The folks at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute are struggling to come to terms with the New York testing disaster. They certainly will not retreat from their deep faith in standardized testing, and they insist that there must be more parent choice, even though parents are sick of the excessive testing and most continue to choose their neighborhood school, if they still have one.
This is my favorite line:
“Reform critics like Diane Ravitch often question why we don’t push reforms that would create a “Sidwell Friends” for every student. Putting aside where we would find the extra $1.6 trillion it would take to make that possible, there is a simpler answer: some of us don’t want Sidwell Friends. And just because some believe the elite culture of the top 1 percent is what’s best for all children, doesn’t mean all parents share that belief.”
I can’t say where that $1.6 trillion number comes from. I went to ordinary public schools that did not face annual budget crisis, that did not squander millions on standardized testing, that provided arts programming and daily physical education and foreign languages, that did not fire teachers if students got low test scores. But people who did not go to ordinary public schools may not know that.
What I want to challenge here is the assertion that “some of us don’t want” what the best private schools have to offer.
Who wouldn’t want what Sidwell offers? Or Exeter? Or Lakeside Academy in Seattle?
Who wouldn’t want classes of 12-15 instead of 35-40?
Who wouldn’t want a beautiful campus?
Who wouldn’t want experienced, respected teachers?
Who wouldn’t want a rich curriculum with science labs, history projects, drama and music, and lots of sports every day?
Who wouldn’t want to go to a school that never gave standardized tests and didn’t judge teachers by students test scores?
Maybe there are such people. I have never met them. Maybe they work at Fordham or the Gates Foundation, but I doubt it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I can’t stop laughing! Not only are you brilliant, but funny as well!
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And don’t forget Sidwell Friends has THREE libraries!
It’s easy to find the $1+ trillion – make the multi-national corporations like Apple bring their money back into this country from their shelters in the Cayman Islands and tax them like regular folks and smaller companies are taxed. We could have all the excellent schools we wanted – for everyone.
This was also my first thought.
So true.
And more so, our political elite would find all the money they needed and more if were told it was for the latest “Stop Terrorism” project.
Maybe we could create a legislative act that would guarantee every school in the country the same quality of education provided for the students at Lakeside and Andover.
A pipe dream you say? Maybe not, as long as we called it it the “Invade Pakistan, Iran and North Korea Freedom Mission”…most members of Congress never read beyond the title before voting…
Wow..they’re desperate and scraping the bottom of the barrel now. How will they deal with multiple state failures when they’re floundering with the NY fiasco? They look impotent and foolish.
I think TBFI is revealing a fear that drives the reform machine to impose and restrict schools for other people’s children: Providing enriching and empowering education (as opposed to impossibly high benchmarks that can be used to beat down the lower classes) could possibly lead to more vital social and economic reforms.
Just walked by Sidwell Friends the other day. Wow, I didn’t see any trash on the sidewalks, drunks hanging out on the streets, rats scurrying around fromt over-flowing trash cans. Bet some title one parents would be MORE THAN HAPPY to have their kids attend Sidwell Friends!
They don’t dare. That school is high security.
Interesting how additional funding was in the forefront of the Fordham argument.
Didn’t Fordham award a 2004 Prize for Excellence in Education to Eric Hanushek, who is best known for testifying as an expert witness that “increased funding does not improve school effectiveness”?
http://nepc.colorado.edu/blog/eric-hanushek-testifies-school-finance-cases
Reduce Sidwell’s funding to that of the average traditional public school in the state and let’s see how “effective” Sidwell is and how many upper-crust Americans flock to its doors.
See video entitled “A Culture of Support” under Great Teaching on Video. It’s not Exeter, Lakeside or Sidwell Friends.
http://www.relay.edu/videos
She didn’t really say anything about what she learned at Relay. The message was she believed in this one boy and if some other teacher didn’t and the relay baton wasn’t passed then he would fail because they believe in no excuses and therefore, non relay teachers suck.
The “professor” talks about highly effective teachers, but he doesn’t define the term….must be test scores, eh?
It was two minutes of nonsensical babbling. Who posts this crap?
@ Linda,
This on the RELAY School of Graduate education website. Their graduates teach at KIPP, Uncommon Schools and Achievement First. They use this to illustrate model teaching. See also the video Clear and Precise Directions. The teacher uses a timer and bribes the kids with food. No kidding! Not sure why they’re all in such a hurry. Maybe they should give the kids time to think?
I’ve seen a few of their videos….remember the orginal one titled rigorous discussions or something like that and then they changed it. It is nincompoopery (is that a word) and ridiculous. It should be titled: how not to teach or how to teach a seal to jump through a hoop. I am embarrassed watching their videos and they think they’ll be “great” teachers? How sad.
Linda,
Nincompoopery = Bullshit (in everyday, albeit harsh, language, Bovine Excrement is school appropriate language)
So “hrh88”, if this video represents “the answer” or “the solution” than why isn’t it being adopted by the elite preparatory academies?
Are the people running Choate, Lakeside, and Andover just too stupid or uninformed to understand this?
And are the parents sending their offspring to these expensive schools also similarly clueless and dumb?
So, maybe you need to go to these schools, show them this tape and give them the “evidence” that all they need to do is follow the example you’re recommending.
It would be a lot less costly. Wouldn’t it? And more effective too.
If you were right about this, that is.
So. Can you tell us. Why aren’t the schools serving the children of the elite insisting on such “outdated”, “unproven” and “wasteful” programs like the ones they ALL offer, in contrast to your little snake oil in a bottle?
My goodness, Puget Sound Parent, you do have a hostile attitude. I sure do like that Kevin Jones teacher who appeared on the tape. It’s a noble goal, for demographics not to determine destiny, and those teachers via videotape feedback have a chance to improve their “technique” or as I call it “the show.”
The elite schools don’t use video feedback because they don’t hire any teachers who don’t already know how to dramatize their lessons. Teaching is often called an “art.” I think that the particular “art” is what we could call dramatization, that is creating suspense around a concept.
I just don’t understand why you want to be so corrosive about teachers who are really trying with the energy of youth.
Puget Sound Parent,
I certainly don’t think that this is the answer or the solution and I’m definitely not recommending it. I assumed that the fact that the methods employed in the videos were awful was self-evident (see my conversation above with Linda). I apologize if that was unclear. I have read about schools that use techniques similar to this, but when I came across the video…a picture says a thousand words.
The school system functions “exactly” how it is designed to function.
This overarching plan goes back to the 19th century.
Here’s a better one …
The downside of the Exeters and Daltons is the parents and the school culture. Even if money were no object, I don’t think I’d want my kids at those schools. And I’m not exactly a working class hero (outside my own mind).
Re cost, I don’t know where the $1.6 trillion figure comes from, either. But it doesn’t seem absurd to me on its face.
That was pretty much what I was going to write. I would not be comfortable with the private school culture.
So I agree with what that person wrote (I don’t know about the coat though). Despite its perks, I would not want my child at an elite private school.
But would you want a public school with the same advantages?
Or do you prefer large classes, a stripped-down curriculum, no art or music, and a regular budget crisis?
I would like the things you listed, However, if I had to take the cons that FLERP! mentioned as well, then I would definitely pass on an elite private school. So no, I do not want my child to have the exact same experience the students at these elite schools have. Basically, I am happy with his wonderful teachers and classmates. For me, the biggest issue is the amount of standardized testing.
Also, how much of the advantage for these students comes from their stellar education and how much comes from their connections?Did Chelsea Clinton snag a six-figure job at a hedge fund because she was the tops in her class? (I assume she is smart, but so are a lot of people who probably applied for and did not get a hedge fund job out of college) In some respects, it is the connections made at these schools, and not the actual qualifications of the individual that leads to better opportunities.
How one views a school depends on what alternatives are available. My spouse was a scholarship student at a famous private high school after graduating from a rural public school system. Being exposed to the life of the mind was a transformative experience.
So it’s like what Chris Rock said about men being faithful to women; they are as faithful as their options. ?
People like what they have unless they can choose something better?
TRANSLATION: Who wants their child to be among such “rich, conceited snobs” anyway?
“Everyone knows that people like you, from a good, honest, decent, hardworking, unpretentious, salt of the earth family just doesn’t belong and isn’t good enough or wealthy enough…eh, I actually mean that you wouldn’t WANT to be among such conceited, vain, self-obsessed people who would never accept you anyway.
“You’d just be a total outcast and it would be a miserable experience for you, just as it was for my cousin’s daughter’s boyfriend who just hated Dartmouth.
“So why don’t you just live at home and commute to the nice local state college where you’ll be much more comfortable among your own kind.”
This was the speech given to a very close friend of mine, by his high school guidance counselor, when he wanted to apply to Princeton from his working class high school back in the sixties.
It sounds somewhat similar to the (satirical) comment made above.
Luckily my friend had a mother who stormed in to the guidance counselor’s office the next day and read him the riot act. The guidance counselor complied with her wishes and sent her son’s application.
Four years later my friend graduated Magna Cum Laude from Princeton—and fit in just fine, thank you—went on to an outstanding law school and ended up at one of the most prestigious law firms in New York.
The Ruling Elite has been peddling these tales of “it’s not as good as it looks” and “you’d be much happier just staying where people like you belong” for a long time.
It’s amusing to think that they’re now resorting to this BS again, as if anyone would actually buy it.
Yep!
The Regents certainly want it for their own kids!! Dalton here we come… Public school is for losers!
I think the author is implying that some parents would “choose” a KIPP style school over Sidwell friends because they believe their children (or rather their sons) need no excuses discipline to stay out of trouble. After all, elite boys need mlitary academies to be there when they get kicked out of Exeter for over-the-top pranks.
This snob is assuming poor and middle class parents are lazy and don’t want nor expect any different from their children. The complete audacity of the writer to make such a suggestion. Fie!
