The corporate reform movement is built on a series of suppositions, hunches, and unfortunately, fraud. The innocent reformers impose their will on teachers who know more than they do and say it’s “for the kids.” But others are in it for money, control, and power. The problem for the reform movement is that they ARE the status quo. They rail against it, but in doing so they have to pretend that No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top are not federal policy. While the reformers demand more budget cuts, more testing, more standardization, they have precious little to show for the 12 years they have been in charge of education in America. Teachers are angry and demoralized, the latest NAEP Long-Term Trend shows stagnation from 2008-12, privatization is proliferating, public schools are under siege.
Anthony Cody writes here that the Tony Bennett scandal is the beginning of the end. The game is nearing an end. The reformers’ have pulled the wool over the eyes of the public and the media. They are flush with cash, but at some point the foundations and Wall Street will realize they are doing harm, not good. It will not benefit society to privatize public education. Those who lead this campaign are not heroes. They will one day look back and wonder how they were duped into supporting so many bad ideas. They might even wonder why they insisted on one kind of education for their children, and something far less for other people’s children.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Suppose we had an FDA for the medicines proscribed to heal the sick educational body?
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I hope it is crumbling because they actually have loads to show for the 12 years they have been in charge and none of it is good. This is a Rachel Carson, Silent Spring moment for public education. We can support what Diane is doing here by continuing to add our stories to every available media format. Document the toxicity but also describe the cure in child-focused detail. It is no longer “up to them”. They are in charge of train wreck that can be averted only through the intervention of We The Teachers.
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I was reading an interview with the CEO of charter schools USA, the school corp that Bennett’s wife works for and Bennett had privatize IN schools.
The CEO speaks very bluntly about his preference for a privatized model for public schools. That’s his goal, and his business plan.
Since I do not believe that school reformers have sold reform honestly, and because I do not believe that most Americans want a privatized system, reformers who tell the truth like the CEO’s of the charter chains, should get much more exposure.
Reformers are avoiding a debate on the central issue. They should have to defend privatization.
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I like that approach. Let NBC’s miseducation nation tout the truth front and center and let’s see what happens. Bravo!
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That is an amazingly terrible program. Arraying the governors in front of the huge University of Phoenix backdrop is one of the most cynical things I’ve ever seen in politics OR media. They should be ashamed to present that as “news”. They may as well have done a crawl: “here’s the politicians we purchased”.
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We can only hope. When has Wall Street turned its back on quarterly profits?
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Actually I think the “reformers” have accomplished their most important goal: the end of tenure. In NYS a teacher WILL be fired if said teacher’s students do poorly on VAM scores for 2 consecutive years even if the teachers has high scores in other areas. John King, NYS Ed. Commissioner stated that principals should use the VAM scores judiciously when firing teachers???!!!! Even if these exams disappear someday, the precedent has been set that a bad evaluation gives the principal the authority to fire someone without due process.
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We go one better here in Florida. If you receive 2 bad evaluations out of 3, and 50% of that is test scores only, then you not only get fired but you lose your teaching credential permanently, no exceptions.
All of those years of college and grad school, all of that money invested in your future, gone in a puff of manipulated test score smoke. Boom! Your career is over. Do not pass go. Do not collect $200. Go directly to the Poor House and fill out your application for Walmart.
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That is just WRONG and should never have been allowed to become the way things work! EVER!
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Rating teachers on test scores is like rating dentists on the number of cavities their patients get.
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I disagree with one statement made here…The reformers were “duped into supporting so many bad ideas.”
They knew exactly what they were doing…Profit over children was their motivation….nothing more. A lot of damage was done that will not be reversed…tenure, testing, evaluations tied to CC with its own testing for seniors to pass in order to get a diploma….and lastly, demoralization of the profession…that will not go away.
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This is maybe the silliest thing I’ve ever seen. The notion that Wall Street will realize that privatization is doing more harm than good and therefore stop investing in efforts to privatize education is beyond naive. Look at the food, banking and pharmaceuticals industries for insight into the conscience of the financial sector. If there is a decent return on investment and/or a solid chance of corporate growth, Wall Street executives will gladly sell their grandmothers into slavery. Corporations are persons without souls. Very powerful persons without souls.
The only hope we have is to convince the public that the public school system is the best alternative for the greatest number of people. This will not be easy for several reasons. The most important is that for a long time the reformers have been telling the public loudly and repeatedly that public schools are failing and our primary response has been to twitter amongst ourselves factual, evidence-based reasons this is not true, while showing the public our “greedy union thug” face in places like Chicago and Wisconsin.
What makes the situation more desperate is that we have to quickly convince the public of this while the public is still in charge. In most of the country, local school boards are the major decision-makers on day-to-day operations, including the granting of charters. The privatizers understand that local control is their enemy and we are going to see an accelerated push to eliminate it in all states. When that happens, the game is over.
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“. . . while showing the public our “greedy union thug” face in places like Chicago and Wisconsin.”
I don’t see how standing up to those who would destroy public education is “our greedy union thug face”. (Maybe my sarcasmometer is not working right now).
“The privatizers understand that local control is their enemy and we are going to see an accelerated push to eliminate it in all states.”
Quite correct! Exactly what they have done with the concept of mayoral control and non elected boards and “state takeovers” of “failing districts”.
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No sarcasm intended, Duane.
There is nothing wrong with a labor union standing up for its interests. I’m fine with that. I was among those in WI standing and shouting at the protests. But let’s not kid ourselves that was about the kids. It wasn’t. It was about the loss of collective bargaining rights and pay.
