Americans are chasing ghosts ginned up by the corporations and their conservative political madmen.
Welcome to the New Company Store, now opening at a location near you.
So what remedy do you recommend for this new indenturement?
I guess I would recommend that more people of color become teachers… But then they will be faced with the same question and insanity that all teachers are faced with. Do you value children or do you value tests? As long as the hegemony posits the “problem” of education as a binary issue based on test scores there is no rational solution because the “problem” is so complex.
It’s values or the economy. It’s not Republican or Democrat. It’s not Tea Party or Royalist. And it’s not relativist. We have to start with shared American values that are not capitalist claptrap. What’s wrong with being a humanist?
Robert a Tea Party Humanist would be an oxymoron. More teachers of color would be good for if nothing else role modeling. When I grew up in the East End of Xenia I did not have to be told ( although my parents did stress it) that education led to a better life. The more educated the people were the more leisure time they had, the more money they had, the nicer houses and cars they had. Because many black neighborhoods in” I knew who the educated people were and how they lived, they had the best cars, best houses, the light-skinned wives.” ( Derrick is a truth teller even when the truth is not pretty). When we moved we left older people who did not want to move and poor people who could not move. What role models do we offer poor black kids today? They had better have a 36 inch vertical jump or a great singing voice.
But, more teachers of color is only part of the answer and then only if they are the right kind of teachers of color. When i was doing ed research about 13 years ago I ran into quite a few black teachers who had at least as much contempt for their students and the same low expectations as any other teacher. They wanted me to know they were not like THOSE blacks. All teachers of students of color need better training in identifying their own biases and the origins of those biases and how to control them. We also need to insist that when we talk about teacher dispositions and our expectations that they believe all students can learn that we mean it.
Republicans are not the friends of education for good reason. The more educated you are the more likely to vote Democrat. This can be clearly seen by the war the GOP has waged on public education.
I had hopes for you Cookie, but you repeat the same old anti-Tea Party and anti-Republican canards as Diane and so many others on this blog do. Thinking like that has broken the public schools and elected The Feckless One, twice no less. You break it, you buy it, Arne Duncan, CCSC, and all. When, and if, the tea party can save this country, you’ll be as welcome as ever, but it would be encouraging to see a few more black Democrats showing a little more understanding of the real principles of freedom. Conservatives call it drinking the kool aid. Jim Jones is Obama. If you follow him willingly what can anyone do? You have a right to choose your own religion. I never understood how he could get away with it, but he did. I want you to live, literally and philosophically. But if you prefer the cult to reality, it’s none of my business any more. Pity though.
Had I known you were a Tea Partier Harlan I would have not had any hopes for you. Which one of the dysfunctional subcategories do you fall into, or do you have a matrix of nasty? Are you a racist, a xenophobe, a homophobe, a misogynist, a religious fanatic, a gun nut, greedy or just mentally challenged? Before you throw around terms like ad hominem rest assured that I can provide evidence for all of the above if necessary. TheTea Party has been enabled by a greedy media that has decided to treat the lunacy of the right wing as worthy of notice. Their excuse is to provide a balance of opinion. We all , well all rational people know, that everyone’s beliefs and ideas are not worthy of dissemination. The Tea Party is, however, happily for lefties like myself, helping guide the GOP over the cliff of extinction.
The GOP mistakenly decided that the Tea Party could deliver votes. The fact that it was made up a of a loose coalition of nut cases did not seem to bother them as long as they won elections, but then when it comes to winning most political parties have little difficulty shelving ethics. So, they allowed people like Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann and Paul to rise to prominence so they could say outrageous and obviously untrue things to get the toothless folks from Snake’s Navel Arkansas to vote. They whipped up paranoia, ” Obama is going to take your guns!”, ” White people are going to be made slaves!”, “Them smart Democrats thinks you are stupid!” , ” They are trying to crush Christianity because their leader is a Muslim born in Kenya” ( that one was a twofer, race and religion!) and convinced them the world was coming to an end if they did not vote GOP.
I feel sorry for the GOP actually. I wish we did have a two party system that all people could find a commonality of purpose with, with only differences of opinion. To begin with the current system where people of color vote almost exclusively for the Democrats allows the Dems to take us for granted and the GOP to engage more effectively in one of their new favorites, voter suppression. It is not healthy for a political system for the other party to be able to look at people and tell who they are probably voting for. But, the GOP sold blacks down the river with their Southern Strategy adopted in the 1960s to attract the racist Dixiecrats disenchanted with the Democrats for pushing through the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The GOP stroked its double chin and said ,” Hmm racist votes and a lot of them for the plucking! Throw the blacks overboard!”
Sadly for the GOP, however, the ascendency of your idiots who decided to wage a war on women, raise the cost of student loans and engage in their continued racist and homophobic and xenophobic behaviors means the only people who can be Republicans are those who are not students, not educated, not of color, not female, not poor, not social justice advocates and lack critical thinking skills. There are, of course, bright, educated GOPers. They are the ones making money off of those in steerage.
I should have known you were a Tea Partier when you started talking about reparations. You are one of those people who is so sure that everyone else wants his money that you sit in the dark clutching your purse and growling at any shadow that crosses your window, ” mine, mine, mine, mine, get your own, mine.” I will leave you with the apt , and quite true, quote by the great Galbraith.The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.”
I think lumping Ron Paul in with the Tea Party nutjobs is unfair. He’s a bright guy who is right about a lot of things that the media’s owners don’t want being taken seriously. It’s true that he can come across as a bit odd; the media focused on this and amplified it by 100 times for a reason, though.
That’s quite a rant, Cookie. Q.E.D. Pity though.
Oh do save your pity for yourself Harlan. You are an endangered species and your pseudo intellectualism is your last gasp effort to be relevant in a world that has left you and your ilk behind. The election of Barack Obama and his reelection has demonstrated that people with your narrow, mean-spirited, world view are no longer going to be indulged in the public sphere unless they choose to associate with people they will no doubt find otherwise inferior to validate their anachronistic beliefs. You can always find a haven on Fox News, of course.
Cookie, Obama’s election may have been a triumph for multiculturalism in one sense, but it was a tragedy in others.
The only triumph I can see in the election of Barack Obama was that is demonstrated at least a crack in our racist society leanings. The fact that it inspired new waves of overt racism may be seen by some as a disadvantage, but I think it is better to drag ugly things out of the shadows and into the sunlight myself. That way you can see what is actually going on in our country in people’s minds. Quite frankly the election of a black president drove some white people over the cliff. I live in the sheltered cove of academe, my white colleagues were gob smacked to see the response the racist signs, the call to kill the president, to take up arms against the government. I was not. We have come a long way, but we have a very long way to go!
The objections to Obama were never on the basis of color, but on the basis of his anti-democratic, anti-capitalist, anti-freedom policies. Color (or race) has zero to do with it, at least in my mind. If he had the abilities his education should have given him, he would have had successes which would have benefitted all the people, and everyone would have been delighted. Unfortunately, he represents a radical leftist wing of the Democrat party which has pulled off an effective coup d’etat. If he represented the right values, we on the right would celebrate him. Nothing wrong with Clarence Thomas or Adam West. Color is not the issue, but governing philosophy. You shouldn’t try to blame Obama’s failures on some generalized white racism in society. There’s always a few skin heads around, but everyone, including the Tea Party rejects them.
This idiocy about global warming just today is another good example of Obama’s pandering to a part of his radical left constituency for the purposes of gaining power over yet another portion of the economy. If you want to see the United States of America become the United Socialist States of America (USSA), then he is indeed your man. For you to claim that opposition to him is based purely on some kind of throwback racism is quite untrue. I must conclude that you are yourself a fellow traveller, or that you do not, somehow, see what he is up to.