Oh yes Diane, unfortunately I think you have met some of those people who don’t want these stimulating learning environments for all our children. They know exactly where the $$ would come from, an easy find. But it just would not be quite as much fun if the cash got shifted away from hedge fund land or the military industrial complex or the endless shopping malls full of NSA subcontractors.
I think some of the motivation for that “some of us don’t want” is reverse snobbery. Sometimes those who know they cannot attain what elite circles have, pretend they don’t want it. It’s an identity statement, not really a value judgement on institutions (I think).
Private, elite schools thrive because they are exclusive. Public schools cannot be exclusive. So balancing standards the elite school is able to maintain with what a public school must maintain is the trick.
There must be creativity and a focus on what is right in front of us (the children in our communities). It would be nice if the DOE were enabling that, rather than hindering it.
But in re-reading the post and comments it does seem to be a ham handed attempt to prop up feeble attempts to find the middle ground between elite and public that reformers so badly want to find (for whatever their own reasons). It’s kind of like wearing an off-brand that is trying to be like a high dollar brand, rather than just wearing something generic. Our market culture drives us to want things, but if you cannot afford the hottest thing, you convince yourself you wanted that cheaper, wannabe item anyway.
My parents always told me to ignore commercials. I guess that is why.
I think the one thing that always makes me shake my head is the call for vouchers so parents can go to PRIVATE schools. Here’s the reality, Sidwell Friends and Phillips and Concord and Choate are not going to take Joe Shome coming off the street. They will take their legacies and the politicians and rich folks. Who will benefit from vouchers? Charters with no oversight.
Here’s another reality. Who has been destroyed by charters? I mean wiped out? Catholic Schools. Charters could even begin to do the job that Catholic schools have done. Just look at Chicago. It isn’t just the closing of the public schools that have lead to the break down of the neighborhood. It is closing of catholic schools.
There was obviously no thought given to any of those unintended consequences. The Market will take care of everything, so don’t worry.
I listen to Duncan and I just shake my head. “The charter sector will comprise 20% of the system…”
He has no earthly idea what the “charter sector” will comprise, nor does he have any way to regulate or plan it. He can’t even manage to regulate for-profit colleges, and he was handed an actual federal law to do that. How on earth can he predict what 50 states will do with the deregulated, fragmented public school portfolio system he supports? He can’t.
“The Market will take care of everything. . . ”
Ol Ma Nature trumps the vaunted free market anytime! Sure bet, even if Ol Ma would have already “trumped” me! (future perfect subjunctive seems correct here-ha ha!)
WHY???? ~ That is true in Philadelphia too. The Catholic school that the granddaughter of my husband’s cousin attended, closed last year (or maybe 2 yrs) and re-opened as a charter. The same school she and my husband attended (They are 60 and 66 years old)
“G” is a very smart little girl, so naturally she was accepted. Not true of some of her friends. It’s upsetting for all.. Thank you for pointing that out.
Another day in the life of authoritarian tribalism – twisting arguments like pretzels to justify the unjustifiable.
I’m beginning the think there is a deep, contagious pathology at the Fordham Institute that can only be managed by an intervention.
“. . . that can only be managed by an intervention.”
Or by nuclear weapons!
Or as Georgie the Least would have said “nukular”
No, I just want math and English- that’s all. I also want my kids to be in classes of at least 40 (no less). China has at least 40 and look at their success. I also want the school to be located in one of those beautiful strip malls. I don’t want any trees or lakes, or anything distracting like that. I also want the school to start at 6 in the morning and end at 6 in the evening. I don’t want them to waste their time on art, music, or any of those other feel-good subject. I only want them to do well on the common core tests. That is why I want them to spend most of their day practicing for scantron tests. That is what I want for my children. Doesn’t everybody?
One more point for the T.B. Fordham Tribe.
In 2008 Congress, the treasury, & the executive branch came up with $700 billion in one WEEKEND to bail out the banks who had stolen over $1 trillion in wealth from us. The big lie was this was a 1 time bailout.
To this day, taxpayers are to this day subsidizing Wall St. by “committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovernable, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to increase risk rather than reduce it.” http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/secret-and-lies-of-the-bailout-20130104#ixzz2bhZDGXPU
As of today, the Fed has $1.4 trillion in reserve sitting there doing nothing.
The standard hand wringing we’re broke lies don’t work any longer. They (plutocrats & mobsters) always find the money for what they want.
I love Matt Taibbi’s work on the fiancial world. He needs to write something similar about education deform!
I’ve been saying the same thing fir several years. Seriously!
We have to write to Taibbi and implore him—arguably the best investigative reporter in the country—to look into this HUGE story if how and why a well-funded elite is attempting to takeover public education and eventually phase it out of existence.
Matt—please come help! SOS!
I agree – it’d be great to see him write something on ed reform. I just wouldn’t hold my breath expecting it to have any real effect.
Diane–
As if teachers in LA didn’t have enough to deal with…
THE LA SCHOOL REPORT, an on-line daily journal which functions as the biggest cheerleader for John Deasy, the Broad-appointed superintendent of Los Angeles Unified, tried to show its “humor” by trying to make a pointed political commentary about Matt Damon’s agonized struggle and ultimate refusal to have his kids go to LAUSD.
http://laschoolreport.com/matt-damon-and-his-public-school-dilemma/#comments
By making their hardy-har-har jabs about Damon’s decision, the editorial board of LA SCHOOL REPORT insinuate that if one supports public education, one thus dutifully should send their kids into a system that champion the lamest, most dreary education that Deasy and the LA Reformers foist on the children of the district, BUT NOT THEIR OWN KIDS!!!
Love how the LA SCHOOL REPORT concludes their analysis by smirking how Deasy offered to “help the Damon’s kids find a school that conforms to their political sentiments. Wonder if they’ll take him up on it.” Ha! Ha! That’s Slap Your Knees Hysterical, LA School Reportl!!!!
Would Deasy personally offer EVERY PARENT who has a kid in LAUSD the same wonderful personal service or just celebrities? Call Deasy’s office to arrange such personalized education consigliere treatment at 213 241-7000 for your kids!!!
Or are other parents left on their own to deal with the overcrowded classes, the lack of art funding, the testing, testing, testing and preparation for testing that their kids would be subjected to?
What parent wouldn’t want that for their kids? Sign me up now, LAUSD!!!
Ben Affleck is standing in line in front of me!
The LA SCHOOL REPORT, who supposedly pride themselves on their investigative journalistic prowess, would NEVER put this question about where Deasy’s kids went or any of LAUSD’s bigwigs. They are most comfortable rah rahing the continued degradation of education by Eli Broad, Pearson Testing and TFA or any pro-reform billionaire-funded school board candidate.
One writer in particular, Hillel Aron, is particularly noxious in his abject get-a-room adoration of Deasy. He also writes the education articles for the LA WEEKLY and his vitriol towards teachers and UTLA in particular is in direct proportion to his insufferable, embarrassing mancrush on Deasy in every article.
Here is Hillel’s zany website and some free publicity: http://hillelaron.com/About.html.
Enjoy his antics!
Meanwhile, public education could be so cool and wonderful and amazing and fantastic for producing creative, critical-thinking individuals in the diverse and engaging setting of an amazing classroom.
Instead, LAUSD offers Number Two pencils.
What is Matt Damon thinking depriving his kids of that experience?
The Fordham Institute is simply getting desperate. Even if parents do not want to send their child to a a school that is overwhelmingly populated by the elite, I bet they would be more than happy if the money that is currently being used for CC and all this standardized testing were diverted to provide the nation’s public schools what charter schools such as Exter, Sidwell, Lakeside and Dalton have. Gates & Co. protect their children while harming the rest of the nation’s children and could care less about such a fact..
Where would we get $1.6 trillion? Can’t we just keep printing money?
Well, the Ruling Elite—the same people pushing for the Privatization of our public schools—ALWAYS find a way to get whatever amount of money they need for something THEY deem essential, whether it be an invasion of another country or a massive taxpayer bailout of a financial firm or banking institution, or an industry subsidy to their friends who “summer” in the same gated compound where the common folk know not to go—unless they’re being let in to vacuum floors or bring ice cold drinks down to the pool, of course…
The world is changing fast and we are worrying too much about fixing existing schools so they meet an ideal model that is no longer relevant. The kids born after 1990 are wired differently from Baby Boomers, Gen X and most of Gen Y. They are more or less fully integrated with a global brain (the web) and function as part of a distributed intelligence not one that tries to have as much as possible packed into one skin encapsulated ego. They learn together, solve problems together, share more, care more, compete less and do just-in-time learning and live more in the now. The function in networks not in hierarchies. They have to worry about climate change and black swans far more then prior generations. They don’t have our prejudices. That means they are almost a different species. You cannot teach them or rule them or make them work in the same way we always have. Our educators and employers frankly just don’t get that. They are still fighting the old battles and worried about the wrong priorities. They need to talk to Professor Sugata Mitra http://sugatam.wikispaces.com/ and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sugata_Mitra
Professor Geoffrey Henny – Subjects: Creativity and Innovation, Economics, Entrepreneurship
CEO Medical Tricorder Applications LLC
Former Director Biomedical Technology Transfer the University of Michigan
Attended private boarding schools in the UK, France, Switzerland and the US
Educated at UC Berkeley, Trinity College Oxford and Cass Business School, London UK
We need to nurture creativity, critical thinking, and perseverance.
I thought this all started with TIMMS and comparing how we are doing with
Finland, Singapore, or Germany? Do any of you know how many tests are given to students in countries like Finland or Germany? I talked with some students and teachers from those countries and found out. Finish students do not take a single standardized test until 6th grade! I wonder how they evaluate their teachers? Germany limits the number of tests each semester to three for high school students. These tests include classroom tests and any type of “standardized” test, so if a teacher gives three unit tests a semester, the maximum has been reached and no “standardized” test could be given. The students and teachers said most of their work is judged by their class participation, both oral and written. They also indicated they get graphing calculators issued with their math textbooks and are expected to use them when needed including during a Test. When are we going to start to do what these successful countries do for our students?