The perception Wisconsin teachers created here among the rest of the citizens will take a long time to live down, and we had better start doing it now, by creating excellent, cost-effective educational systems that will convince voters that there is no need for expanded privatization.
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Daxeeckstrom,
Of course money always has to be managed prudently. It does not grow on trees. But far more of it would triclke down from our federal tax dollars if our elected officials were not paying for Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Afghanistan. I DON’T WANT my tax dollars going to military campaigns that are controversial to begin with, draining of our own internal infrastructure, and maim and kill far too many civilians and our men and women in uniform.
But I have to disagree with you about the motives of labor in WI schools. Collective bargaining rights leads to labor conditions and labor conditions translate directly into learning environments and conditions for children. Addressing the needs of those who take care of children is part and parcel of addressing the needs of children.
If it were not, children would have no need for adults in any context.
The removal of collective bargaining rights in WI spells the death of advocacy for smaller class size, small group instruction , reading specialists, librarians, the arts, physical education, ample teaching space, etc. The list is getting longer now that reformers are lying to the public that we teachers are costing society the eyes out of their heads, as the French would say.
If the paradigm of financing were to be better balanced and differently proportioned between Federal tax dollars and local property taxes from home owners, we would not be having this discussion.
Of course, there must be ceilings on teacher and administrator pay. No one can keep on going up forever. But if healthcare were not so expensive, profit driven (an American man in the news recently underwent hip replcement surgery in Belgium for $13K and the SAME exact scope of services and products in the United States would have cost him $78K), and were replaced y a single payer system, there would be more money left over to address the infrastructure of school systems.
As wealth was being generated more and more from 1935 to 1965, unions saw to it that a middle class was born, cultivated, and expanding by bargaining for some of the vested interests produced by people’s labor. That’s not the result of greedy union thugs, but of justice, fairness, and equity, the three elements that once made this country the envy and dream of the rest of the developing world.
We can no longer turn to globalization as a reason or excuse to not foster unions and labor rights. In fact, in this overly globalized economic climate, the needs for such have grown more than they did in the 1930’s.
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And Daveeckstrom,
If you think teachers cost a lot, do you have any idea how much excessive testing mandated from RttT are costing districts and eating into their budgets, preventing them from hiring more qualified personnel.
I suggest you read extensively on the financial effects of this reform movement on schools, educators, children, and families. You’d be empowered!
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Robert,
I get the spin that was placed on the protests in Wisconsin, but I was there, listening to the conversations around me at the protests and I didn’t hear anyone talking about advocating for students. They were just pissed off at having taken a giant pay cut and knew that without collective bargaining, there would be more to come.
I agree with your politics vis-a-vis the military-industrial complex, healthcare etc. and I am intimately familiar with the high cost of testing mandates. I just think we should stop kidding ourselves. The world has changed and teachers who continue to operate as if we are above that change are in for a huge shock when we realize that our competition will increasingly be slick, heavily-marketed McSchools. Unless we start to positively and actively show the public that we are the organic market in that analogy, they will assume all things are equal and happily send their kids to the place that sells itself the best.
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Daveeckstrom,
Agree! Public schools and their unions must put forth to the public all the successful and strong signs and evidence of learning. Given our very current paradigm of school financing, there needs to be a review of salary caps for any type of employee in an LEA. In the northeast, the pay is very dignified. In other parts of the country, the pay is abysmal. But a crisis that motivates reform in taxation and tax appropriation is something school boards and parents, among so many other cohorts, must address.
LEAs absolutely need to engage parents and robustly communicate to them what goes on in the district. Major horns must be touted, or a
parents will end up sending their kids to the school that sells itself the best . . . you hit that nail on its head.One a parent leaves the school building, they go out into the world and spread their impressions to other parents. This means a school must have substance in its excellence and transparency about its resources, and it must communicate both to parents, otherwise, it will the suport of those parents.
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Daveeckstrom,
Correction in last sentence: ” . . . . it will lose the support ofthe parents.”
It is hard to type on an i-pad!
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daveeckstrom, you are beyond correct, and you, too, Michael Brocoum. What you have said makes it all the more difficult–that’s why EVERYONE has to fight all the more.The testing industry must crumble and die as testing has created this domino effect on public education. The answer to this is massive opt-outs and Garfield teachers all over the country (CPS–in 2002, 12 Curie HS teachers also did this testing protest/successful abolishment with CASE–another ridiculous test {& this, BTW, was when Arne Duncan was the new CEO of CPS}) Keep it coming, folks. Just as in NC, it’s all about the NUMBERS of participants. In the meantime–as it’s been discovered that we have caught on to this massive ALEC plan and profiteering on the backs of our children and our teachers–be on the lookout for new terminology used as a school-closing front–aka–building “under utilization” (e.g., Chicago). Keep fighting,
because yes, WE can and we WILL!
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The tests and the testing industry are the #1 money-sucking apparatus in the whole scheme! Have you read how many millions this is going to cost states each and every year? My state can’t begin to afford that, especially since we chose not to compete for RTTT dollars since small, rural states don’t fit the mold well, and Arne won’t give us a waiver yet either! I see state taxes going up up up just to fund the testing. What Pearson is charging states is exorbitant, to put it mildly. We don’t even need these tests except as a way for the feds to grade schools and fire teachers! This stuff is the definition of INSANITY. Corporate greed has reached the point of perversity.