We in education understand what damage he is doing in his support of Duncan’s policies (with which he agrees), but no one would attribute our opposition to those policies as arising from racism among teachers. Far from it. It’s the policies themselves which are destructive. Likewise his general policies. The Immigration bill is another example of an economic power grab masquerading as solving a problem. But if we wind up in a police state, with a computer dossier on everyone in the Utah Data Center of the NSA, don’t blame me. It seems to me that people who attribute racism to the whole society do so because they cannot justify the policies under question. Is our hatred of standardized testing, racism? Truly, impossible.
Obama’s education policies do not come from Duncan. Duncan serves his own masters, the same ones Obama served when he appointed Duncan.
I’ve been told that before, that my time is over, and in less articulate language. You are really something, Cookie. I took you for an educated, ethical person, but your rhetoric, anyway, is as vicious and cruel as any I’ve ever seen. I now begin to understand a bit better why I am loathed on this blog. I used to write the same way. But when I did, I was no gentleman. You are certainly equally no lady, but because your views are in harmony with all but two or three here, you will be praised and applauded for skewering the old white man. I had not thought racial politics went so deep to the core of the soul, but I see I was wrong. I had always thought that there was a REAL possibility of coming together, as we did in the 60’s when Dr. King was active. But, if you are representative (which I hope is not the case), I see there is no hope of uniting us. You have lost your chance of an ally. When the country becomes Hispanic, they won’t care and can’t be manipulated through white guilt, and blacks will be marginalized. Neither of us will live to see that sad day.
Whites should only be guilty if they are participating in racist actions or supporting those who do. The past is never truly past. I am not going to try to be in harmony with someone who demonstrates contempt for their fellow human beings based on income, race, gender, sexual orientation or any other personal characteristic. Dr. King did what he had to do in time he lived in, this is a different time. For the first time last year births of children of color outnumbered white births. But it is not the end of white folks, several of whom I have in my family currently and quite a few of whom were my ancestors, I am talking about the end of an era for people to decide that some animals are more equal than others based on prejudice and bias and an unwillingness to understand the imperative of at least respect if not friendship. If my students are any indication people who try to distance themselves from others by declaring themselves superior will be shunned. Latinos are not a racial group, something which confuses many Americans. We have been looking at matters of race in a binary fashion of black and white so long we cannot give it up. There are white Latinos, black Latinos, Asian Latinos and Indian Latinos, most, even the ones who are phenotypically white, consider themselves people of color. The politics of the right is one of white supremacy so no matter what shade of brown these new people are physically or philosophically they are not going to want to be Republicans unless the party changes drastically, and then where will the racists go? You act like your feelings are hurt, which is unfortunate. I do not dislike you, I imagine you like most people have some very good qualities, I disagree with you, there is a difference which many people do not seem to understand.
That Galbraith quote is a keeper!! Sums up the republicant party agenda quite well. Their willful ignorance and embrace of tea partiers, proudly self proclaimed tea baggers, and the whole family values bunch, as well as the ALEC agenda, has made them dangerous to America and her freedoms as well as an obstacle to true reform of our govt and education system.
“the war the GOP has waged on public education.”
You’re kidding yourself if you think this is just a Republican war, The Democrats have been waging that war on steroids. Both parties are on the same page regarding education policies today. The main difference is that the GOP supports vouchers, so instead the Dems promote mayoral control over school districts and un-elected school boards so they can readily shut down neighborhood schools in massive numbers and hand them over to private charter operators for $1 rent –as Duncan first started doing in Chicago.
The politicians with clout in BOTH parties are neo-liberals who want to see unregulated free-markets prevail virtually everywhere, including the take over of public services such as education. It doesn’t matter to them that it was deregulated greedy billionaires who took down our economy. They were “too big to fail,” bailed out by our tax dollars and suffered no consequences –and the inequitable distribution of wealth has further expanded since then, under the protection of both the GOP and the Dems.
Both parties have been bought by the 1% and, with few exceptions, they do not represent working class and low income Americans. Many civil rights leaders and organizations are on the corporate payroll, too, so they have been keeping their mouths shut. See the Black Agenda Report: “Corporate Funding of Urban League, NAACP & Civil Rights Orgs Has Turned Into Corporate Leadership” http://www.blackagendareport.com/corporate-funding-urban-league-naacp-civil-rights-orgs-has-turned-corporate-leadership
Robert, Thanks so much for sharing the article on The Company Store!
A key to its effectiveness has been in getting people to vote against their own best interests. I think the tide has finally turned for many working class swing voters though, who have been waking up to the reality of our corporate owned country.
BTW, Moyers did a follow up to the United States of ALEC the other day, “Privatizing America One Statehouse at a Time” http://video.pbs.org/video/2365030339
I think we have gotten a glimpse at what the Republican strategy is for the next presidential election. Many people who arrived in the US in the past decades from communist countries were understandably skeptical of government, fell for the GOP’s claim that they are for less government and joined the Republican party. This is why so many Cuban immigrants became Republicans in Florida.
I saw this a lot in the north, too, as I worked with many immigrants from European Eastern block countries and virtually all of them became Republicans –and they gave that “less government” reason to me for doing so. Often, children continue in the political affiliation of their parents.
Since it was so apparent in the last election that the Hispanic vote really matters, the GOP started trouncing out Tea Partier Mark Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, in hopes of garnering the Hispanic vote. I think we will be seeing a lot more of Rubio in the future. Sure, there may be some Hispanics who would cross party lines and vote for Rubio just because he is Hispanic, but I doubt the vast majority will, because they would be voting against their own best interests –which is much more apparent to people today than it was in the past.
Please listen to the NPR story which aired this morning covering the NCTQ report. I will be e-mailing NPR to let them know how disappointed I am in their superficial coverage. The mainstream listener will be left to think that the majority of teacher prep programs are inadequate. We must push for better standards in reporting Ed news
One has to take what National Propanda Radio puts out with a block of salt. Hint look to their “funders”.
NPR’s Lynn Neary totally pimped Sandra Stotsky the other day, too, never mentioning that her work was NOT peer-reviewed and has been rejected by researchers (it, like the NCTQ report would never be accepted to a peer-reviewed journal due to the lack of their methodological rigor–hell, you couldn’t even pass a dissertation defense with either report).
It may be time to stop thiking that the NCTQ Evaluation was merely flawed and consider the possibility that it was an intentional hatchet job and perhaps, slanderous? Organizations do not make these types of mistakes(?). As we all know facts are stubborn things so when in need make up your own.
It looked like an obvious hit piece. The fact that virtually all of the schools of ed. were trashed showed how ridiculous the study was. It made me sick when I saw that Broad and Gates were involved. They are nothing more than bullies.
DeeDee,
“It made me sick when I saw that Broad and Gates were involved.”
Why would it “make you sick”? That’s just standard operating procedures for those bastards. I would have been totally astonished if they hadn’t had a hand in it.
I posted this on another page, but worth repeating…there is some psychological abuse of teacher which I think scares them into submission (probably not all, but a lot) Teachers are the most publicly abused professionals out there!
Release a report basically saying they are all ill-prepared, and then in the next breath, Arne pulls back on the teacher evaluation pressure…definitely a cycle of abuse going on.
Gosh, I got my Masters’ from a Catholic university and can’t say it was an indoctrination center either, although its president does discuss how the disparity in incomes hurts children a lot. I think that IS backed up by data.
I got my credential from Chico State and am very proud of my education. Eventhough you can never be fully prepared for your first day of teaching, because of the credentialing program I went through I was able to not only survive my first day, but to thrive. CSU Chico has a wonderful teaching program that I would recommend to anyone, that is if I was recommending becoming a teacher to anyone, which I don’t anymore.
This so called report is just the latest in what is sure to be an ever increasing glut of lies, disinformation and deceptions, all in response to the growing awareness of and push back against the abject failure of corporate reform and it’s hostile takeover of public education. They literally have no facts on their side, their own fault entirely, and as such have nothing left to them but these Orwellian bluffs meant to distract us while they try to consolidate what they have managed to take control of to date. They still have money and ownership of legislators as well as media access, so they are still in a position to continue to cause harm, but as shown by the shrillness of their protestations, the game is up.