Do you honestly think our educational problem is the curriculum and standards are not rigorous enough for our current students?Please go to your local school and talk with the teachers or read some of the students comments on facebook. If you live in an area of higher socioeconomic means, then your school is performing above average due to many factors such as parent support for learning and checking to see that their children are completing their homework or immediatley getting the help they need. Parents of students who attend “good” schools do not want endless tests that are meaningless to their childrens future and a huge waist of resources that should be used to improve the school learning environment by purchasing needed technology and up to date instructional materials. Maybe the new standards could be helpful, but teachers have a shorter, more limited amount of time to cover more curriculum than before due to earlier testing periods and more testing. Futhermore, how are students held accountable for doing their best on these tests? Is the test result used to help calculate the students grade or do they need a proficient score to earn a diploma or get accepted for college or … If the test has no student accountability component why would they even care about doing well. I would focus on preparing for my immediate class grade to improve my GPA and SAT exams or preparing for a big game or musical performance. I could use this test as a way of getting back at a teacher who is asking me to do more than I want to do because I have other interests. Are only math, science, and English teachers being judged by these tests or is there a test to judge a PE teacher or Art/Music teacher or Elective teachers? I wonder how long it will be before we find no one willing to interview for a math teaching position at a low performing school. I do not see how spending ALL this money on testing is changing anything except creating a National Curriculum and telling low performing schools that they continue to be low performing schools and they need to replace their teachers with better ones. It seems like I have been hearing this same argument for the past 50 years. Yes, I am a senior citizen who cares about real changes that will improve educational opportunities for the students who need an environment that is conducive to learning. Why are we spending money we do not have on schools that are already achieving and trying to have a one size fits all system because this is not why Americans create so many new things and come up with so many new ideas. If we are trying compete with Finland and Singapore, then we need to make serious structural systemic changes to our schools and do what they do or do not do in their schools. NO more football programs or other sports in our high schools and most electives would also have to be eliminated. I am a Finlander, but we live in a much different country in America and we have very different values. When the well-educated parents of public school children start to understand that a large part of schooling has changed from learning and developing critical thinking to preparing students to do well on a test that most people never have time to analyze and use as a resource to improve the educational experience for children, then they will either place their children in a school where real learning is the priority or they will get involved in changing our new system of schooling. I cannot call this system a system for learning because time and testing are not and should never be factors in a learning environment that promotes creativity and critical thinking (testing without student accountability). These two goals are what made America great and create jobs and they do not happen in a specific amount of time because each of us is unique and we do things at different rates. And futhermore, testing has never been shown to improve either of these factors. Critical thinking and creativity are factors that need to be encouraged and nurtured from Pre-K on. To flourish, they need a stress free environment so students can open up their thoughts and dream up new ideas. It seems ironic that many of the people who were allowed to be raised in this type of environment, open, creative, and stress free, are the same people who are now paying for and pushing for a more controlled and structured environment, but not for their own children? What about Bill Gates and Mark Zutterburg?
Thank you for reading and pray for your grandchildren’s future.
And what is it you’re trying to sell me????
@Professor Geoff:
I respectfully disagree. Children are born with pretty much the same brains as they have been for millennia, barring differences in prenatal nutrition. They are not automatically ready to learn their world on iPads, they are still hardwired to learn through experience, guidance, and unstructured play in the early years the same as children born 100 years ago, or 500 years ago.
It’s what happens to them after they’re born, what they are exposed to by parents and by society, that shapes their brains. Put a child in front of a TV for an hour a day as soon as it’s born and you WILL change how the brain works; substitute an iPad for interaction and you WILL change how the brain works. But give a child a rich sensory learning environment and just enough guidance, and you’ll have the same amazing being as you would have had if the child had been born before 1990 – perhaps more so for holding off on the tech.
And so I assume you’re exempting the children of the Ruling Elite from this analysis? Or, are you exempting the non-elite/great unwashed from your thesis? Or are you claiming that those income and culture distinctions are meaningless and that NONE of them need the type of education that is now exclusively available to only those children at the very top of our current social order?
What exactly DO you mean with all of this anyway? Please explain.
I actually liked the post by the Kathleen Porter Magee that prompted Diane’s response and thought that it showed that at least some reformers are wrestling with what they’ve wrought. But the argument about Sidwell Friends is just silly. Is there a single foundation, a single PAC, a single “grassroots” group that’s feverishly working to replicate Sidwell Friends like schools? Just sayin…
I thought the same thing.
“Is there a single foundation, a single PAC, a single “grassroots” group that’s feverishly working to replicate Sidwell Friends like schools ? Just sayin…”
Can we put this on a poster, handout, website, newsletter, whatever….please?!
How easily she pushes aside the $1.6 trillion because the real need isn’t money, it’s parental choice! The real hard slog would be to provide all kids with the offerings schools like Sidwell friends provides. The so called reformers never take the hard or the high road for kids.
An enormous part of the success of places like Phillips Exeter or Sidwell Friends is that they get to pick and choose the very best students, who have often very wealthy families who are able to give enormous donations for libraries, gyms, lab buildings, playing fields, and so on.
I’m surprised at how many here are missing the point.
Forget the rich kids–the question is this: If your NEIGHBORHOOD PUBLIC SCHOOL full of kids from each SES level could lose the testing and gain PE, arts, lovely campuses, 2 recesses a day, top-notch libraries, etc. WHO WOULDN’T WANT THAT?
But this institute person says if you want that, you’re just like all the awful 1%ers.
The truth is that if middle class parents demanded what private school kids get, Rhee and all of her ilk would no longer be 1%ers.
Given how segregated housing is in the United States, I am not sure neighborhood schools would be full of kids from each SES level.
Not true–especially in suburbs where there is a mix of apartments, rentals houses and permanent residences that feed into most schools.
And again, you’re missing the point, which I hope for your sake is intentional. Otherwise, you would lack basic logic and comprehension skills.
We need to educate our public about the reasons behind the decisions being made. I cannot wait for Professor Ravitch’s new book to help in regard to educating people about what is happening in our educational system. In the meantime, please read the following:
Why do we say we need to compete globally, but we do not want to learn from those countries supposedly outperforming us? Please read the following and remember, Finland is one of the top scoring countries in math year after year. Let us read and learn.
Finland’s education expert Pasi Sahlberg
Finland’s Pasi Sahlberg is one of the world’s leading experts on school reform and the author of the best-selling “Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn About Educational Change in Finland?” In this piece he writes about whether the emphasis that American school reformers put on “teacher effectiveness” is really the best approach to improving student achievement.
He is director general of Finland’s Centre for International Mobility and Cooperation and has served the Finnish government in various positions and worked for the World Bank in Washington D.C. He has also been an adviser for numerous governments internationally about education policies and reforms, and is an adjunct professor of education at the University of Helsinki and University of Oulu. He can be reached at pasi.sahlberg@cimo.fi.
By Pasi Sahlberg
Many governments are under political and economic pressure to turn around their school systems for higher rankings in the international league tables. Education reforms often promise quick fixes within one political term. Canada, South Korea, Singapore and Finland are commonly used models for the nations that hope to improve teaching and learning in their schools. In search of a silver bullet, reformers now turn their eyes on teachers, believing that if only they could attract “the best and the brightest” into the teaching profession, the quality of education would improve.
“Teacher effectiveness” is a commonly used term that refers to how much student performance on standardized tests is determined by the teacher. This concept hence applies only to those teachers who teach subjects on which students are tested. Teacher effectiveness plays a particular role in education policies of nations where alternative pathways exist to the teaching profession.
In the United States, for example, there are more than 1,500 different teacher-preparation programs. The range in quality is wide. In Singapore and Finland only one academically rigorous teacher education program is available for those who desire to become teachers. Likewise, neither Canada nor South Korea has fast-track options into teaching, such as Teach for America or Teach First in Europe. Teacher quality in high-performing countries is a result of careful quality control at entry into teaching rather than measuring teacher effectiveness in service.
In recent years the “no excuses”’ argument has been particularly persistent in the education debate. There are those who argue that poverty is only an excuse not to insist that all schools should reach higher standards. Solution: better teachers. Then there are those who claim that schools and teachers alone cannot overcome the negative impact that poverty causes in many children’s learning in school. Solution: Elevate children out of poverty by other public policies.
For me the latter is right. In the United States today, 23 percent of children live in poor homes. In Finland, the same way to calculate child poverty would show that figure to be almost five times smaller. The United States ranked in the bottom four in the recent United Nations review on child well-being. Among 29 wealthy countries, the United States landed second from the last in child poverty and held a similarly poor position in “child life satisfaction.” Teachers alone, regardless of how effective they are, will not be able to overcome the challenges that poor children bring with them to schools everyday.
Finland is not a fan of standardization in education. However, teacher education in Finland is carefully standardized. All teachers must earn a master’s degree at one of the country’s research universities. Competition to get into these teacher education programs is tough; only “the best and the brightest” are accepted. As a consequence, teaching is regarded as an esteemed profession, on par with medicine, law or engineering. There is another “teacher quality” checkpoint at graduation from School of Education in Finland. Students are not allowed to earn degrees to teach unless they demonstrate that they possess knowledge, skills and morals necessary to be a successful teacher.
But education policies in Finland concentrate more on school effectiveness than on teacher effectiveness. This indicates that what schools are expected to do is an effort of everyone in a school, working together, rather than teachers working individually.
In many under-performing nations, I notice, three fallacies of teacher effectiveness prevail.