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. . . “greedy union thug faces”?? Really?? It is union “thugs,” Sir, that are engaging and fighting the corporate beast that threatens our schools. If being a thug means standing up and fighting for my students, school and fellow teachers, then I’m claiming it PROUDLY. I bet though, however, you wouldn’t say it to my face 🙂
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Dave, I’m talking perception here, and perception is reality. When my fellow Wisconsinites saw tens of thousands of teachers skip school and go to Madison to protest, their first thought was not, “Look at those teachers standing up for their students.”
Why? Because we were NOT standing up for our students. Nothing had changed in our students’ lives that brought on that protest. Something had changed in their teachers’ lives, namely a 12% pay cut and loss of collective bargaining. We were there protesting a loss of power and money. Period. We can put all the spin on it we want, but it won’t amount to a hill of beans unless we actually show the public, not just tell them, that we are the best people to be educating their kids.
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People have forgotten their history. Labor has a contentious and violent history. Power is never given, it must be won. If people want to get upset at teachers for advocating for themselves and their survival, they can go right ahead and be upset. Was this about money and having a voice?? Certainly, but it was a fight started by Scott and his corporate paymasters. There would be enough resources/ money if they weren’t diverting BILLIONS into the coffers of cronies and corporations. Are our students and schools best served by the privatization of schools?? Oh hell no, they’re not. The good news is we are starting to reframe the argument and push back against JEB! and the Koch brothers. Teachers are uniting under this banner. We are tired of the corporate BS. We have had enough of the corporate rape and pillage of our schools and children. Time to pick a side boys, time to pick a side . . .
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Dave Galloway,
I was there. I protested too. I get how labor activism works. But it’s over now. We lost that battle. We will lose the war if we don’t get out of this mindset and begin to put on a PR face that recognizes whose hands our fate is now in. Local taxpayers are the only thing that stands between us and the ravenous mouths of the for-profit reformers. We have to show them that we are the ones they want in charge or their children’s education. We won’t do that by being Bad-Ass Teachers.
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I am part of that “general public” you’re talking about. I’ve never been a teacher, nor has any member of my immediate or extended family.
But I’m a parent: And I don’t want a teacher lacking due process to be teaching my child, or any child. I don’t want a school filled with 24 year olds who teach for 18 months and then leave for their “real career” in law or business or medicine.
A financially secure teacher is a GOOD teacher. My child will not learn if he has a stressed out teacher that is constantly worried about being fired, or “reduced in force”. Nor will he learn if the teacher is under constant financial pressure and stress.
I want students to have teachers who are organized and well-represented. Why? Because it’s in the STUDENT’S best interest; not just the teacher’s.
Collective Bargaining is something Americans should be proud of—not apologizing for. If anything, the union leadership, in both the NEA and the AFT, on the local and national levels, has been far too accommodating. And by doing so, they’ve of course, hurt themselves. But more important, those actions have hurt our students!
Chicago did it right; they went into their school communities and talked directly to parents and students. They let them know that their interests are the same and that they should be allies—facing a common enemy.
So, please, no insult intended, Dave, but a teacher’s best interest IS ALSO a student’s best interest as well. They’re one and the same.
Being in favor of collective bargaining doesn’t make any working person “greedy”. (Where the hell did you learn to enable that horrendous misperception?)
When those teachers stood there, outside in that very frigid weather, they weren’t just “greedy”, doing this “for themselves”. That’s nonsense. (Go talk to Whitney Tilson and his fellow hedge fund buddies if you want to see an example of greed!)
They were standing there for ALL educators, ALL students, and ALL families that send their children to these schools. Please don’t play into the hands of those who portray any such resistance as “greedy”, coming from a bunch of “thugs”.
Shame on those who deliberately created that vile and false portrayal. And shame on those of us—educators, parents and students—who lack the courage and the stamina and the diligence to explain the other (credible) side of this story.
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Thank you.
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Puget,
Thanks for the support, but if people like you were in the majority, Scott Walker would never have been elected and his union-busting legislation would never have stood a chance in the legislature.
Now it’s time to deal with the world as it really is, not as it would be if it was fair and right. We are living in a world where marketing = survival and “Bad-Ass Teachers” are marketing nothing appealing to Joe and Jane Sixpack, who are already programmed to believe that competition will fix all ills.
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Sorry to disagree with Anthony, with whom I’ve had the pleasure of talking to a few times (not on this subject).
I do think we are slowly swinging back the pendulum. The parent and taxpayer backlash is growing and gaining considerable momentum. Voices are being heard and distributed via social media more and more. This is not an issue.
The challenges now are a few:
1. How will the growth of such legitimate backlash compete with damages already done and more damages coming down the pike?
2. How will the reversals come faster and stronger, knowing that the reformers have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on propaganda in the mainstream media?
What we have going on now on our behalf is not only better than what we had in the past, but it’s superior. Bennett’s resignation is one of many signs of the true vulnerabilities and falsehoods of the reformers. . . . But I don’t know if it is a sign of their demise.
Let’s keep up the momentum and fight, and re-triple our efforts.
This will be a fight whose victory – ours – is ever more assured and made more likely in proportion to the tenacity and permanence of our efforts.
In the parlance of chemistry, our chemicals have at least been deposited into the beaker. Before, they were not even considered for adding or able to be added. But they have not mixed thouroughly with the reformer’s chemicals, already present in the beaker. Our ingredients are at laest there, floating around. This is a vastly superior step compared to a even two years ago.
Now we need to shake that beaker vigorously to make sure the chemicals have mixed and the catalysts released to change things for the better.