I think you are right. I think they are fighting back with a new smear campaign.
The NCTQ is funded by the usual groups who want to do away with teachers’ rights in the workplace. In there view collective bargaining stands in the way of student achievement. Those terrible things like sick days, a duty free lunch, contractual work day & prep time are the great evil!
This “report” is propaganda plain & simple.
Anyone else notice the NCTQ report didn’t gut oh, let’s say, TFA teacher preparation?
😦
You know, in the interests of being evenhanded and fair, and addressing fatal flaws in an allegedly major national source of ‘great’ classroom teachers for some of the nation’s most underserved and needy students?
I can’t imagine why anyone wouldn’t question so much $tudent $ucce$$…
Ah, Beth, ahora caigo en la cuenta/now I get it!
🙂
My take–very similar to Linda’s.
http://fullerlook.wordpress.com/2013/06/17/nctq-ranking-of-teacher-prep-programs-gets-an-f/
Such data is always elusive and mixed structure. Convene some blue ribbon panels on needed changes. It’s not rocket science. Teacher Preps need to spend more time in good classrooms.
Say what??
I have said before the fraudulent NCTQ isn’t about “teacher quality”–it is solely about lowering teacher standards because it subscribes to the neoliberal notion that since education is largely a waste of money, there is no point paying teachers professional salaries or requiring them to have much more education than the students they are teaching.
They would SEEM to be saying the opposite, that teachers need MORE education.
I find it ironic that this report slams teacher education programs and yet thinks that it’s just fine to have teachers that have only five weeks’ training and have barely had any teaching experience whatsoever. And I had a terrific teacher preparation program: go Utah State Aggies!
It does imply that most of teacher education as presently set up is useless. But teacher certification programs COULD be different, couldn’t they?
Yes, they could be different. Tell us HU, How, pray tell how?
I had a long term sub once getting an MA at Eastern Michigan in secondary ELA, but he couldn’t read Shakespeare. Literally. He had fine rapport with the kids, but just didn’t could not make sense of the material even with the book open. Thus he could not explain how a word, line, or scene or plot was constructed. He could not differentiate between the language characterization of the figures in the play. Why I don’t know. He finally settled in very happily to a job teaching 3rd grade, and I suspect did very well.
At least for English Teachers, I think they need to read all the classics plus have minors in philosophy and history. I’d say know your s*** FIRST and then maybe a course in Ed Psych so you know a bit about statistics and development, and maybe a course in reading teaching, and maybe one in teaching writing, and maybe two practice teaching stints. But as my darling daughter, Rachel says, the socialist, communist, islamist, nazi garbage is what one mostly gets, utter confusions masquerading as nobility. A pagan religion.
The motivation to “change the world” is nonsense, in my view. One needs to change oneself before even thinking of correcting society. The blind sent out to lead the ignorant.
I’d say, then, that a GOOD ed school wouldn’t accept the English Department’s conception of what was required for a major. Content preparation is the sine qua non, in my “opinion.” At least, at a minimum one should know the great books well enough to explain them to someone else.
That said, I didn’t get to that point until I had taught for five years, and in a college too. Now I know it CAN be taught, because my graduating high school seniors really did understand Shakespeare, some plays anyway, when I got through with them. A teacher has to actually understand the books to teach them.
Hi Dad! Happy belated Fathers Day!
Rachel (LOL).
When NCTE first started compiling their inventory of ed programs they sent out a rather large survey to each State Dept of Ed as well as the ed programs. Circa 2003? Anyway, we at the Indiana DOE spent much time gathering information on state laws, school procedures for evaluation of teachers, etc and sent it back. NCTE contacted us with further questions, and some clarification requests. We complied. We were then surprised to see their report and the errors it contained. Also, if the state had not adopted their proposed requirements, the state was given a bad score. We contacted the lady and her staff, but they would not make corrections, because, as they saw it, they were right. Sadly, our man mitch and his ilk invited her to speak to the Ed Roundtable where she spewed out her anti-teacher ed program rhetoric and pushed her agenda. The gov, an informed education reform leader, according to his kind, ate it all up without question because it fit his a priori conclusions and cleared the way for his plans to privatize public education and shut down teacher unions. Several of the educators on the Roundtable provided counters to Ms Walsh, but the gov brushed them aside and they were soon replaced with his toadies. I am not surprised she is still up to her poor research and propaganda, but I am very saddened that people like gates are still giving her funding. Having Rhee on her board should have been a red flag.
I don’t think you mean NCTE. They would not have anything to do with Michele Rhee.
sorry, did not mean NCTE, meant NCTQ Walsh and her group. The Dean of IU school of education gave a nice rebuttel to her most recent report in the Indianapolis Star on 6/18/2013. I still have copies of the informatin we provided and our clarifications over several months. She insisted if we did not have certain specific laws enacted that we could not have good programs. And primarily all they did was review the course listings.
The Washington Post carried a story about the NCTQ “study” yesterday. It was typical fare for The Post’s coverage of education: shallow, mostly one-sided, and often inaccurate. The story can be found here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/university-programs-that-train-us-teachers-get-mediocre-marks-in-first-ever-ratings/2013/06/17/ab99d64a-d75b-11e2-a016-92547bf094cc_story.html
It’s too bad that Post reporter Lyndsey Layton didn’t do her homework. When it comes to education reporting, that now seems to be the norm at The Post.
Layton calls the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) an “advocacy” group, but that’s all about all she says. It’s noteworthy to look at NCTQ’s website to see who makes up its staff and advisory board, and where it gets its funding.
The president of NCTQ formerly worked for E.D. Hirsch’s Core Knowledge Foundation. Anyone who’s read Hirsch’s book Cultural Literacy understands that Hirsch knows little about education and research. Not surprisingly, Hirsch is on the advisory board of NCTQ.
Most of the staff have little or no classroom teaching experience, and of those who do, many are Teach for America alums. Wendy Kopp, TFA head honcho and corporate suck-up, is also on the NCTQ advisory board.
NCTQ funding comes from many of the same foundations that push corporate-style “reform” across the country: the Gates Foundation, the Doris and Donald Fisher Fund, the Broad Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, the Dell Foundation, the Walton Foundation, and the Arnold Foundation.
Besides HIrsch and Kopp, the NCTQ advisory board is tied tightly to conservatives, data-driven dunces, corporate-“reform” advocates, and charlatans of all types. It includes Michael Barber of testing giant Pearson, KIPP founder Michael Feinberg, Eric Hanushek, Rick Hess, and Joel Klein, who always had a terrible time telling the truth about his tenure as New York City Schools chancellor.
Until recently, Michelle Rhee was on the advisory board. As chancellor on the DC schools Rhee instituted a culture of fear and distrust, and presided over a large-scale cheating scandal. As USA Today reported, more than half of D.C. schools were involved, and” the odds are better for winning the Powerball grand prize than having that many erasures by chance.” A “classroom had to have so many wrong-to-right erasures that the average for each student was 4 standard deviations higher than the average for all D.C. students in that grade on that test, meaning that ” a classroom corrected its answers so much more often…that it could have occurred roughly one in 30,000 times by chance. D.C. classrooms corrected answers much more.” About all those erasures, Rhee said “students are being more diligent about their work.”
These are the NCTQ people. We should wary of what they say, even dismissive. They have no credibility.
Incredibly, Post reporter Layton tries to give them a ton if it. She pretends the lies and the bias don’t exist, and she recites NCTQ president Kate Walsh’s inane comment that a “market strategy” results in high-quality public education. That’s simply untrue.
Layton cites a McKinsey “study” that shows that only “ 23 percent of U.S. teachers graduated in the top third of their class.” The“researchers” at McKinsey argue that the “key” to education reform is to attract the very best college students into the profession. And how do they assess who is bright? SAT and ACT scores. Obviously – like Lyndsey Layton – these “researchers” haven’t done their homework either.