The first belief is that “the quality of an education system cannot exceed the quality of its teachers.” This statement became known in education policies through the influential McKinsey & Company report titled “How the world’s best performing school systems come out on top”. Although the report takes a broader view on enhancing the status of teachers by better pay and careful recruitment this statement implies that the quality of an education system is defined by its teachers. By doing this, the report assumes that teachers work independently from one another. But teachers in most schools today, in the United States and elsewhere, work as teams when the end result of their work is their joint effort.
The role of an individual teacher in a school is like a player on a football team: all teachers are vital, but the culture of the school is even more important for the quality of the school. Team sports offer numerous examples of teams that have performed beyond expectations because of leadership, commitment and spirit. Take the U.S. ice hockey team in the 1980 Winter Olympics, when a team of college kids beat both Soviets and Finland in the final round and won the gold medal. The quality of Team USA certainly exceeded the quality of its players. So can an education system.
The second fallacy is that “the most important single factor in improving quality of education is teachers.” This is the driving principle of former D.C. schools chancellor Michele Rhee and many other “reformers” today. This false belief is central to the “no excuses” school of thought. If a teacher was the most important single factor in improving quality of education, then the power of a school would indeed be stronger than children’s family background or peer influences in explaining student achievement in school.
Research on what explains students’ measured performance in school remains mixed. A commonly used conclusion is that 10% to 20% of the variance in measured student achievement belongs to the classroom, i.e., teachers and teaching, and a similar amount is attributable to schools, i.e., school climate, facilities and leadership. In other words, up to two-thirds of what explains student achievement is beyond the control of schools, i.e., family background and motivation to learn.
Over thirty years of systematic research on school effectiveness and school improvement reveals a number of characteristics that are typical of more effective schools. Most scholars agree that effective leadership is among the most important characteristics of effective schools, equally important to effective teaching. Effective leadership includes leader qualities, such as being firm and purposeful, having shared vision and goals, promoting teamwork and collegiality and frequent personal monitoring and feedback. Several other characteristics of more effective schools include features that are also linked to the culture of the school and leadership: Maintaining focus on learning, producing a positive school climate, setting high expectations for all, developing staff skills, and involving parents. In other words, school leadership matters as much as teacher quality.
The third fallacy is that “If any children had three or four great teachers in a row, they would soar academically, regardless of their racial or economic background, while those who have a sequence of weak teachers will fall further and further behind”. This theoretical assumption is included in influential policy recommendations, for instance in “Essential Elements of Teacher Policy in ESEA: Effectiveness, Fairness and Evaluation” by the Center for American Progress to the U.S. Congress. Teaching is measured by the growth of student test scores on standardized exams.
This assumption presents a view that education reform alone could overcome the powerful influence of family and social environment mentioned earlier. It insists that schools should get rid of low-performing teachers and then only hire great ones. This fallacy has the most practical difficulties. The first one is about what it means to be a great teacher. Even if this were clear, it would be difficult to know exactly who is a great teacher at the time of recruitment. The second one is, that becoming a great teacher normally takes five to ten years of systematic practice. And determining the reliably of ‘effectiveness’ of any teacher would require at least five years of reliable data. This would be practically impossible.
Everybody agrees that the quality of teaching in contributing to learning outcomes is beyond question. It is therefore understandable that teacher quality is often cited as the most important in-school variable influencing student achievement. But just having better teachers in schools will not automatically improve students’ learning outcomes.
Lessons from high-performing school systems, including Finland, suggest that we must reconsider how we think about teaching as a profession and what is the role of the school in our society.
First, standardization should focus more on teacher education and less on teaching and learning in schools. Singapore, Canada and Finland all set high standards for their teacher-preparation programs in academic universities. There is no Teach for Finland or other alternative pathways into teaching that wouldn’t include thoroughly studying theories of pedagogy and undergo clinical practice. These countries set the priority to have strict quality control before anybody will be allowed to teach – or even study teaching! This is why in these countries teacher effectiveness and teacher evaluation are not such controversial topics as they are in the U.S. today.
Second, the toxic use of accountability for schools should be abandoned. Current practices in many countries that judge the quality of teachers by counting their students’ measured achievement only is in many ways inaccurate and unfair. It is inaccurate because most schools’ goals are broader than good performance in a few academic subjects. It is unfair because most of the variation of student achievement in standardized tests can be explained by out-of-school factors. Most teachers understand that what students learn in school is because the whole school has made an effort, not just some individual teachers. In the education systems that are high in international rankings, teachers feel that they are empowered by their leaders and their fellow teachers. In Finland, half of surveyed teachers responded that they would consider leaving their job if their performance would be determined by their student’s standardized test results.
Third, other school policies must be changed before teaching becomes attractive to more young talents. In many countries where teachers fight for their rights, their main demand is not more money but better working conditions in schools. Again, experiences from those countries that do well in international rankings suggest that teachers should have autonomy in planning their work, freedom to run their lessons the way that leads to best results, and authority to influence the assessment of the outcomes of their work. Schools should also be trusted in these key areas of the teaching profession.
To finish up, let’s do one theoretical experiment. We transport highly trained Finnish teachers to work in, say, Indiana in the United States (and Indiana teachers would go to Finland). After five years–assuming that the Finnish teachers showed up fluent in English and that education policies in Indiana would continue as planned–we would check whether these teachers have been able to improve test scores in state-mandated student assessments.
I argue that if there were any gains in student achievement they would be marginal. Why? Education policies in Indiana and many other states in the United States create a context for teaching that limits (Finnish) teachers to use their skills, wisdom and shared knowledge for the good of their students’ learning. Actually, I have met some experienced Finnish-trained teachers in the United States who confirm this hypothesis. Based on what I have heard from them, it is also probable that many of those transported Finnish teachers would be already doing something else than teach by the end of their fifth year – quite like their American peers.
Conversely, the teachers from Indiana working in Finland–assuming they showed up fluent in Finnish–stand to flourish on account of the freedom to teach without the constraints of standardized curricula and the pressure of standardized testing; strong leadership from principals who know the classroom from years of experience as teachers; a professional culture of collaboration; and support from homes unchallenged by poverty.
International Comparisons of Students
You’ll Be Shocked by How Many of the World’s Top Students Are American
JORDAN WEISSMANNAPR 30 2013, 2:00 PM ET
(Reuters)
When you look at the average performance of American students on international test scores, our kids come off as a pretty middling bunch. If you rank countries based on their very fine differences, we come in 14th in reading, 23rd in science, and 25th in math. Those finishes led Secretary of Education Arne Duncan to flatly declare that “we’re being out-educated.”
And on average, maybe we are. But averages also sometimes obscure more than they reveal. My colleague Derek Thompson has written before about how, once you compare students from similar income and class backgrounds, our relative performance improves dramatically, suggesting that our educational problems may be as much about our sheer number of poor families as our supposedly poor schools. This week, I stumbled on another data point that belies the stereotype of dimwitted American teens.
When it comes to raw numbers, it turns out we generally have far more top performers than any other developed nation.
That’s according to the graph below from Economic Policy Institute’s recent report on America’s supply of science and tech talent. Among OECD nations in 2006, the United States claimed a third of high-performing students in both reading and science, far more than our next closest competitor, Japan. On math, we have a bit less to be proud of — we just claimed 14 percent of the high-performers, compared to 15.2 percent for Japan and 16.2 percent of South Korea.
Part of this is easy to explain: The United States is big. Very big. And it’s a far bigger country than the other members of the OECD. We claim roughly 27 percent of the group’s 15-to-19-year-olds. Japan, in contrast, has a smidge over 7 percent. So in reading and in science, we punch above our weight by just a little, while in math we punch below.
But the point remains: In two out of three subjects, Americans are over-represented among the best students.
If we have so many of the best minds, why are our average scores so disappointingly average? As Rutgers’s Hal Salzman and Georgetown’s B. Lindsay Lowell, who co-authored the EPI report, noted in a 2008 Nature article, our high scorers are balanced out by a very large number of low scorers. Our education system, just like our economy, is polarized.
What’s the takeaway? Salzman and Lowell argue that our large numbers of top scorers should help put to rest the concern that we’re losing the global talent race executives and politicians love to fret about. I’m not sure they’ll do the trick, though. In 2009, Chinese students in Shanghai sat for the PISA test for the first time, and their scores were spectacular. Although data for its other mainland provinces hasn’t been published, the OECD’s test guru says they’re similarly impressive.It seems pretty likely, in other words, that China has more young math and science geniuses at its disposal than we do (whether that’s something that should be keeping any of us up at night is another issue). But Salzman and Lindsay make another point that’s worth dwelling on: You can’t replicate a country’s style of education without replicating its culture, so instead of looking abroad for ideas about how to teach our kids, as some policy-types are inclined to do, perhaps we should look at what’s succeeding here at home and spread it. Our schools are already producing plenty of bright thinkers of their own.
Thank you for reading this paper and let us pray for our children and grandchildren.
Concerned Grandparent
Finland and the US are apples and oranges. An itty-bitty country with no diversity in its population has different goals than one as large and diverse as ours.
Besides, the privatization movement is WORLDWIDE and will be coming to Europe as well.
Who cares about Sidwell Friends? It isn’t because it is a “better” school that the Obamas picked it–it’s because it has traditionally been the school where diplomats and such sent their kids because of security reasons.
Riiiiight.
The Obamas and the Clintons did not think Sidwell was a better school than their neighborhood DC school.
They only chose Sidwell because of security and tradition.
The enriched curriculum, the facilities, the arts programs and opportunities had nothing to do with it.
Sure.
I don’t know if we all want a Sidewell Friends in our local neighborhood, but I would love to transplant many aspects of that school into our public schools across the nation.
But these reformers always know that what’s good for their own children is certainly no good for other people’s children. They simply know what’s better for other people’s children.