Crumbling empire of the reformers? I dont’ think so.
Is this the beginning of far more diversity in the voices and advocacy of our side and their presence in the power broker scene and round tables? Yes!
I will be believe the crumbling of the evil empire when in NY State, new legislation makes combined local and standardized assessments no more than 0 to 5 % of my overall evaluation from APPR and does not give disproportionate weight to the testing in that 0 to 5%. As it stands this year, local tests will count as 15% (down from 20%) and standardized tests will count as 25% (up from 20%). This is a scam and a lie, and the empire will crumble when teachers like myself are no longer mischaracterized and lied about.
The proof is in the creme anglaise. . . .
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This isn’t a fad or a pendulum swing. This is the direct result of policies which have created too much wealth into too few hands. These greedheads want it ALL–they want to pilfer ALL public institutions for private gain, and they have “philosophical” cover for their sociopathy (neoliberalism/libertarianism), and they have bought off both political parties.
These parasites won’t be happy until they have sucked the last dime out of the 99.9 percent of people in this country.
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Completely agree!
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I don’t think Wall Street cares whether or not they do good or harm, BUT if some sense that the public won’t tolerate this brand of reform indefinitely, there will be blood in the water, and the other sharks on Wall Street will tear the education “reform” scammers to shreds faster than we could ever hope to.
We just have to keep up the cuts and scrapes where we can until the other sharks get the scent.
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Bravo and here’s a toast to many more cuts and scrapes.
I don’t mind making a few gashes myself. Let’s unite to continue exposing the edufrauds.
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I wish believed it was crumbling. I don’t see that in Denver. We continue to go full bore with 50% of teacher evaluations based on test scores. We continue to add more charters even though the highly touted ones are showing DECLINES in proficiency and even though we can now show charters that are so-called boundary schools, i.e., that have to take all students, do absolutely no better than the neighborhood schools they replaced. We have four board of education seats up for election in November and have already seen the national money start to flood Denver for the slate of the status quo of “reform”. DFER has endorsed these four without even interviewing the other candidates. One of these candidates has publicly stated we need a 7-0 board so no questions about these failing strategies would be heard. I guess he thinks we should just push on with the failures as long as we keep covering it up. And , of course, Denver suffers from being a one newspaper town with little to no investigative journalism and with the newspaper in the back pocket of the corporatists . I wish it weren’t so, but honestly, I don’t see the end in sight. I hope I am wrong. Our kids, employees, communities certainly deserve better.
Jeannie Kaplan
DPS school board
District 3
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Anthony Cody is too optimistic for his own good. These people want to DISMANTLE ALL PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS for private gain. Education is only one part of it.
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You nailed it. This is about the 99% even HAVING a future.
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They have the Billions. To get the taxpayer Billions. 2008 wasn’t enough and constant grabbing drains the treasury. Privatization steals from us.Easy to steal from an existing source, our schools. A = B + C A is the money available to schools. C are the buildings, the teachers, the staff. When A is constant (we are still in a recession) and B = Privatization= the middle man like the Charter in Orlando that had a Principal that paid herself $500,000 a year. All that B means less C. Teachers in Florida already start at only $8 an hour. So increasing B means we end up decreasing C. $100 = $10 + $90 We don’t need no stinkin $10 handed off as pure graft. Maybe we can at least start by introducing a bill to our legislature that they -not- pay to S&^%# us through the travel August 9 to the ALEC birthday in Chicago? We have the voters and the taxpayers. But, unfortunately, they still have the money.
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Correction: The ALEC Birthday Party is Thursday, August 8th (not the ninth)–12 Noon at the Palmer House in Chicago. Come on down, and make the numbers count! (More than the Million Man March!!)
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How horrifying. It’s hard to believe, what you’ve mentioned here. This perversion should not be the norm in Orlando or any other part of the country. . . .
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With sincere respect to all the commentors here, it’s clear what we all don’t want. What is less clear is what kind of school experience we are advocating for. I find it frustrating the extent to which the conversations here and elsewhere fail to acknowledge the enormous changes that are occurring in the world and the undeniably significant impact that technology is having on every aspect of learning, education and work. We do well to push back against the Jeb Bush’s and Michelle Rhee’s of the world, but we must also be willing to push back on the institutionally organized structures, practices, pedagogies, assessments, and general systems that currently operate on a context for learning that is inadequate at best and irrelevant at worst. If, as this post suggests, the corporate reform movement is heading south, are we really just saying we’re going to go back and try to do the old school concept “better?” Do we not have an obligation to start talking about how to unlearn and relearn the whole enterprise in the light of the increasing abundance of knowledge, information, teachers and learning opportunities we now have access to?
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Will,
How about applying the same paradigm that has been so successful at schools like Sidwell Friends and Lakeside Academy? Small classes, experienced teachers, well-maintained and up-to-date facilities, a rich curriculum that is strong in the arts and other subjects, a well-supplied library, excellent technology, and the staff required to meet the needs of the students? That seems to work well for the elite’s children, why not for others?