A study in Ohio found the ACT has minimal predictive power. The ACT composite score predicts only 5 percent of the variance in freshman-year Grade Point Average at Akron University, 10 percent at Bowling Green, 13 percent at Cincinnati, and Toledo, 8 percent at Kent State, 12 percent at Miami of Ohio, 9 percent at Ohio University, and 15 percent at Ohio State. Hardly anything to get all excited about.
Here’s what the authors say about the ACT in their concluding remarks:
“…why, in the competitive college admissions market, admission officers have not already discovered the shortcomings of the ACT composite score and reduced the weight they put on the Reading and Science components. The answer is not clear. Personal conversations suggest that most admission officers are simply unaware of the difference in predictive validity across the tests. They have trusted ACT Inc. to design a valid exam and never took the time (or had the resources) to analyze the predictive power of its various components. An alternative explanation is that schools have a strong incentive – perhaps due to highly publicized external rankings such as those compiled by U.S. News & World Report, which incorporate students’ entrance exam scores – to admit students with a high ACT composite score, even if this score turns out to be unhelpful.”
The SAT is no better. Here’s what Princeton Review (a test prep company) founder John Katzman said about the SAT:
“The SAT is a scam. It has been around for 50 years. It has never measured anything. And it continues to measure nothing. And the whole game is that everybody who does well on it, is so delighted by their good fortune that they don’t want to attack it. And they are the people in charge. Because of course, the way you get to be in charge is by having high test scores. So it’s this terrific kind of rolling scam that every so often, somebody sort of looks and says–well, you know, does it measure intelligence? No. Does it predict college grades? No. Does it tell you how much you learned in high school? No. Does it predict life happiness or life success in any measure? No. It’s measuring nothing. It is a test of very basic math and very basic reading skill. Nothing that a high school kid should be taking.”
See: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/sats/interviews/katzman.html
Nicholas Lemann, author of The Big Test (a book on the SAT) says this: “The test has been, you know, fetishized. This whole culture and frenzy and mythology has been built around SATs. Tests, in general, SATs, in particular, and everybody seems to believe that it’s a measure of how smart you are or your innate worth or something. I mean, the level of obsession over these tests is way out of proportion to what they actually measure.”
And what DOES the SAT really measure? More than anything else, it measures family income. But it most certainly is not an achievement test. Nor is much of a predictive test. Matthew Quirk reported as much in The Best Class Money Can Buy: “Brian Zucker, the head of Human Capital Research, an enrollment-management consulting firm, measures the correlation between SAT score and freshman GPA for his clients and typically gets results between .03 and .14 on a scale from 0 to 1. (‘I might as well measure their shoe size,’ he says.) “
The Post and its reporters continue to engage in sloppy journalism. Worse, they consistently denigrate the core values and principles on which The Post was founded.
Eugene Meyer bought The Post in 1933, and established seven guiding principles. The first two were these:
“The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth can be ascertained; and
“The Newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it.”
It’d be refreshing and in the best interests of the citizenry if The Post administration and reporting staff would reacquaint themselves with Eugene Meyer’s principles. After all, in Meyer’s view, a “newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large,” and its purpose is to report news honestly, “for the public good.”
The Post and its reporters have an awful lot of remediation to do. And, when it comes to reporting on education, so does the mainstream press.
In my many years as a high school English teacher, I had many of the same questions about whether the SAT measured anything that I could estimate based on my own experience as a giver of writing assignments and grader of them. What I finally concluded was that there was a rough correlation between what I perceived as “intelligence” and “academic ability” and SAT scores. “democracy” is right to attack the SAT if that is what the teacher preparation report uses as a stand in for best students. I don’t find his (or her?) attack on the SAT credible, thus I am more prepared that he (or her) to credit the validity of the NCTQ report.
As another anecdotal piece of evidence, if anecdote is evidence, I was in the bottom third of my college class, but didn’t really know enough to become a good teacher of high school English until after I had earned a doctorate. That’s not proof of anything—I’m a slow learner, late bloomer—but that’s where I am situated among the numbers. I don’t remember where I was in my high school class rank, but I doubt it was much higher.
I’m sure there is much to be gained from good instruction about pedagogy, but my main limitations was then and still is that I haven’t read as many of the great books as a good teacher (in my view) needs to. It’s impossible, probably, to teach something you don’t know. I’ve never read E. D. Hirsch, but from what I hear about his work, I would tend, I think, to support it.
Not everyone who knows a lot can teach, but I don’t see how one can teach without knowing a lot.
HU,
If you don’t mind in what is your doctorate and what university? Where might I find a copy of your dissertaion? I’d be interested in looking it over.
In all fairness, I started out at Mizzou but ended up lacking one education course when I thought I had enough to graduate. At the time I was doing upholstery and I decided I didn’t need the degree as I wasn’t teaching anyway-silly me. 15 years later (early 90s) I found myself laid off of a mid management position and there were literally hundreds of applicants for the positions I was applying to and if one didn’t have a degree one’s resume went directly to the round file. So I decided to go back and finish up-had to re-student teach (which was a good thing) and take a few more required education courses, got my degree from U of MO-St. Louis.
Got a teaching job and went back and got a masters in ed admin from the same institution-UMSL being able to afford it because I got free credit hours for teaching their advanced placement Spanish at the high school (Hell, I was an “Adjunct Professor” for twelve years la de da). Myself and a few others doing the master level work caught the eye of two excellent professors Jim Walters (who was a school board member in the district where I taught at the time) and Charles Fazzaro. Great folk both of them! I was invited to apply for the doctoral program, was accepted and started in on the work funding my studies through the same mechanism of getting my credit hours free for teach AC courses. Then UMSL decided I could only use three credit hours per year, maximum (My ex was in law school at the time so our family money went to that-rightly so). So I said screw the doctorate even though I continued to go to our group’s seminar sessions until all had finished up but me. My dissertation was to apply Wilson’s work to the Missouri Assessment Program (MAP-state standardized testing program. I was more interested in the discussions and learning than getting the credential-silly me again.
University of Michigan. EdD in English and Education. “The Loss of Celebration from the Concept of Didactic Poetry in Eighteenth Century English Criticism.” 1971.
J. H. Underhill
You can’t earn an Ed.D. in English. But you can earn an Ed.D. in English Education.
As someone with a BA and MA in English, and a Ph.D., I think you might want to study the correlation between SAT scores and SES. SAT is primarily a measure of SES.
You are correct. Ed.D. English and Education.
I know my opinions carry little weight here, but it has seemed to me, for quite some time now, that we can’t see the forest for the trees. We are complaining about the symptoms without determining that there is a “disease”!
When you look at the time and money (and the participants on the boards of these organizations such as NCTQ, it seems to me that there is a goal in their existence. That goal is not just about undermining existing teachers, but about dismantling the entired broad-based education preparatory practices that are taught at universities all over the United States.
I don’t believe there is any desire to “fix” the situation. The desire is to elminiate it. When you look at the new “evaluation” system, the testingi, the rejection of a learning curve, the rejection of developmental learning, the rejection of differentiation for students of dissiimilar backgrounds or abilities, and the rejection of current teacher education programs, it is obvious (at least to me) that the intent is to trash the old and to replace it with something outside the realm of all that teacher education institutions have been using as researched, field-based evidence of Best Practices, pedagogy, and curricula.
Look at the decisions to replace teachers based on (knowingly false) test scores with inexperienced (and in their minds un-indoctrinated education graduates. Using TFA, not holding those schools to the same testing expectations or evaluations, cycling teachers through the system after 2-3 years, and focusing on math and language arts at the expense of science and social studies continues to undermine the education received at the university level. They seem to wish to “protect” the nation’s children from progressive thought, claiming that there is no moral compass within the university syllabi.