It conjures up images of billionaire Merryl Tisch, the president of our the Board of Regents for New York State Department of Education, sitting sprawled out on a carpet with kidnergartners in a public school in a recent photo opt . . . Ms. Wholesome-everybody’s-mommy looking as though she is bonding with small impressionable children when in reality, Ms. green blooded Medusa is defunding their schools and destabilizing their teachers and principals left and right.
What was Ms. rich Tisch thinking during this shoot? . . . “Again, what’s great for our blue blooded children is no stinkin’ good for your pedestrian little ones, which by the way, will become OUR future employees . . . “
Robert,
The folks sending their kids to Sidwell, Lakeside, et al…
believe that this is what schools should look like for
the middle and lower income kids: (I’m talking about the
picture on top of the article)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/as-chicago-closes-dozens-of-schools-neighbors-fear-for-their-safety-future-of-communities/2013/08/11/5d547e52-0291-11e3-bfc5-406b928603b2_story.html
I guess they’re waxing Bengali (as facilities exist in Bangladesh, not in Bengali communities in the United States) . . .
Could it be that our business-like attitude about education has been driven by the idea of “efficiency”? We have allowed ourselves to be duped into a Walmartesque world where, yes, indeed, we can get something for almost nothing. We can and “deserve” the lowest possible prices for anything, including education. We have been fooled into thinking that you CAN have “quality” by cutting corners. Depending on how one defines “efficiency”, we can determine their expectations. Education that is quick, without “extras”, for the least possible cost (meaning labor must be cheap) seems to be the name of the game. Is that surprising with the Walton Foundation et al funding much of the “reform”? Look at their business model.
While the people who have amassed fortunes shop at the finest, most expensive stores and schools, with employees there who are probably paid little and who shop at Walmart, these “superior beings” have found the “secret” to leaving the illusion of “happiness” and “educational rigor” for the masses. How? We are going to recreate schools in the image of Walmart! Get more education for less dollars. We can mass produce the product. We can give efficient delivery by employing teachers trained for 5 weeks. Serve it up, pay employees as little as possible. Demand that they do the job of 5 people, clean their work areas, work 12 hour days (but only get paid for 8), plan for the next day on their own time, correct papers, learn ever-changing computerized (unvetted) evaluative measures, but most of all, do it for next to minimum wage.
I think we need to break down what is occurring and compare it to their business model. How do they get the most bang for their buck? When a corporation holds all the cards, so to speak, by buying up and buying out the smaller stores, then they have a monopoly on the distribution of their “goods”. Is that not what the privatization movement is doing to schools, prisons, community services, turnpikes, etc.?
So, why not do that for “service” industries? Buy them up privately, because when government (i.e. the people) actually own them and have control over them, sometimes the costs get out of hand (i.e. wages and benefits) and it is dangerous for employers and employees to have loyalty to one another. It breeds familiarity, and we cannot have that. The common person, of whatever race, is forbidden to seek the level of “the chosen” few. To allow that would create some kind of society where too many of us are “equal” in knowledge and finances. That would eliminate the opportunity for some to feel superior and to control what the lowly middle class and poor are doing. Sure, some outliers exist because of inheritance. They want to pass that onto their 2.3 children to assure that their future generations are, indeed, more well-off than all the rest.
So many want to insulate themselves from “the other” that the paranoia has overtaken their common sense. We have entered a state of perpetual panic and are leaving a really poor legacy for the children.
This has to be stopped in its tracks.
As for higher ed and how it is or has been contributing to education teform movement, I think a degree from a top tier or Ivy League seems to be used as a ticket to a life others cannot have by pure right, rather than a chance to be a better educated person who leads by example and allows others to learn from them. To me a truly well-educated leader rarely makes note of where they went to school and looks ahead more often than they look back, forging new connections and truly using the insight they should have gained at the school to better their communities. To use any school as a brand-name that gets you into certain circles cheapens the degree. Attending a more “rigorous” school is allowing yourself to be put through the ringer, so you come out a stronger person, rather than something like a logo that you simply pop on your résumé. While it can and should be popped on the resume, to stop there and then only be self-serving looks like a dead-end road to me in terms of legacy. If one gets seduced by one’s own “greatness,” then one loses the point of being well-educated. There should be a humility to having been educated at a reputable institution–not arrogance. Both types, and everything in between, exist. I just think the arrogant ones have been a little louder lately. A wise leader goes out among the crowd and leads by example, I think.
If you read Michele Rhee’s book, which I did, she describes classroom situations that to many veteran teachers or those who studied education in undergrad, would find ho-hum. She describes events every teacher has dealt with, but as if the epiphanies she has along the way are somehow unique because they are her epiphanies. Are her epiphanies better because she proved herself to be Ivy-league worthy?A wise and humble mother problem-solves every day and gains keen insight into her children (as do teachers). An industrious mother or teacher writes a book about it. But the one who wrote a book about it and called herself radical is not experiencing the wisdom, necessarily, to any greater degree than the mother or teacher who did not write a book about it. It’s like a city kid spending a day on the farm and then suddenly becoming an expert on farming. Good farmers will roll their eyes and just keep on farming. I am sorry that in this case the city kid has convinced people with power and money to go in and take over the farm.
Why is it that in today’s world, especially in education, that there is a mentality that the old way of teaching was so very wrong. Well, for one I beg to differ. Look at the old way of teaching (50’s, 60’s) and look at what we have here today.
Massive broken education systems galore, at the cost of billions each year, yielding total incompetence, where some students were just pushed up the education ladder, that hardly can read and/or write. Much to my amazement, I learned that some school systems do not even teach cursive writing in school — only printing.
And, if this is for the betterment of society, then give me back the old way of teaching, for that is where the best politicians of this country originated.
In the 50s and 60s public schools did not really seek to educate all students.
Again, missing the point.
Cherry wasn’t calling for a return to segregated schools and shunned special education kids.
He/she is commenting on the no-testing, no-social-promotion, no-nonsense teaching of that era that produced good results, bonded communities and strengthened cities.
Isn’t the point that public schools should seek to have the same opportunities as elite schools for their students? Isn’t it the reason we would all like to have health care as fine as Congress gets?
The dirty little secret seems to be that in order to get what they have, some sacrifices have to be made because there isn’t enough fairy dust to spread around for EVERYONE to have the same opportunities. Why? Because it is pooled in a small %age of bank accounts.
We need to have the same for all, but there is no way to pay for it because of neglect, lack of infrastructure, need for decent salaries and facilities and materials.
Just as corporations seek to operate their businesses outside of regulation, it seems that the goal of private schools is to operate outside of the testing madness.
Unfortunately, those who “have” control the purse strings and they get their way!
On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 9:42 AM, Diane Ravitch’s blog wrote:
> ** > Cupcake commented: “Again, missing the point. Cherry wasn’t calling for > a return to segregated schools and shunned special education kids. He/she > is commenting on the no-testing, no-social-promotion, no-nonsense teaching > of that era that produced good results, bonded c” >
Good results for all students?
There was a thread recently about retaining students. The opinions were not unanimous, but a majority were opposed to the practice.
I agree with TE. There were plenty of issues with schools in the 1950’s which are a reflection of society at that time and there are issues with school now which are also a reflection of our present society. Also, it was easier to get a decent job with benefits with just a HS diploma (or not) back then.
Anyway, I though the biggest factor in success at school is poverty, What good is it to dwell on the perks found in elite private schools, if the living conditions outside of school don’t improve?
Some believe on some “deserve” to learn or live in comfortable environs.
@concernedmom: You don’t believe every single child would benefit from the “perks” found at private schools?
You believe that since we can’t change what happens outside of school, we should just abandon poor kids to test after test after test, awful facilities, a lack of arts and PE and temporary teachers?
Wow. Just wow.
I guess I don’t consider an enriched education free from testing some sort of “perk” only for rich kids.
Cupcake,
that wasn’t my point. Of course I wish the Friends-like perks for every child (including mine own child who attends a Title 1 school),
My point was that I read (including many times on this very blog) that poverty is the biggest factor in school success . I did not say we should abandon poor children. My point is just concentrating on the school without also looking at conditions outside the school at the same time will not bring the results some think. If a child goes to bed hungry, has a parent who is too exhausted from working three part time jobs and is not available to reinforce learning at home then I doubt these students will see the same success as their well-off peers if they all attend a Friends-like school.
I find this blog is becoming more about arguing and less about finding solutions. Despite differing opinions, I feel everyone here wants to improve education for everyone.Peace.
Here is a snapshot of a typical day at a school in Bridgeport. The building has climate-controlled windows that open a mere 10 inches at the bottom. There is no central air. The rooms are hot and stuffy, and fans just move the hot air around the classroom. The seventh and eighth grade students are confined to one hallway. They have gym two periods per week. After gym, they proceed to their next class, after running around in their school uniforms. There’s no locker room to change into gym clothes, and certainly no showers to wash themselves, so they arrive to class hot, sweaty, and quite frankly, the smell is overpowering. One has to wonder in amazement, knowing there are reformers cracking their whips, demanding the scores go up, or face punishment and humiliation. Something indeed is rotten in education. Just come into my classroom and take a good whiff. These sociopaths do not care about the basic needs and well-being of students who attend “the other schools.” However, they are quick to withhold necessary funding that would alleviate this problem. But no, just spend millions testing them under these conditions, so they can cry out to the public that charter schools are the answer. They forget one very important factor. We the teachers care. We the teachers are in the classroom every day, and work through these problems every day. We do our best despite the negative and spiteful comments politicians and reformers say in the media. I’ll quote Clinton Eastwood: “Go ahead! Make my day.”
BPS teacher, get ready to gag…according to Vallas “tool and resources” don’t matter and failure is not an option. Of course, he is referring to test scores.