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Thanks for the reply, Diane. No question, the schools you mention represent the best of a traditional education, and if that’s what we want, we should model those spaces. But from what I can tell, (and I’d love to be proven wrong,) neither Sidwell or Lakeside use technology to support what I would call a more modern learning approach that is steeped in inquiry and develops kids as learners who can take adavantage of the rich connections to teachers and knowledge that live far outside the classroom. I’ve worked with many high level independent schools in the NJ-PA and Atlanta areas, and on rare occasion (i.e. Lovett in Atlanta) can I find a school-wide vision that sees technology as a rich, global, transparent, create-ive learning resource as opposed to a productivity tool. In public schools, what Chris Lehmann, principal at Science Leadership Academy in Philly, and Pam Moran, the superintendent of the Albemarle, Va school district should be the models that we aspire to. In fact, Pam’s recent post on how students are using technology to learn should be a required read for everyone concerned with how to truly prepare our kids for this modern world of learning. And, importantly, both Chris and Pam understand that the onus of testing does not preclude them from leading these types of transformations. Modern learning and passing the test are not mutually exclusive.
There’s no question we need to fight back against the reformers, and I totally respect the yeoman’s work you are doing to do so. But I just don’t think it’s enough to end the conversation about change there. This is a different world. What served us well is not serving my kids and won’t serve my grandkids. We need different thinking about what we do in schools. Simply doing what we’ve been doing better is not enough.
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With sincere respect to all the commentors here, it’s clear what we all don’t want. What is less clear is what kind of school experience we are advocating for. I find it frustrating the extent to which the conversations here and elsewhere fail to acknowledge the enormous changes that are occurring in the world and the undeniably significant impact that technology is having on every aspect of learning, education and work. We do well to push back against the Jeb Bush’s and Michelle Rhee’s of the world, but we must also be willing to push back on the institutionally organized structures, practices, pedagogies, assessments, and general systems that currently operate on a context for learning that is inadequate at best and irrelevant at worst. If, as this post suggests, the corporate reform movement is heading south, are we really just saying we’re going to go back and try to do the old school concept “better?” Do we not have an obligation to start talking about how to unlearn and relearn the whole enterprise in the light of the increasing abundance of knowledge, information, teachers and learning opportunities we now have access to?
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Why do you assume that isn’t already happening in many schools in our country? How do you know it is not taking place in many districts, schools and classrooms?
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Because I’ve visited hundreds of schools in the last few years and seen very few instances where the thinking around learning has changed. Many schools have the stuff, but they use it to deliver the traditional curriculum “better.” I’m talking about using it to make learning student-centered, authentic, inquiry-based AND connected and networked to other learners and teachers around the world. Real work, real purposes, real audiences that live far beyond the classroom. Solving real problems, making real solutions. If you can share a list of schools that are doing that at an organizational level, that have that as a long term goal, I’d love to see it.
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What cities/states/settings have you visited?
Do you believe the national standards and required testing tied to student worth and teacher evaluations will move teaching and learning in the direction you describe?
I can only speak to my classroom, team and school.
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Sure, but then what is your idea for doing so?
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My thoughts on the new questions facing schools and the potential answers are pretty much captured here.
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Your book description begins with:
“Traditional educators, classrooms, and brick-and-mortar schools are no longer necessary to access information. Instead, things like blogs and wikis, as well as remote collaborations and an emphasis on ‘critical thinking’ skills are the coins of the realm in this new kingdom.”
First is your theory based on the premise that brick and mortar schools exist ONLY to access information? Critical thinking skills are emphasized in wikis and remote collaborations, but never in schools?
Are you a supporter of the k-12 online Miliken schools?
You said in a previous post that you have been to hundreds of schools and all of them were inadequate but on this site, which you claim to be an advisory board member, there is an example of a school in Maine that engages in project based learning (and that happens in many schools in our country). Maybe you need to visit more.
Therefore, even thought you didn’t answer my question can I assume you are not supportive of frequent testing, narrowing the curriculum and national standards forced on all schools?
http://www.edutopia.org/stw-maine-pbl
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Well, I’ve sprung for it, and will take a look.
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Linda,
Not sure why the accusatory tone. Apologies if I’ve angered you. I just want to debate the ideas.
First, I didn’t say all were inadequate. I wrote that I’ve “seen very few instances where the thinking around learning has changed.”
My opinion (based on first hand experience) is if you boil it down to the core, most schools are about delivering the curriculum to pass the test with some critical thinking and problem solving thrown in for good measure. My argument is that those things (and many others) should be the primary focus of schools, not testing.
I was an advisory board member for the Lucas Foundation for four years until the board was dissolved two years ago.
Hope that helps.
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The current “reform” movement led by Gates, Duncan, Obama, Broad, etc. is leading us away from your vision. I was referring to your words in the description of your book.
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A-freakin’-MEN!, Willrich45
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“Do we not have an obligation to start talking about how to unlearn and relearn the whole enterprise in the light of the increasing abundance of knowledge, information, teachers and learning opportunities we now have access to?”
Sure, but the money behind the “reformers” is bent on two things: 1) lowering their cost of doing business by reducing expenditures on education (Waltons, Broad, Gates, et al), 2) cashing in by creating new education markets and expanding old ones and then owning those markets (Gates, Murdoch, et al). What’s more, the “reformers” that work for foundations or receive grants from them get their livelihood by attacking teachers and advocating for policies that are either unproven or already proven worthless.
Right now, bad ideas supported by hundreds of millions of dollars and an assortment of political and financial opportunists are threatening to destroy the teaching profession and the institution of public schooling. Unless more people fight back against the bad ideas and the profiteers, student-centered learning won’t stand a chance.
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Exactly….as long as they are in charge we are going backwards. Subvert!