These “reformers” wish to “vaccinate” the educational system with dead ideas that will cause education as we know it to “kill itself”. By so doing, the last vestiges of the “old ways” will be replaced by the “new and better” 21st century “truisms”. After all, people from all walks of life have criticized public education so harshly, for so long, that they feel empowered by this voucher movement to take students away from dealing with a pluralistic, diverse society. It is easier to indoctrinate your own child if you don’t expose them to other kinds of thought or give them the opportunity to have compassion for those who may be different from themselves.
It just seems that so many people are afraid of “the world” as it is that they wish to create their own little “Utopian fantasy” and allow their children to grow up in a “pure” environment, insulated from society’s ills.
I am sorry, but this is the UNITED States of America. I don’t agree with everyone’s beliefs but at least I can tolerate them and learn to deal with them. If this testing and evaluation craze continues, public education will be eradicated and there will be even more “haves” and “have nots”. But, isn’t that what the reformers really want? Let’s go back 70-80 years … yeh, it was so much better … for whom? The monied white Judeo-Christian people.
Good day.
I agree with you Deb that the probable purpose of the NCTQ report is to flush the Augean stables of what it sees as the horse manure of current teacher education programs.
Your position is clear: “They seem to wish to “protect” the nation’s children from progressive thought, claiming that there is no moral compass within the university syllabi.”
From my ideological perspective that is exactly correct and indeed what should be done. I find “progressive” thought utterly bankrupt with no moral compass at all except advancing its own tyrannical power.
It’s a curious thing for progressives like yourself to be preaching higher values than money, but then to base your entire world view of economic class distinctions. We are no longer ONE America because, in my view, mainly the defection of progressives from realistic human values, namely you get what you work for. That used to be the norm in public education until progressive thought took it over and converted its values from individual achievement to everybody must win.
Another paradoxical consequence is that access to true social mobility through education has diminished for the underclass since progressive thought came to dominate the public school classrooms. They can no longer get the kind of teaching they need to rise in schools in which large class sizes, disorderly and violent classrooms, and hit or miss teaching takes places. When one’s classroom becomes Detroit, the impulse is to move north of Eight Mile if one can manage. North of Eight Mile has come to mean charters for many. Suburban public schools for most.
The greatest damage progressivism has done to the public schools is reflected, in my view, in your own comment. You regret the focus on Math and English to the neglect of science and social studies. My feeling is that unless one knows math and english, one can’t do science and that social studies have become ideological indoctrination in socialism, i.e. anti-capitalist.
These criticisms of school teachers and the preparation of school teachers do sometimes seem like blind flailing away at in appropriate targets, yet I suspect that progressivism’s hostility to achievement gives support to the reformers and its support for collectivist and statist thinking loses support from the common sense “consumer” of education.
Well, Harlan, your observations are certainly pointed and unfortunate. There has been a perpetual backlash against what you are calling “progressive” ever since the Civil Rights Act passed. I am a Centrist, thank you very much. So, don’t go tryinng to label me by your own standards.
When public educators were given the responsibility of educating ALL students and the country was changing through immigration, schools did not become “without values” but they could no longer try to force all students to follow their previously insular ideas of the “white, Protestant, Judeo-Christian, male, monied” makers of the “rules” for everyone.
What is happening now is that too many people w
ant to retain that model and to push it on everyone. We do not have a monotheistic society, whether you like it or not. We don’t have the right to perpetuate our ideas on others in that fashion.
Of course, math and language arts/reading/writing are the underpinnings of other learning. But, with out the curiosity to learn about how things work and how our history has shaped our thinking, we aren’t truly educated.
I have seen the chipping away at scientific discovery simply because some peole value the dollar more than the earth. I have seen history lessons changed to eliminate the atrocities of the slave owners towards slaves. Textbooks are being changed. Facts are being rubbed out. How convenient that the computers and the internet can be used to change history. It is very Orwellian.
If these “reformers” have their way, children born in 2020 will have no idea about the way we have treated other peoples and they will think that we have been justified to protect our dominance in the world through wars and domination. I have felt since I was in the 5th grade that we mistreated the Native Americans, the First Nation. But, we don’t even confront this. I actually read an excerpt from a 4th grade “science” textbook that said, among other things, that God created the evergreen trees in the shape of a triangle so the snow would slide down the branches and that lightning is magic in the sky that we don’t understand. How simplistic and absurd is that?
Don’t get me wrong. I believe in God. I just don’t believe in perpetuating the myth that the white man is the superior human on earth and that it is the job of our government to promote belief in one perception of religion. We have separation of church and state. But, some want to take our public dollars and force their own version of “truth” on all children. I find that to be insulting to those people.
I must say, though, Harlan, you have a way of twisting others’ words to meet your own view.
Good day.
“…with no moral compass…”
You see, HU, your way of thinking, and I’ve heard/seen this way too many times before is that one cannot have a “moral compass” without being subjected to/believing in the Judeo-Christian god. According to that belief system, one, by definition, who does not believe in your god cannot be moral. I know, I was indoctrinated with that crap growing up in the Catholic system in St. Louis. And that belief is pure bullshit. Harsh, yes, and it’s meant to be harsh as you high minded religionistas are telling me that I can’t be moral-get off your high horse.
“We are no longer ONE America. . .”
We never were “ONE America (sic)” unless the “we” were white Anglo Saxon land owning male protestants. Again, this is one of the many fallacies promulgated by the tea partier types. Ask the native Americans (not sic but sic at the same time), ask the non Anglo Saxons, ask the women if they were a part of the “we”. But the tea partiers want to regress to the founders time and “original” meaning of the constitution. Sorry, no thanks.
“Another paradoxical consequence is that access to true social mobility through education has diminished for the underclass since progressive thought came to dominate the public school classrooms.”
True social mobility has collapsed greatly since the introduction of Piss Down (oops, sorry I mean Trickle Down) theory of economics of the demi-god of the tea partiers Uncle Ronnie Raygun. Neo-liberal supply side economics means all the money flows to the top and the excrement from those at the top showers down on those at the bottom. Harsh, yes, because those policies are even harsher.
“. . . that social studies have become ideological indoctrination in socialism, i.e. anti-capitalist.”
As usual the tea partiers confuse and conflate an economic system-capitalism with a government system-democracy in crying wolf about socialism. Please show me where in the US constitution that capitalism is the economic system of choice for this country. Yep, I thought so, you can’t.
Deb. You are playing the race card. That a white Christian gets things right about school doesn’t mean he’s wrong because he’s white. And Duane, actually capitalism is the official economic system of America. The Constitution is based on private property, contracts, and the invisible hand, not on planned economy, regulation, and authority. But the ruling elites have forgotten that. The uniting concept is freedom, of the individual and of markets. The tea party is right. All, of course, my mere opinion.
Harlan, I am not “playing the race card”. Not at all. I am playing the card that says that one group of people or thought is SUPERIOR to all others and should carry more weight. It doesn’t matter about the race per se. All that seems to matter to some of these bent on gutting education in America is to perpetuate their particular brand of having a “moral compass” and claiming that they have THE interpretation of “the truth” while the rest of the people have nothing but bogus belief systems. You know there are certain groups that advocate the so-called WASP mentality (that is a seldom-used term these days). As our country becomes more and more diverse, education has had to encompass those different races, cultures, and religions.
I simply feel that in the U.S. we are a land that has offered this freedom from oppression, so I don’t feel that it is justifiable to force one set of values upon everyone. I know that some fundamentalists feel that the very idea of teaching science is oppressing their views, say, for example, in the area of global warming or climate change. However, merely ignoring what is happening in the environment doesn’t seem to be following any kind of “moral compass” at all. Or, in another situation, we have had parents who don’t want teachers to expose their children to the facts of PLANT reproduction because it might make them “wonder about human behavior”.
Of course, mathematics and literature are the foundations of learning. However, social truth and scientific discovery have driven the world. We need to expose children to opportunities to learn from the past, both triumphs and errors, as well as to explore the future through scientific inquiry.