The pictures are revolting. The self appointed general facing his troops. Do not click to enlarge. His words alone make me sick.
Notice you now have a Baton Rouge principal who seems to hop around quite frequently. Louisiana “reformers” are invading CT. I guess they couldn’t find certified local educators or maybe there are new waivers to waivers for Vallas lemmings.
http://www.ctpost.com/local/article/For-principals-failure-not-an-option-4724239.php
Yes, Linda. I am painfully aware of it. **sigh**
If you want to you can connect via the Pelto blog and you can do so anonymously. There is support here. Email Jonathan: jonpelto@gmail.com
http://mobile.edweek.org/c.jsp?DISPATCHED=true&cid=25983841&item=http%3A%2F%2Fblogs.edweek.org%2Fteachers%2Fliving-in-dialogue%2F2013%2F08%2Ffrom_school_grades_to_common_c.html%3Fcmp%3DSOC-SHR-TW
Now NYC is moving to axe the requirement to have librarians (and libraries). I know the guy in this article (Gregg) and he is just….slimy. I heard him remark once that librarians are essentially archivists and curators – not teachers – yet he is in charge of defending school libraries.
So they’ll blame the principals. Blame the state. Ask for a waiver, and then pare down services even more. Why are these people in charge of education?
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324769704579006604137520932.html?mod=WSJ_article_comments#articleTabs%3Darticle
Well of course I wouldn’t want to have MY OWN children in a school like Lakeside or Choate or the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools!
What would ever give you that crazy idea?
Why would I want them to attend a school where there are ONLY 12 to 18 students in a class? And where individual tutoring is available for any student, at any time, for any subjects?
Why they’d be likely to get far too much individual time and attention if they went to such a school. What decent parent would want that for their daughter or son?
There would be little or no standardized testing—and as a result, they’d no longer be spending 25% of the year on cramming, eh, I mean “Test Preparation” before those all important tests.
That sounds absolutely terrible: what would they do with all of that extra classroom time on their hands? Learn and passionately engage in a vibrant classroom atmosphere where subject matter could come alive?
What possible good could come out of that?
What parent wouldn’t prefer a school with 35 to 65 students per class, being taught every year by a succession of 23 year olds with Five Whole Weeks of “Teacher Training” the previous summer, in exchange for a 2 year student loan deferment, before they go on to begin their real careers in law, medicine, politics or business?
Why would any decent, competent mother or father want a seasoned, experienced professional who has spent their entire adult life doing what they truly love—teaching children—in an educational environment where the teachers are also good friends who share knowledge and insights and work together cooperatively in the best interests of each and every child.
Wouldn’t most parents prefer that the teachers in their child’s school “compete” against one another to win that “Merit Pay” bonu$, in a high pressure, “Glengarry Glen Ross” atmosphere?
Why wouldn’t all parents want the “benefits” of cutthroat competition among teachers? Why wouldn’t my child thrive academically in a “school” where teachers have a “Lookin’ Out For Number One” mentality and who realize that anything they might do to help another teacher will inevitably hurt their own chances of getting that “Value Added Contest Prize” at the end of the year?
So I think that all of us who love our children and want the best for them should heed this valuable “inside advice” provided to us, free of charge, by Duncan, Gates, Emanuel, Tilson, Broad, Bloomberg and so many others in that top 1%.
They’re obviously sharing this sage wisdom with us to spare us the heartbreak and grievous disappointment they experienced with their own children who attend these types of schools.
They really ARE selfless and oh so caring, imploring us NOT to make the mistake s they made when they sent their own kids off to Dalton and Sidwell Friends.
What’s that you say? They’re STILL planning on keeping their own offspring in these Exeter and Andover hell holes, bypassing the far superior 60 student classrooms emphasizing “Teach To The Test” drills led by people who just graduated from high school only 5 years earlier?
That’s shocking. I am absolutely astonished to hear that they’re doing this!
And so deeply moved that I’m about to choke up…
I guess this just underscores their absolute sincerity when they insist that they’re only pursuing this “Education Reform” agenda because they truly care, so very deeply, about our country’s poor and underprivileged children and will stop at nothing to help them.
Could there be any better illustration of this then the fact that they’re apparently willing to sacrifice the best interests of their own daughters and sons so that those coveted slots in the far superior “Race To The Top/Teacher Accountability/No Excuses/Testing All The Time” schools can be reserved for the poor and underprivileged children who clearly need them the most.
Hopefully all of these children of the Ruling Elite won’t suffer too greatly in their future careers because of the sacrifices made by their parents—holding their own children back so that the indigent, unconnected and anonymous of the inner cities can go first in line and receive the rich, ultra beneficial experience of the “public” schools you’ll find today in such places as New Orleans, Detroit, and Philadelphia—the future these 1 Percenters are working so very hard to guarantee for ALL public school students in the USA…
Choke..sob…excuse me…I apologize. ..I’m going all John Boehner here…I just love those kind, generous, sweet, sincere billionaires and all of the people they’re paying to push for MY child’s best educational future!
Although the 1% must be drug tested all the time like they are in Orlando’s Lake Highland prep, it would be nice when my daughter’s friends came over that one didn’t get the sense that they aren’t getting enough to eat at home. Half the children are now in poverty or near poverty. You can’t wall that away from kids in a classroom anyway. As Dr. Ravitch mentions in a previous article Finland has 4% poverty. Therein lies the main differences. At my college, the public school kids like me did- better.
Diane is right about what’s not to like about Sidwell, Exeter, etc. and others are right about the inability of many poverty kids to take advantage of what those schools offer. But good schools could be created, and in the public schools system too, with enough money. No one is discussing funding except those who think the rich have the money if they could only be made to disgorge it (by confiscation? steeply progressive taxation?). Even Diane dismisses Fordham’s figure of 1.6 trillion needed to fund such schools. I don’t know where the Institute gets its number either, but surely it is SOME number, and that is what we need to be looking at in a realistic way. If 1.6 trillion is a wrong estimate, then Diane owes something more than skepticism about it if she thinks it is too high, if she thinks that the kind of good public school she herself went to can be replicated for the costs of current instruction. Fordham too owes us a worked out calculation of how it arrived at the figure of 1.6 trillion dollars. Lets compare that figure with the current expenditures of the federal government just for the sake of something. Step up teaching economist. Step up Duane. Others. Until someone comes up with a way of funding public schools properly, all of our moral ranting and raving about desert, is just spitting into the wind. The reformers have their paradigm: reduce costs, exclude high-cost students.
Start thinking like business owners. No, stop, stop. I won’t let you say, “Education is not a business.” Of course, it’s a business, its a service business, and a labor intensive one too. Private schools like Sidwell and Exeter charge what it takes them to provide that superior good service, $20,000 and up per year, and that just for a day school.
You won’t find any solutions without calculating the costs and determining where you’re going to get the gelt.
Re: “Until someone comes up with a way of funding public schools properly, all of our moral ranting and raving about desert, is just spitting into the wind.”
You keep ignoring the fact that we had in the not so distant past — well, within my memory — a way of funding public schools properly.
One of the principles behind that system of funding was that people paid taxes in rough but rational proportion to the benefits they received, and way back then most folks understood that benefits received was not just the enrichment of one’s family jewels but the benefit of living in a civil society with an educated pool of labor and professions.
Of course it wasn’t the kind of accounting scheme that CPAs dream on, but a decent rule of thumb based itself on the measure of income and property that a person or business gained from the common good.
That system worked fairly well, and it lifted all boats, as they say, but then a new philosophy of business arose — “Why pay for it when you can steal it?” became the order of the day.
And that is how it came to this …
What this boils down to is even more progressive taxation. But it can’t be federal taxation you are talking about because education is funded locally and in the states. What, then should be the top state tax rate? The devil is in the details. What are your details?
Like regressive taxation is so much better. Puts the burden on those who don’t have enough to pay it. Higher sales taxes locally, just peachy. Lets the rich send money to the Caymans.
If you will look at the states with ALEC’s influence, you will see schools under fire. Our esteemed “governor” in Ohio helped bring down Lehman Brothers and now he is hiding the spending and contributors to JobsOhio, known here as RobsOhio, undermining police, fire, city, and school funding. Putting people out of work but trying to claim he is a jobs creator. Sure he is. Trying to make Ohio a “Right to Work (for nothing)” state. Look at Michigan, Wisconsin, NC, Florida, to name a few. There is such a fear of “socialism” because they think it is Socialism that the Tea Party loudmouths are running around spewing half truths. But, we know where their news reports originate.
Another push to change the subject when someone doesn’t care to answer, perhaps because they know it would be absurd. I say cut federal top tax rate to 25% so people can spend a bit more on local schools. National economy would grow a little faster. More people would have jobs.
I don’t like to get “personal” but you are the one who changes the subject. You are the one trying to bring in your Tea Party views and state so boldly. You are the one who seems to have an anti-Ravitch motive. You just make me very tired. But, twisting is the name of the game in these discussions. You don’t seem to understand when someone does answer you so-called questions. Your “game” is annoying and tiresome. We need a solution to bad reforms, to privatizing ruination of public education. And, it does involve responses to taxation at all levels. SMH.
Exactly, Deb, all the issues go to taxation. What I bring in is relevant to the problems and the solutions. I ask questions about money, and usually I get a moralistic rant or a personal attack.
My own utopian solution is to have each school be run as a collaborative or collective BY the teachers. The teachers would own a share, and collective decide how to spend the money and what to charge. The employees would be the board. Then teachers would be true professionals, taking responsibility for their enterprise. Now the money comes from taxes, the teachers trust the unions to look out for them, the administrations allocate the money and an elected board of citizens takes the responsibility. In Chicago, where the mayor controls the schools Rham caved on a union contract to give raises of 16% over four years so a strike wouldn’t hurt his boss Obama in getting reelected. Now the piper must be paid, the chickens are coming home to roost. Chicago’s got BIG unfunded pensions for teachers, and the state won’t let the city get money to start paying into the pension fund. Chicago is Detroit out a few years. Rham tried to balance the budget by closing schools and firing teachers. Temporary solution. Meantime kids are supposed to have safe routes to school, but today two gang members shot each other on one of the safe routes.