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I don’t disagree with anything you write, Randal. But that doesn’t excuse us from having a serious conversation about the current relevance of schooling, reformer-driven or not. We won’t get more people fighting back unless we can articulate the importance of student-centered, authentic, inquiry-driven learning as a response to a world where answers are now everywhere. If we continue to promote the value of school as the stuff that can be captured in a Khan Academy video, we leave ourselves wide open to the message of the reformers, that school can be done more efficiently, with fewer teachers, etc. The articulated and practical value of school has to change, not just for the sake of this argument but for the sake of the new realities our kids are facing.
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willrich45: “If we continue to promote the value of school as the stuff that can be captured in a Khan Academy video…”
Stop right there. That’s not a “straw man” proposition. That’s a tightly bundled “straw group” proposition. Who is “we,” what is “the stuff that can be captured in a Khan Academy video,” and who is promoting “the value of school”–define that one while you’re at it–on that basis? I’m not buying any part of the “if” you propose.
Yes, schools need to be transformed. For the average student, it’s still way too boring. And I never liked the attitude that says, “I know how to teach, so let me do it.” A great teacher doesn’t “know” how, he’s always LEARNING how. Traditional teaching skills and subject matter do have value, but yes, teachers and schools need to evolve as technology and society change. To my way of thinking, even supposedly progressive, authentic modes of teaching are suspect. I leaf through my copy of Understanding by Design (Wiggins and McTighe, Expanded 2nd Edition) as if it were radioactive. I’m afraid the proliferation of reductive, overwrought “UbD Units” intended to result in particular “understandings” for students may lead to the end of American civilization as we know it.
Even so, the immediate problem is that big money folks are trying to turn schools into low cost teach-and-test factories, and to further enrich themselves by doing so. The desired input is efficiently “delivering” instruction at a lower cost and the desired output is ever-increasing standardized test scores. And this means ever more money for test and textbook publishers, ever increasing campaign contributions for bad education-focused politicians, and an erosion of public school funding as it is diverted to more and more charter schools. It means more tears and tedium for kids and less autonomy for teachers, but more control for politicians over matters they know nothing about.
I say that ANY resistance to these trends is a vote in favor of a better learning experience for the child and an improved learning climate. You don’t need to have a radical new approach in hand before you work to expel the pernicious reforms. Each teacher will evolve in his own time and manner. With the abundance of online resources these days, self-development is easier than ever.
I’m looking over my notes from ISTE 2012. I’m sorry I had to leave midway through your presentation titled “The Steep Unlearning Curve: Rethinking Schools, Classrooms, and Learning.” I hope more teachers catch onto the ideas of unlearning and relearning. I just don’t think protesting the new status quo will get in the way of that.
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I think one of the biggest problems for those fighting against the educational “reformers” is that the fight needs to happen on 2 fronts simultaneously. First, against the demonization of teachers as teachers: that is, in many cases as union members, and against all of the ancillary stuff that goes along with that perspective (loss of collective bargaining, etc.). Second, against the idea that teachers in a classroom offer no net benefit to students and can thus be replaced by computers, Khan Academy, Rocketship, etc.
Teachers and a few members of the general public are starting to push back against the first, but I agree with Will that unless a serious conversation is had about what school actually MEANS, the second point will be much, much more difficult to make and in the end will be much more damaging to education. The public is very used to the idea of things becoming automated, and is quite familiar with the delivery of information via the Internet. Their memory of school, by and large, is that of it as a place where they got information. Why shouldn’t they believe that the Internet can replace large pieces of that? I hate to use neoliberal terminology, but unless teachers can convince the public that they genuinely add value to children’s experiences at school, we’ll get no more sympathy in the end than the UAW workers whose factories have closed.
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So, we see the world of business change to the times of technology but we are supposed to keep education the same or go back to the way education was? Yet we expect teachers to be better educated to teach children. We expected to teach children to the test even though the test isn’t even equivalent to where the world is actually at today. When even shopping turns out to be a technological experience today, don’t you think that technology should be one of the #1 things taught in schools? I’m not saying we should get rid of History, Science, Math, or English. Because, please someone teach these students to spell and write sentences correctly! And teach them about the past, who Einstein was, as well as how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide without always needing a calculator. We can use the arts in schools and still have technology! But can’t we teach them all this AND teach them how to search for answers on their own? Can’t we show them that technology is a collaborative tool that will connect them with more than the classmate in the seat next to them, or the co-worker in the cubicle across the office? We can now work with people across the nation, across the world. Can’t we teach innovation and encourage creativity and get rid of the ridiculous and already outdated No Child Left Behind because it isn’t working for anyone. Teachers are still teaching to the test because that is what the schools need the numbers for. Students’ education is being hindered because it doesn’t matter if they are prepared to go to college or enter the workforce after high school as long as they pass those standardized tests that schools must give.
This is just my opinion and everyone has one. I have never liked using textbooks and have encouraged my students to think outside the box in my classes. Thank goodness I teach technology courses where they are able to do that!
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I am not that optimistic. That’s because what is going on with education in the U.S. is part of a WORLDWIDE trend, and it is rooted in neoliberal ideas about “globalization” and education not as the means to create an informed citizenry but only as job training.
These billionaires and Wall Street crooks and their politicians are in it for the long haul, people. Anthony Cody is wrong.
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I wish I could agree with Anthony…however, in Los Angeles I do not see this crumbling of the privatizers. The Los Angeles Times has totally drunk the Kool Aid and repeatedly publishes long articles on the success of charters, TFA, Ben Austin and his Parent Revolution school takeovers. But they say virtually nothing about good public schools and successful students. Their slant is influencing many in the public who repeat the mantra about failing schools and rotten teachers.