The “moral compass” to which you refer seems to be driven by one idea, not tolerant of others’ contributions. It may not be “wrong” for one group, but may well be wrong for others. As you probably know, there are many disagreements as to what the Bible tells us about morality, let alone the differences among other religions or belief systems. Our jobs as educators are not to force interpretations on children but to allow them to think for themselves. I know that some are threatened by the thought of students being encouraged to become “critical thinkers”. Somehow, there are those who believe that tolerance is authoritarian in motive, but have forgotten about the Pharisees …
Now I think I hear you playing the cultural relativism card, that all values are equal, that none can be concluded to be “better” or “worse” than others. I would agree with the limit that when someone is INtolerant of my views, I think that intolerance must be rejected. I suspect you would agree, and that we should not be tolerant of intolerance. Can we not reject the theocracy of Iran? I think we MUST reject it because it is intolerant of the existence of Israel. We can, perhaps, understand, the variety of beliefs and theologies empathetically, but pragmatically speaking, when dogma limits freedom, then I think we all have a right to say “Don’t impose your views on me.”
Toleration of many views, in the sense of letting them be expressed, would seem to me to be anti-authoritarian. When a dogma attempts to restrict exploration of other views is when I think it should be opposed. We shouldn’t, I believe, embrace views which insist on restricting free speech. Your choice of climate science is a poor one, because there is not universal acceptance that such warming as has occurred is owing to human activity. Yet those who are skeptical are called “climate change deniers” and are mocked. The general liberal (by which I mean tyrannical) culture is totally intolerant of climate change deniers. That intolerance is, to my mind, a sure signal of scientific mullahism.
A better example would be evolution, it seems to me. One can hardly imagine modern biology without the evolutionary assumption. Parents who want to shield their children from the notion that humans too probably came about through fully natural processes, perhaps have a right to try, but I don’t think they have a right to insist everyone else never mention it. Nor, on the other hand, do evolutionists have a right to be intolerant of creationism, even though it may seem to totally ignore the question of the age of rocks. What we can say, is “I take a different view of the matter.”
By “critical thinking” I mean “noticing internal contradictions.” Such philosophical discussion I find to always be interesting and sometimes fruitful. Students should alway be encouraged to examine the premises underlying arguments and claims. A claim which is on its face self-contradictory, I would argue cannot be true. So there is at least that way of evaluating the potential truth of an assertion. If YOU are claiming that “there is no absolute truth,” you would seem to be making an internally contradictory statement. If you are correct in your assertion that there is no absolute truth, they your own statement would be untrue. Thus an absolute relativism denies itself. We, therefore, have to admit that some claims may be true.
Likewise, when we speak of a “moral compass,” I think we have to say “some values may work better than others,” and leave the argument at that. I would hold that pragmatism, i.e. getting from where one is to achieving a goal, suggests that some strategies work better than others, and that that observation is not culturally limited. I would argue for something like this: “IF you want to get an A in the course, you will need to do your homework.” But I wouldn’t myself care to go beyond a rough and ready pragmatism is explaining how a “moral compass” works.
Progressive thought is just that, progressive rather than the regressive thought that believes in only hard sciences ( not surprisingly traditionally dominated by men) and the dead white guy canon. Knowing about people who are not like you is a good thing, that includes knowing about the dead white guy canon but not limiting one’s education to that alone. So much of the criticism of education is done by people who have never studied pedagogy or taught a class. If you are not a professional educator with some teaching experience under your belt your opinion is irrelevant.
M C M … I taught for 30 years and just retired last June.
While they receive money from many foundations as listed on their website, I see that the “usual suspects” are among the principal funders of NCTQ.
No wonder OSU scored so highly! They do not have any black professors or students in their School of Education evidently! And the Dean has the nerve to talk about cultural awareness in her little speech. I do wonder sometimes just how dense people can be? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJqACv40Nzc&feature=player_embedded
I’ve written about NCTQ’s policy papers that are passed off as research before.
http://rdsathene.blogspot.com/2011/06/now-on-schools-matter-nctqs-lausd.html
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/rip-american-dream-why-its-so-hard-for-the-poor-to-get-ahead-today/276943/
Thanks for sharing the link to this article, Deb! I ran across it the other day and then couldn’t remember later on where I’d read it, so I really appreciate the reminder.
Try not to let HU get to you. He’s just an old fogy, set in his ways, who comes here to stir the pot, get attention and pass along Tea Party indoctrination. He will never, ever change, nor will his adopted “daughter”, as evident in their fall back on the time worn “values” and “morals” mantras, first touted by the GOP in the Reagan era. That was effective then for elevating conservatives above those with differing views, so they will keep at it, but the masses are onto self-serving greed and the failure of trickle down economics, so that’s probably not going to be effective for too much longer.
So, try to ignore and hang in there, Deb!
Values and morals never go out of fashion.
The GOP has never had a monopoly on values and morals, as they’ve liked to lead people to believe historically.
You’re holding up Democrats, as represented by members of the party in Congress and the Administration as representatives of morality and virtue? Whoooeee. I challenge you to name one ethical policy any Democrat has recently advocated. Benghazi? IRS? Fast and Furious? Even the defeated farm bill was no good. The gang of eight immigration bill is another abomination. And don’t get me started on all the anti growth policies of the Democrats, including Obamacare. One policy. Just one.
I will agree that the Rhino Republicans are not any better, but the Tea Party is much more solid ethically so far than the braying Donkeys and devious Elephants.
No, I did not say the Democrats were any better. I can’t recall them claiming to be the only ones with “family values” or to be the “moral majority” as the Republicans have. The Democrats are just as cunning today though, using civil rights mantras, such as MLK’s, “the fierce urgency of Now,” in order to rush through the neo-liberal privatization agenda and the Common Core.
The Democrats have been the beneficiary of several bad moves on the part of the GOP, at least bad from a social justice point of view, not sure it was bad from a getting elected point of view. Their decision to abandon the black population with their ’60s Southern Strategy and court racists, particularly the disenchanted with the Democrats due to LBJ pushing through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 Dixiecrats made most black people unable to support them even to today. My father , like most men of his generation, was a Republican until he died in 1966 at the age of 56. He would not be a Republican today, none of his children, grandchildren or in-laws are Republicans. I dare say since all of my grandchildren are bi or tri-racial none of his great grandchildren will be either, certainly the one old enough to vote is not. This primacy among minorities gives them the presumed right to speak for minorities in education issues.
Now more to the issue at hand, education. If blacks had not been virtually shut out of education policy in many areas in the past 20 years ( how many black school board members and superintendents are there in anything but urban areas?) Democratic leaders or anyone else outside of the field of education would not be able to sell policy and practice with the idea that it will bring equity to education. I taught high school for 16 years, went back to school fully planning to go back to my classroom, but in those days if you wanted a masters in History you had to go full time. I took a left turn after grad school and ended up as director of a student retention program sponsored by the Ohio Board of Regents at a local college.. I wanted to get my PhD after I decided to stay in higher ed, went back and got my PhD in Ed. Leadership and began teaching. I had the opportunity in 2002-2003 to participate as a Library of Congress Fellow in their Cities and Public Spaces Seminar. While in DC I received a call from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and went there to be their Director of Diversity Education and Assessment , I also had a faculty appointment in their SOE. I retired in December 2012 because of directions the state was taking, including a newly elected Tea Party legislature.
I came back to Ohio, intending to adjunct and enjoy my retirement. I contacted Antioch University Midwest where I had taught previously and offered to adjunct for them. Instead they asked me to teach a class and fill in for a recently departed administrator as Field Placement Director. I was appalled when attending the OPACTE and OCTEO conferences and meetings ( organizations for teacher preparation at private and public institutions) to see that there were virtually no people of color involved at any level. At the OCTEO conference in March not only were there fewer than 20 people of color out of several hundred delegates, there was not one presentation or strand or theme on the subject of the achievement gap, white teachers working with students of color, nothing. The program cover featured a picture of a blonde teacher in a 1950s twin set holding a stack of books and smiling in front of her all white class. I stood up at the general meeting and challenged the group about their exclusion of any mention of race, diversity, achievement gaps, etc. in a state with an increasing number of students of color. I was met with platitudes from some, hostility from others and about 15 people slipping up to me to whisper how glad they were that I brought that up.