Teachers always want someone else to pay. The public school teaching cadre always wants someone else to take care of them. They model that culture of dependency for their students. And that’s what the students learn, dependency, rather than independence. What a difference it would make if each building’s teachers owned the school and were responsible for running it? No we have teachers who are still emotionally children looking for their Daddy the State to take care of them, teaching their students to look to their Daddy the State to take care of them. From a moral perspective, the kids do have a right for the best schools money can buy, but you can in the real world only have what your daddy will buy you, and their Daddy the State is out of money.
The right-wing-nut-tea-party is slowly gaining the upper hand because they recognize reality and they are no longer willing to be shamed by the government bureaucrats we call teachers. When someone says, “We have to educate ALL the children in first rate schools” they say “Yah, sure. We’ll take care of our own.” And that’s what’s happening. It’s cruel, it’s bitter, criminal, but no amount of Red Ranting is going to change their minds. “Yah, sure. You got a point, by golly. But we’ll take care of our own families for the time being.”
If you want their money, you’re going to have to come get it at gunpoint. Are you willing to do that? I didn’t think so. That’s why the education matters are intrinsically intertwined with the so called “social issues,” illegitimacy, poverty, crime, food stamps, even abortion. How is that you say? Well, if liberals are willing to kill babies then the tea partiers can say, “Ya, sure. I didn’t make them other babies. I’ll take care of my own. Why didn’t ya abort ’em if you wasn’t goin’ to take care of ’em?”
Teacher owned and run cooperatives. That’s my proposal. Daddy the State won’t pay any more for babies he didn’t make and their loving mommies didn’t abort because more babies means Medicaid and SNAP. It’s a business, ladies and gentlemen, farming the babies to get the Federal Govt. to support them. But, education, now education is locally funded. And the local yokel is rubbing the back of his sunburned neck, and saying, “Yah, sure. You got a good point by golly. But we’ll just take care of our own for the moment.”
This message was brought to you by Tinfoil Hats, the best in brain wave receivers for transmissions from behind Jupiter and Saturn. Be sure to wear yours as you watch the Perseid Meteor Showers tonight. You will receive a special message from . . . but you know who . . . which will tell you what to do in the next 24 hours about whether to enroll in a charter or in the local Homeschool Cooperative. You remember Rin Tin Tin? He was one of us too. With our TINfoil hats you can hear him bark again and even understand what he says.
Thanks, as always, Harlan, for summing up the philosophy of Anal Retentive Narcissism (ARN).
Perfect comment!
Harlan,
I’ve rarely read a column with so many occasionally brilliant insights in a sea of utter nonsense, idiocy and sociopathic reaction.
Your views of humanity, economics and social relations are really an artifact of Bizarro World blended with Ayn Rand and The Three Stooges.
Well, now you’ve vented, and I know how you feel about ME, what can you say about any of the issues in the post specifically? Do you think I’m not actually ‘human’? Maybe the Devil was my Daddy? Don’t deny it. That’s what you really think. But, now give the devil his due, and examine any proposition you wish.
Dewey said it long ago in School and Society: “What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy. All that society has accomplished for itself is put, through the agency of the school, at the disposal of its future members. All its better thoughts of itself it hopes to realize through the new possibilities thus opened to its future self. Here individualism and socialism are at one. Only by being true to the full growth of all the individuals who make it up, can society by any chance be true to itself. And in the self-direction thus given, nothing counts as much as the school, for, as Horace Mann said, ” Where anything is growing, one former is worth a thousand re-formers.”
Come now, can’t you come up with a better insult? Make it ARNE or maybe your darling AYN or RAND? But ARN? You must have gotten your psychiatry degree in Chile.
Dewey’s ideal is a heroic one, but you DO notice that he discloses his true orientation, socialist. Individualism and socialism are one. Don’t we ALL wish it were so. This is Diane’s mantra too. But it just cannot be so. You can have individualism and freedom or socilism and tyranny. When the socialist state starts giving out benefits, eventually everyone wants to ride free. But eventually the benefits exceed the society’s willingness to produce. That’s what has happened. If money grew on trees, Dewey’s ideal could be realized, that every son and daughter could be given a rich man’s education. Money is stored work, and not enough people are working. You’d think the President would understand that. He had the finest education money can buy. Unfortunately he didn’t learn any thing about reality, only wishful thinking. He has his. But the common man doesn’t. Business is trying, but it can only do so much under malign circumstances, by which I mean capricious administration. Doesn’t his careless slackness bother you? His totally bad education policy puzzles me. First NCLB, now CCSC. It’s bizarre.
Details, Details …
Rereading through this made me wonder. We use the term investment. Most people seem to think investment has to do with money and possessions for self. It is like a drug. People can never get enough money. They can’t take time to be satisfied. To be content is considered to be lazy. Hmmm
I think no we need to invest in children, in a fully functioning society, into an opportunity to give back. The goal seems to be to take from the least able and hoard it for those who have been lucky.
We are a society without heart or purpose. For so many, having a society is socialist. It is like talking to a wall.
Is it permitted to have one’s own individual purposes beyond sustaining society?
People can and will do as they wish. Society is crumbling due to putting individuality so far above common good that some people are invisible and don’t seem to matter at all. But those who don’t care, won’t care, so it won’t change until it hits people between the eyes.
Rather I think the reverse is happening, that individuals are merged so deeply in the state that they are submerged by it. Some of us think that restoring a modicum of freedom of choice in education is a necessary step to restore American civil society to health.
A well-functioning public education district is a joy to behold and is indeed the foundation of civil society, but even the best are infected with doctrinaire smugness, including top heavy administration, ham-handed bureaucratic public relations, and now gung ho embracement of the CCSS.
Thus, in spite of the drain on their finances represented by charters (which do skim), and virtual charters, which amount to vouchers for homeschooling, I come down on the side of choice, since I have concluded that the public schools are INCAPABLE of self-reform. It’s a real pity, and I don’t understand why teaching standards have not been maintained across the board even in my relatively rich district, but that is the case, and it goes back to at least the seventies when my children went through the neighborhood elementary school and were not properly treated by unresponsive teachers.
I have formed, for better or worse, the conviction that the public schools are ALWAYS second best, and that their performance is connected with unions, tenure, and bureaucracy. I’m ready to try satisfying the constitutional mandate of each state to provide an education for all with an all charter and all voucher system. The model I’d like to see is each school owned by the employees as a collaborative. That would introduce a stern dose of realisism into the teaching staff, which currently are isolated form their clients by being employees of the local government. I am simply NOT convinced that schooling needs to be operated as a single, district wide, governmental entity, like the police department or the fire department, or the road commission. I don’t think democracy depends on that way of offering schooling to the population.
Do you, then, support businesses being employee owned instead of having a corporate LLC take over blindly, paying employees peanuts while keeping profits for the 1%?
And while you mention your well to do neighborhood, what will become of the poor neighborhoods in your grand scheme of things? And while choice sounds good to some on paper, remember, it is often not all that wonderful on the inside. In all my years of teaching, I only had one student who transferred in from a private school who was more advanced than my students. He was brilliant but a non-conformist. I don’t think they ever tamed him.
I don’t think anything is stopping anyone from taking online, PSEO, AP language or math classes, foreign languages, or vocational/technical courses in my district. So they have PUBLIC choices.
My district only has about 2000 students, 1 superintendent, 1 curriculum advisor, 4 buildings with a total of 4 principals, and 1 nurse for the district. Classes are kind of large for all grade levels, but they know how to average in the smaller classes to make the numbers reported seem smaller than the reality. So there is low overhead and a lot of the CC junk is dumped on the teachers to figure out in our spare time. We are suburban/rural. We have maintained an Excellent rating for over 10 years with the last 6 being Excellent with Distinction. The job has become exhausting even for the 20-30 year olds. So, not all public non-wealthy districts are doing so poorly, even though we teachers see the charade for what it is. They have driven almost everyone over 60 to retirement because of the continued mental, physical, and social pressures to be all things to all people.
Sorry your kids weren’t well-served in the 70s. Many changes have been enacted since then. Some have actually been good. We try to meet all kids’ needs. And we haven’t had a raise since 2007 but have paid more for our insurance with less coverage.
It has always been difficult to meet the needs of someone who thinks their kids are a cut above, though. We never treated our kids that way, although they are bright boys. We had no money to give them all that money can buy, but we were happy enough with their public schooling.
Oh, Deb, you must not disturb our writer in residence of political fairy tales with any hint of what is going on in the real world, much less point out what Beast it is that really threatens our individuals freedoms. Better to leave our pseudo-libertarians to their dreams.
And who does really threaten our liberties, and how?
I know. I should just go away. But, the ones who tend to respond to my posts seem to be those who oppose or who think they have me pigeon-holed as some kind of ultra-liberal with no common sense. When he posted that last time, I couldn’t help but try to point out the exact parallels that are taking place in this economy and that these are the same forces that are undermining public education. At least I found out that he doesn’t work in a public school, so of course he has a bias. I just get so tired of the constant, deliberate skewing of the topic, and often followed by an accusation that someone else is diverting the topic, that he and a couple of other guys initiated. Adds to my stress level for sure. I may just bail. It keeps my mind lively to keep using some of my critical thinking skills. I know it is futile. Thanks.
Not futile, Deb. It’s just you don’t have any good arguments. You and Aubrey’s sniggering contempt for us tea party folks out here, vitiates your credibility completely. You won’t meet anyone who doesn’t blindly support public education in a neutral common ground. You dismiss us (me) as a RWNJ, a tin-foil hat wearer, an evil greedy private enterprise supporter.