This week the Times article on the ‘wonderful’ Walton Family Foundation giving another $20M to LA TFA kids, was absolutely dripping with admiration and very little explanation of the failures of TFA (This dastardly Walton family of inherited wealth who steal from us all by paying their workers so little that they have to go on food stamps and Medicaid. These thugs of huge unearned wealth who also urge and donate for Stand Your Ground laws throughout America.)
The LA Times focuses again and again on the one TFA physics teacher who seems to have succeeded, but not on the hundreds of others who are struggling. There is no way to make them honest assessors without bias since they are trying to sell the Tribune, and the LA Times, to either Rupert Murdoch or the Kochs. They even have a video online where the lead Education writer interviews another education writer and they both gush about the charters. It is truly sickening.
The reason Merrow cannot get his article published is because Michelle Rhee is protected by her mentor, Eli Broad, and his partners in the free market such as Murdoch who owns most of our media. The power of these kings is so vast that they can kill any story as well as use their PR folks to push the exaggerated stories and their darling Rhee, all with the goal of breaking the back of unions, and further enriching themselves. It is so sick but they do it with the mantra that they are saving children of color from the dumb public school educators.
AnthonyCody is a great commentator, and I wish I could see things his way from his perspective in Oakland, but is not accurate in Los Angeles. Today online the Daily News interviewed Ben Austin who equivocated about anything that did not make him look like Lancelot. We do not have a major free press anywhere in LA so the public believes all the mendacious reports.
I have not been writing much for awhile because I am talking around town on these issues with our organization Joining Forces for Education…but I am getting beaten up on a regular basis by educated and selfish folks who are pro charter and who recommend that obstreperous students be ostracized from the general student population and sit in a locked room with a military guard each day in public school. And as to the Special Ed and ELL kids, they think it is fine that they go to inferior schools far from their neighborhoods. I am horrified at the attitudes of some of the American public.
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What is crumbling is Brown vs. Board of Education.
The new principal at Weigand Charter School, the product of Ben Austin and the Waltons et al, got his education at National University. How telling is that? Just read this.
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Vicki,
When is the last time you watched the Disney Channel? or Nickelodeon?
This blog reminded me about the massive ad spending by private charter schools and their ilk I witnessed the past few days while my grandkids were here.
We, the tax payers, are unwittingly paying for our own brainwashing!!! The excessive ad buys are paid for with corporate profit, paid for by our tax dollars. It is obscene. No public school district could ever afford it, yet where does the money come from? –– The government contracts the private schools have been awarded!
Truly, I never knew…
My daughter, who recently received a statewide (Texas) honor for her extraordinary service in the PTA, is very interested in this. When she returns to Dallas she will catch up on Diane’s blog.
Allyson Allyson S. Malek cell 831.238.4065 http://www.allysonmalek.com
>________________________________ > From: Diane Ravitch’s blog >To: allymalek@sbcglobal.net >Sent: Sunday, August 4, 2013 7:01 AM >Subject: [New post] Is Corporate Reform Crumbling? > > > > WordPress.com >dianerav posted: “The corporate reform movement is built on a series of suppositions, hunches, and unfortunately, fraud. The innocent reformers impose their will on teachers who know more than they do and say it’s “for the kids.” But others are in it for money, control, an” >
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Hey Randall,
So, “we” are the thousands (if not millions of educators) who still promote school as THE place to come and receive an education. “We” may not articulate it quite like that, but our actions bear that out. It’s about the institution controlling the learning. The stuff that can be captured in a 10-minute Khan video is just that…all the content, the basic skills, the formulas, the dates, etc. My kids take tests in school that they could pass had they “studied” at Khan. That is exactly the “value” schools promote, but I no longer need school to teach my child Algebra, French, US History, etc. I’m not saying I don’t want schools; they are the most important part of our communities and our nation in terms of the future we create for ourselves. But if we really just try to be better than Khan et. al. at delivering an education, we will absolutely lose the battle to the reformers.
You’re right; the immediate problem is the money soaked vision of an efficient yet “world class” education that can be delivered by rock star teachers online, adaptive learning systems, and the like. But even if (or, hopefully, when) we push back that nonsense, schools in general have a serious identity crisis looming. Just like media, banking, publishing, and much more, we are going to have to reinvent ourselves. And to me, that reinvention starts with redefining our value to our kids and communities. We need schools now to be places of questions, places where students and teachers create meaningful, beautiful work that is shared with a global audience and has a real, authentic purpose in the world. We need them to be places where we nurture curiosity and creativity, where kids learn to embrace failure and change, and where the technologies of the day are in full use.
Protesting the status quo is appropriate and necessary. But it’s not enough. That’s all I’m saying.
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“We need schools now to be places of questions, places where students and teachers create meaningful, beautiful work that is shared with a global audience and has a real, authentic purpose in the world. We need them to be places where we nurture curiosity and creativity, where kids learn to embrace failure and change, and where the technologies of the day are in full use.”
I don’t think many readers would disagree. We needed schools to be that way back in 1984 (except maybe for the global audience part) when Horace’s Compromise and A Place Called School were published. Some teachers and administrators paid attention and changed their practice. Current trends are going in the opposite direction, and that’s a major reason for the protests.
Again, I think you’re inventing a class of people–protestors against bogus reform who believe that schools only exist to transfer knowledge and skills–that, if it exists, is a lot smaller than you think. There’s nothing in Diane’s critique that defines school that way. And I’m willing to bet that quite a few advocates for public education are or were innovative teachers.