Educators in higher ed and research know the problems looming with more emphasis on testing, a dearth of people of color in the schools and the silence of not only the people of color who are there but their white colleagues on the subjects of teacher expectation, etc. , those on the ground ignore these issues to a large extent. In a society which has managed to make pointing out inequities and racism and racial ignorance more of an offense than engaging in racially unfair behavior it is no wonder people just keep their mouths shut until they get with people they think they can trust.
There can only be two reasons we have an achievement gap, either people of color are just dumber than white and Asian kids, or the system is flawed. Until we begin to look at what is wrong with the system rather than what is wrong with the kid and his/her family things will only continue to deteriorate. If you find anything I said of interest I invite you to visit my blog at minerva5.wordpress.com to read more.
I doubt anyone thinks people of color are dumber than whites, Asians, etc., but the “gap” persists. If the trouble is with the “system” I wonder what you think that trouble specifically is? It seems to me that there might be at least one third possibility to explain the “gap” somewhat separate from white obliviousness in “the system.” I will subscribe to your blog. This is a question that interests me very much.
Harlan, most black people do not even know our history or the complexities of being black in America. How can we expect white middle class women, the vast majority of our teaching staff to know anything about black people/ We still live in relatively segregated circumstances where true interracial friendships are almost exclusively the purview of academics and rich people who have enough in common to get past the differences and get to know each other. Poor people are taught to distrust early and often and true friendships between poor whites and poor blacks are rarer than hen’s teeth in my experience. The education community is further handicapped by the lull in research into racial difference, cultural discontinuities, etc., which has taken a back seat in recent years to SES. I could have told them that sorting people by how poor they are would not have much of an impact on race. There are more poor white people than any other race in America so if you begin to equate the need to ameliorate problems with linkage to income you are going to lose the focus on the problems of race. I will give you three here to ponder:
1) Our society portrays black males as thuggish and violent almost without exception, so when those young black boys begin to look like black men the white teachers are afraid of them. There has been quite a lot written and several studies done on the fact that black males get suspended more than any other group. Again we are faced with a two-pronged explanation. Black males act worse in school than any other category of student or black males are being punished differently than other groups
2) Teacher expectations. I actually had a white teacher across the hall from me in my one and only year teaching in the inner city tell me she gave the kids grades because they had such a hard time and she did not want their self-esteem to suffer or for them to lose hope. A lot of white teachers do not believe that black students can achieve. They are happy when they do not make trouble and if they can just pass, especially the black males. I asked 100 different black males 10 years in a row ( they were all juniors or seniors in high school coming to UNC for a college visit. I gave the big class lecture so they could get a taste of college life) how many of them had been pressured by their teachers to be academically excellent. Fewer than 1/4 of the hands ever went up. I asked them how many of them had been pressured to play sports by a coach, teacher or other person, almost every hand went up. Do not get me wrong, white teachers are not the only ones who think black kids, especially black boys are not capable. A lot of our black teachers have internalized racism and they think so too!
3) Cultural ignorance on the part of the white teacher. Many of them do not seem to know the difference between poverty behavior and culture based behavior or the uphill struggle some black kids have to even believe they can learn. I taught in the system my children attended for most of my public school career and my children got treated like white kids because of it, including frequently being the only black kid in honor’s classes. They were not allowed to slack off or fail to achieve, their teachers, all white for the most part would not let them. When I complained at the high school that the only bright black children in Xenia, Ohio did not have to be named Newsom, I was accused of being a trouble maker. After all, my kids were doing fine. At one point my middle child was the president of the senior class whild his sister was president of the sophomore class. But, their experience was not the norm for black kids at XHS then or now.
When the Xenia schools integrated I never had another black teacher, but when I was in high school and jr. High back when the earth was cooling the white teachers did not have preconceived notions of my ability and insisted I do well. My French teacher even raised the bar and insisted I get a 97 for an A instead of a 95 because I found the language easy. The continued gutting of the authority of teachers, the insertion of rules and testing rather than trusting the teachers has made it harder to teach period and has certainly done nothing to make white teachers better at working with students of color. There are excellent white teachers out there, do not get me wrong, but they are a minority and nobody consults them to see why they are successful. I think our society is afraid to dig too deeply into the achievement gap for fear they will discover black people really are dumber than white people. I know that is not true, but I think I am, once again, in the minority.
Is there actual evidence that the racial achievement gap in academics still exists after poverty is taken into consideration? At the very least it must get a lot smaller once poverty is factored in.
Poverty does not explain the achievement gap , in high performing schools black students still do less well than white and Asian students,even if they are in the same classes. The data is often skewed because the school is looked at and not the level of the classes, but even in honor’s or IB or other classes the black students may do well, but there is still a gap. The problem is that the issue is exacerbated in research because in many school districts poor whites and non-Asian students of color are frequently not placed in advanced classes ( teacher expectation rears its ugly head again) which means the N you are dealing with is quite small. The problem is that we are trying to conduct education that is, unlike virtually every other facet of life , is not impacted by race.
“It’s Poverty, Not Stupid” http://nasspblogs.org/principaldifference/2010/12/pisa_its_poverty_not_stupid_1.html
The achievement gap reflects the opportunity gap that has long been known to exist between lower and higher income students. This is not an issue that is specific to America:
“International Tests Show Achievement Gaps in All Countries” http://www.epi.org/blog/international-tests-achievement-gaps-gains-american-students/#sthash.H6s31ud5.dpuf”
As Angel Gurria, Secretary General of OECD said, “Countries get the poverty rate they are prepared to pay for.”
Little is being done to address poverty here, beyond putting all eggs in the education basket and expecting teachers to resolve poverty all by themselves, even though they have no control over the out-of-school factors impacting the lives of children in poverty. Both sides of the aisle are virtually on the same page regarding education policies.
This administration issues sanctimonious platitudes stating that “education is the civil rights issue of our day” while it simultaneously pursues a privatization agenda aggressively, which benefits corporations much more than disadvantaged children, parents and communities. The pattern has been to starve the schools in urban areas with our neediest students of the resources that are necessary for them to be successful, declare them failing, blame teachers, shut the schools down and hand them over to private enterprises, who are then free to feast at the public funding coffers in unregulated charter schools.
The US has decided to pay for its poverty by sacrificing millions of children’s lives to neo-liberal profiteers, many of whom are running segregated, military style charters for children of color, with white drill sergeants as teachers. MLK must be rolling over in his grave…
Deb, Harlan, and his long lost daughter Rachel,
How about some more depth on values like equity in education – which some people seem think has nothing to do with “playing the race card.”
This short clip http://youtu.be/WG7U1QsUd1g
is just a part of a conversation about race.
Harlan and Rachel, please find the time to view/listen to this MSNBC Special presentation. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/24165209/ns/msnbc-documentaries/t/conversation-about-race/#.UcclbvnBNoN
“I guess what I’m saying is part of the education process is socialization. With all due respect, one of the reasons why young people may pick white over black is because all the images they see, including sometimes their parents reinforce the idea that the culture that they came into is somehow pathological. But that doesn’t mean that we are.” – Dr. Carr.
The keynote speaker at this year’s RI Writing Project Spring Conference, Ernest Morrel, spoke about image and re-imaging. As I looked around at all the teachers (very few of color), I wondered how well the primarily white teachers (TFA or otherwise) from outside the poor urban, urban ring, or suburban communities can do that.
For M Cookie Newsom,
Thanks for your input. You would have liked Ernest Morrel’s talk.