For me, the value that good schools “promote” has a lot more to do with inspiration, guidance, mentorship, and human connection than it does with that Khan video you talk about. Some of the actual online promotional materials that Diane’s commenters have linked to might be worth a look. They’re not selling shortcuts to solving math problems.
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Randall,
We’re totally on the same side here when it comes to what the current corporate reformers are trotting out for our kids. The efficiency in the name of test scores crap is just that…crap.
Where I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree is about the level of understanding that most parents, policy makers, and public school educators have right now as to the ways in which computing and connections are literally rewriting the script when it comes to learning, schooling, and work. I submit that at the end of the day, schools are a content-centric enterprise. We organize and mete it out according to some outdated theories on how learning happens and how an education should be delivered. Look at any other content based institution (newspapers, media, art, etc.) and you’ll see the wholesale disruptions that are coming our way whether we like it or not. If the object of schooling is to pass a series of discrete subject area tests and to label that narrow result “an education,” well, we just don’t need schools for that anymore. And I would argue that even if you took the current corporate reformers out of it, schools as they currently exist are so conditioned to that end that we’d still be aspiring to outcomes and awards based on the number of AP classes we offer, SAT scores, NAEP scores, and whatever else is easily measured. Few know how to do anything else.
I’m not blaming anyone here; these changes are sudden and huge in scope. But very, very few truly practice the student-centered, authentic, inquiry based types of learning that Ted Sizer advocates for. I’d love it if you were right. But I’ve had literally thousands of conversations with educators at every level over the last few years, and while they are for the most part smart, caring, hard-working, good people, they aren’t learners in the contexts that this modern world now requires. They’re not connected. They don’t use computers to create new knowledge, to solve problems, and to amplify human knowledge. And because of that, they can’t see their way to the very different conception of schooling that I believe our kids desperately need right now.
Nonetheless, I sincerely appreciate the conversation.
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“But very, very few truly practice the student-centered, authentic, inquiry based types of learning that Ted Sizer advocates for. I’d love it if you were right.”
I didn’t say that lots of teachers and administrators practice what Sizer advocated. Some changed their practice, influenced in part by those authors. Of course, they only changed to the extent that they were able to do so and still keep their jobs.
What I don’t understand is this: “If the object of schooling is to pass a series of discrete subject area tests and to label that narrow result ‘an education,’ well, we just don’t need schools for that anymore.”
Ask any coach or choir director if that’s the object of schooling. Or ask anyone who’s worked as a school nurse or lunchroom supervisor. Or any kid who’s ever enjoyed being in the marching band or on the speech team. The value of schools as they are today can’t be separated from the people in them and they enjoyment (and challenges) they experience. Naturally, the K-12 online hucksters don’t want people to believe that.
Yes, mindless busy work can be done online as well as in a classroom. What the great education critics of the Eighties wanted was for the classroom work to be as memorable and filled with real life learning as the extracurricular work. We haven’t achieved that goal. But to say that schooling is nothing more than learning facts and skills… That might just be playing into the hands of people who want to destroy it (or manipulate it for their own profit). I don’t really think we’re disagreeing on much–it’s just a difference in emphasis.
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I think you are essentially right about the “souls” we need in the classrooms. Certainly the ‘fact teachers’ were never the ones who had any impact on me, but rather the ‘inspiring people’ who just happened to be the classroom teachers.
For me the main one was the football coach (‘a real man’) who also was the campus poet. I was never much of a football player, but I found I could do poems a bit, and that led to a life long career as a student and teacher of literature and writing, sometimes even creative writing.
Although I did encourage quite a few student writers, I am regret to say, that I never really considered myself as a role model of human virtue, but more as a purveyor of “correctness” in diction, punctuation, logic, and comprehension. I see now that I was nevertheless an example, and not altogether unworthy: always hard working, always scrupulous about grading, always ready to follow a discussion where it led.
I just happened to love Shakespeare, so I could be authentic there, and that got me into directing, where I learned the most and had the most fun (and if you’ve directed you can add agony). I was lucky in that where I taught I could choose much of it (within department guidelines) and I never chose to do anything about which I was not personally enthusiastic.
Recent posts have crystallized for me this crucial element of the personality, or persona, or authenticity as a person which is necessary to being a human role model in the role of a teacher. Person first, instructor second. THAT is something of a new ordering of priorities for me, that the subject is the way into human maturity, into modeling Self Actualization, which is what all young people are trying to work toward I suppose, but which for we teachers seems always to be entwined with a particular discipline (or should be?).
(By the way, Ted Sizer has died, though his widow and partner in education work, Nancy Sizer still survives, I think.)
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Harlan Underhill: Thanks for your reply. A football coach who was the campus poet inspired you to be an English teacher… that’s exactly the kind of thing I’m talking about! The next generation of schools is still going to need real human beings to mediate between the kids and the computers.
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I’m aware that Mr. Sizer has passed on. Thankfully, he’s still advocating through his writings.
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Can you hear that? It’s the squeeky, old pendulum swinging back to common sense and reality. Music to my ears…it means everything is going to be alright. Pretty soon, the corporate pundits will hear it, too. Until then, professionals out there, operate from your heart space, being mindful of what you know and follow your intuitions…this will lead you to consistently do the right thing for students, no matter what anyone else says. Trust yourself. You know what you’re doing. And what you’re doing has the greatest impact on our future, other than the families that send their very best to us each day. Live up to that privilege. Don’t let the bastards get ya down!
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