Before I started teaching where I live (urban ring), I substitute taught in most of northern RI. At Hope High School, Mount Pleasant, Classical, and Central, students were not very interested in “African” American literature. They were not interested in their cultural “roots” as prescribed by the white teacher culture. They weren’t interested in vocabulary tests as a measure of success. But they were interested in being heard. Not listened to, heard. They wanted to know were to find opportunity.
Twenty years later I still don’t have a definitive answer that doesn’t involve leaving one culture and being co-opted by another – and I don’t mean the Walmart wage slave culture. I mean the achievement culture which is based on AP, ACT, SAT, NECAP, etc.
We cannot ignore the income achievement gap in this country, which has increased substantially over the decades and is now almost double the black-white achievement gap. In contrast, 50 years ago, the black-white gap was one and a half to two times as large as the income gap.
It is an opportunity gap. Children from wealthy families have been pushing on ahead of the rest of the pack. “…the income achievement gap is not caused by having large numbers of black or Latino children concentrated at the low end of the income scale. ‘The achievement gap between rich and poor whites has gotten bigger over time,’ “: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/21/income-achievement-gap-al_n_1105783.html
“We cannot ignore the income achievement gap in this country, which has increased substantially over the decades and is now almost double the black-white achievement gap. In contrast, 50 years ago, the black-white gap was one and a half to two times as large as the income gap.”
CT, where are you getting that information? I’d love to be able to cite it. Thanks!
Ron, That info comes from the report by Prof. Sean Reardon of Stanford which is described in the link that I provided to the Huff Post article entitled, ” ‘Income Achievement Gap’ Almost Double Black-White Performance Gap, Report Shows.” There are links on the page with the article, too, including this one to Reardon’s report: http://cepa.stanford.edu/content/widening-academic-achievement-gap-between-rich-and-poor-new-evidence-and-possible .
Ok, thank you Harlan. You have successfully driven me away from trying to say anything. Take all your smarts and type away. I won’t ‘be reading it any longer. I don’t need this. If a person can’t simply state his/her thoughts without having you deliberately pick every word apart, it isn’t worth my time to TRY to contribute. I feel that we have taken something which should be more easily discussed and solved and turned it into some big research driven, study driven, think tank driven, continuation of more of the same … that drives the situation into stalemate. However, I will NOT be participating any longer. I have more important things to do than to receive your personal insults. Educational delivery has become a mess. Go ahead, you and a couple others seem to have the definitive answers. Good bye.
I regret you have chosen to withdraw from discussion, but that is, of course, your choice and privilege. I do NOT believe the mess of educational delivery can be easily solved. Discussion, even debate, is an important part of interest in public policy. I think the main purpose of discussion is clarification of people’s claims. That’s all I was trying to do, clarify for myself what your actual position is. That can come across as critical in the bad sense. But I do see it as part of the “critical thinking” we like to think we are teaching. I would much prefer to have you show me where I am wrong. I certainly do understand that people have better things to do with their time than spend it in contested conversation.
Robert , there is not one culture for blacks and one for whites. There are several for blacks and several for whites and several that are shared. I grew up in Greene County Ohio. There are two HBCUs , Central State University and Wilberforce University within 4 miles of my hometown. That meant that if you did a statistical analysis of the town and county at the time the percentage of blacks with a degree would have been much higher than whites, if you bumped it up to the PhD level it would have been really higher. Xenia is the county seat, used to be an agricultural center, but has been since the 1960s or so mainly a bedroom community. We had lots of people who worked at Wright Patterson Air force Base in Fairborn Ohio where my dad had his tailor shop. At the time they did not allow black people to live in Fairborn, so all the blacks and a good many of the whites lived in Xenia. We also had a lot of factory workers who worked in nearby Dayton or Springfield. Xenia is basically small town America, the county fair was a big deal and I had to go see my friends’, black and white , cows in the livestock barns. So, my culture was about as different from an urban black’s as could be. I thoroughly enjoyed my one year teaching in the inner city, partially because I learned so much, including the fact that I could be black and live 18 miles away from populations that were as alien to me as life in New Guinea. I can only image a middle class white woman being plunked down in Roosevelt High School and encountering differences they had no idea existed. I can also, unfortunately, imagine her drawing the erroneous conclusion that this is black culture. My mother was the secretary of a college president, my father a small business owner. They had three children, all three of whom went to college, My father graduated from Hampton Institute, the precursor of Hampton University, my mother graduated from high school, she was orphaned at an early age, but both of her parents were college graduates.I participated in Jack and Jill and was presented at a cotillion sponsored by the LINKS. I have been married for more than forty years, all three of our children went to college, four of my five sisters-in law are retired teachers, the other one was the head of pediatric nurses before she retired. Black people like me do not exist in the public sphere. The media will show you Tyler Perry families, riddled with drugs, out of wedlock births, jive talking, prone to cursing and violence or they will show you rich celebrities, unfortunately they also tend to be jive talking.
So when you say the students have to change culture to be learn, successful in the world of SAT and ACT and GRE and LSAT, no they do not. They need to realize those things are part of their culture and that they too can learn, achieve and prosper. But somebody has to teach them that and our current crop of teachers ( well I have not been in classrooms much since doing ed research in late 90s, but I do talk to teachers) seem to have developed martyr complexes that are alien to me. My teachers were superhuman, they solved problems and brooked no resistance, yet I had teachers tell me that they could not teach a class of fourth graders because they came to school hungry. They seemed to feel this excused them from trying rather than realizing it meant they had to feed them first. The teaching profession has gone to hell in a handbasket. They are weak, passive and whiny in far too many instances. Educators are supposed to change the world, not go along with idiocy in a docile manner.
In Ohio the legislature is moving to allow the Chancellor of the Board of Regents to set the standards for admission to Schools of Education. The standards proposed are a GPA of 3.2 or above or a 22 on the ACT. Many of the excellent teachers I taught with, black and white, would not be able to enroll in a SOE under those standards. To add insult to injury the STRS, the retirement system has changed its procedures so that veteran teachers either retire or lose benefits. At the same time the state is poised to institute a massively problematic teacher preparation/credentialing program called edTPA that will have the student evaluated by strangers who work for a monster company called Pearson. In other words you can complete all your coursework and flunk your evaluation, which consists of two videotaped ( probably an anachronistic term) samples of your teaching and a reflection paper, and never get a license. Is it not smart to make getting a license more difficult when we are facing a teacher shortage due to retirements? And yet teachers bow their heads and comply. I have no idea what happened to the agents of change I used to know. Their teeth have been pulled and their tails are between their legs.
Because people of color tend to do less well on standardized tests, this will cut the number of teachers of color even further. As far as I know there are NO people of color participating in making the decisions being made in Columbus concerning teacher preparation. Even though Ohio blacks pay their taxes, when it comes to education they have no voice.
sorry,
I didn’t mean to imply that there was one black culture any more than there is one white one. Though liking testing and GPA into teacher education entrance requirements seems to do just that. Test prep is a very one-dimensional kind of education.
As a current teacher candidate in an initial certification program I was very, very concerned with the NCTQ’s report. My institution was among the 90% of colleges and universities did not participate in the study and after reading the report I can clearly see why. Curious to see what research method was used to conclude that most of the schools are failing in their programs; I sought out their methodology and was very dismayed with what I found. After reading the methodology NCTQ clearly did not complete its research to make the resulting report quantified. I say that because where are the teacher candidate surveys, observations, interviews, faculty interviews, teacher placement data and subsequent student achievement data? No information was given on the thoughts, opinions, and achievement of both pre-service and in-service teachers after year one, year two, etc.
None of this information was retrieved yet NCTQ published a report that says teacher preparation programs are ineffective. As I can see, they made no visits to any schools for qualitative data yet clearly deduced that universities are failing in their teacher preparation. I found the report to be slanted, horribly incomplete, totally inconclusive from the data gathered and very detrimental to the teaching field. I can only hope the public is critical enough to read the report which in itself will reveal its lack of validity.