All I’ve ever said is that there is no public sector as such. ALL the money used to hire teachers first has to be made in the private sector. That would seem to me to be incontrovertible. But you say I don’t think the public sector contributes anything of value to the world. I think you made that up even though you put it in quotes. Value yes, if well done, and there is a circular effect because well-educated students get jobs in the private sector, and pay taxes and thus pay your salary.
BUT they have to apply their skills in the private sector before they generate a penny of value. An education by itself may be an intrinsic good, but it is not “worth” anything unless it generate wealth in a private business that manufactures or repairs or serves.
Is that not so? Ignore Aubrey. You seem to be a real mind.
#1. Saying I have no good arguments discredits you in my eyes.
#2. You are trying to put extraneous thoughts into my interpretation of you and/or Tea Party people.
#3. You were the first on here to use the term “tin foil hats”.
#4. I believe I said that through civics we need to teach about democratic republics and possibly demonstrate the process, but I didn’t claim that schools were such.
Harlan, you preach to us when you believe we are not kind to Dick, so you need to follow your own advice. Where did the kinder, gentler, peace making Harlan go? He appeared for a while after insulting Diane and now he’s gone. 😦
No, you shouldn’t go away. Talking to people of good will and common sense keeps us strong and gives us hope, and the majority of people here are like that. But it becomes clear after a while that some people are just so out of touch with the realities that concern the rest of us, and not even hearing what others have to say, that trying to get through to them will just make you lose faith in humanity. So you have to quit doing that …
Aw, Jon, it depends on the day. I am disillusioned with so many. People claim to have “the definition” of being American, a Patriot, a citizen, a teacher, a student, and on and on.
I learned a long time ago that we are not a society of one-minded people and you can’t please all the people all the time, but you can’t please some of the people at all. They will wear you down, waste your time picking your brain and making you defend your position until you just want the conversation to cease. You can’t really fight platitudes and quotes (misquotes) and ideas that put self above everyone else. You can’t explain why you think it is un-christian or un-charitable to just dismiss some kids as the results of parents who shouldn’t have had kids but who were often forced to have them by the very people that eschew the whole poor class of people. It is all about control.
I think the one thing that trumps it all is LOVE. If you love the kids, and if they know it, feel it, meet your eyes, you will bring them along. You won’t necessarily bring them to the same place at the same time, but they will move forward and look back at August with surprise at the different persons they have become. We are not all the same. The students aren’t the same. The teachers aren’t the same. The contributions of the varying strengths and weaknesses all goes into the process of learning, applying, living, being human.
The computerization of education, while it has some benefits, should not replace human teachers. We are not all like Bill Gates. We are not all driven to “do what it takes” to make a buck, no matter who is left along the road wondering what hit them between the eyes. For, we have been railroaded with this change that … might have merits in some places … has been thrust upon us, trying to invalidate previous education received at colleges and universities, and through much research, trial and error. This monster is shoving the past out of the way.
Any culture who encourages disrespect of those who have worked in the trenches and who moves forward blindly is going to hit a brick wall.
That’s all I’ve got now.
Absolutely. Collaboratives are the way to go. NO class size should be larger than 22. Most 15 max. If your district has low overhead that’s great. Is your pension plan defined benefit or defined contribution? Are you prevented from getting social security?
Benefits are state driven. They are changing for those retiring after 2015. We had matching funds from the district. Our state forbids us to get Social Security. I have almost enough SS credits to draw it, that I am not allowed to utilize without sacrificing the STRS benefits of an equal amount. Out class sizes are too large. We have 24 in kindergarten. I believe some kids go all day because they are that far behind. Elementary sizes at my school are 24 – 28. The other elementary has 22-25. Middle school has up to 36 in classes. High school varies because of electives and such.
As much as none of us like the heavy handed, if sparse, administration, the fact that it IS sparse gives us more of an opportunity to teach CORRECTLY and just worry about the garbage when they enter the room, which isn’t often. They will be going to 10 evaluations per year, unannounced, looking for a different, unrevealed domain every time they pop in. Insanity. Just insanity. Many reviews are lies, pure lies. Even the good remarks are inaccurate. But … that is how it is. Considering how well the students are doing, you’d think they’d realize that we aren’t inadequate teachers. It is very exhausting.
I’m sure it is, Deb, exhausting. I think it is utterly unjust to make public school teachers give up SS benefits if they have earned them in other contexts. Cruel.
Just because I spent my entire 42 year career in private education institutions doesn’t mean I don’t empathize with public school teachers who have to put up with so much crap. I never made more that 2/3 what the public school teachers in my city made, but only occasionally did I have to put up with administrative idiocy.
I was lucky, and from one point of view I had it easy, though I know what an all-day, long nights, gruelling grind good teaching requires, not to even mention the Michigan snow and ice too many mornings.
I wish you had it easier and made better money.
Harlan’s theory that “There Is No Public Sector As Such” is very like the theory that There Are No Chickens As Such, only hatched eggs.
It takes a “real mind” to think up a theory like that, but no real thought into the sources of value in the world, whether economic or any other kind.
When you plant an orchard you do need the land to do so, but it is the fruit trees which create the value, not the substrate itself. Same thing with government entities. We all need a court system to try criminals and enforce contracts, but that’s not where the value comes from. The value comes, economic value, from what individuals do in the way of business within that framework or on the substrate. All of the state infrastructure is paid for with tax money, and the money comes from capitalist activity, paid for by corporations or people working for them. That seems obvious to me. I didn’t invent it. I’m just calling attention it. The public sector ALWAYS is a cost. The question is whether it is an excessive cost. The EPA, the Department of Education, possibly the Commerce Department, and possibly the Energy Department could be cut or eliminated to the benefit of lightening the general tax load on the businesses which create ALL the wealth in the country. The topic at issue is whether public education as presently constituted is an excessive burden on the society. Like most bureaucracies it is wasteful and sluggish. It was once the glory of the country and could be still, but its attempt to comply with NCLB and now with CCSS, suggests it is infected with utopian thinking, capitulating cravenly to what it loathes, and in addition outrageously over worked and put in no-win situations so that teacher morale is low. Private schools seem to many to be a way out of the mandates, and charters likewise, and vouchers even more so. It is no wonder to me that the Obama-Duncan axis of insanity continues to outfox so many well-meaning people who have worked long and hard in the public schools and really should not be subjected to the pressures they currently are. NCLB objectives have been postponed for a year or two by Congress, but the monster is not dead yet. It needs a stake driven through its heart. And meanwhile the Son of NCLB, known as CCSS, has arisen and is throwing its dark shadow across the land. Those who are fighting furiously against it are heros. But CCSS, like a vampire zombie is drinking the blood of public education and eating its brains, until the entire national educational public educational establishment will be sick and reeling while those who have managed to get out of the apocalypse zone via charters, vouchers, and private schools are in many cases happy, fit, glad to be going back to school, eager to pursue their educations. Part of the problem to begin with is that educationists never saw themselves as a service business, but rather as an essential national, governmental institution. I would argue that this lack of self-awareness of what public education was really up to, is the cause of its fatal susceptibility to the reformers. Public education is like a mouse on LSD, made insane by the fatal self conceit that it is an essential government institution, like the legal system and the courts, when all it is but ONE possible delivery service for the intellectual culture from the past that permits human beings to realize their human potential and maximize their safety and comfort. The public schools do not have a monopoly on culture. They didn’t do the seminal thinking behind modern science and literature. They do try to conserve it and pass it on. But that transmission to the future has become a tad unstable, disturbed by the availability of other delivery services, charters, vouchers, and as always the elite private schools maintained by private wealth, most of which, nevertheless, seek students from all economic levels of society to support with scholarships. Such schools and colleges are happy to share humane education with students and families ready to accept it. Such students are in the minority in such institutions—scholarship kids—but they are there getting good educations and going on to productive lives. Some of that productivity will go back into maintaining the society, into the substrate, but most will go out to transform nature in some way, adding value to objects and fluids, and earning money. It is that money that funds ALL government.
So now we have the theory that money grows on trees.
Well … we wish❢ … but not a theory that bears any fruit.
“Money Comes From Capitalist Activity”?
What the devil does that mean?
We might have understood that Land + Labor of Love + Lemon Tree bears fruit, if you like that sort of thing, but where does this Capital and this Legal Tender come in?
Don’t be perverse, Jon. You know perfectly well how capitalism works. Someone has an idea for a product, she gets some money together to start making it, and then sells the results of her idea + raw materials + knowledge + labor. The necessity of knowledge is why education is so important to business. Maybe a cook can make jam out of strawberries by rule of thumb, but there is science to every step of the process. Any individual to be productive has to guide his labor by knowledge, whether it’s a kid patching up a car body with Bondo, or a musician performing for people, or a girl out of college going to NYC to work with Moody’s Bond Rating company. There’s an unavoidable intellectual content to everything we do for a living. People are poor because they don’t have the knowledge to mix with their labor to be useful to an employer to transform something into something customers will pay more for than the original raw materials. A lump of wet clay is just a lump of wet clay until skill (i.e. knowledge) shapes it into a jar. A vat of grapes is just a vat of rotting fruit until knowledge transforms it into wine. There is always this combination of raw materials + knowledge + effort needed to make anything of any use. Even baking bread requires it. The “capital” comes in as a way of acquiring the raw materials (grains of wheat)(yeast)(water)(salt)(heat). The capitalist usually is the one who ALSO has the knowledge of how to use the raw materials to “add value” to them. And sometimes, in small operations, the capitalist is the one who mixes his labor with the raw materials. The profit is the difference between what he buys the materials for and what he can sell the finished product for. Money is the means of exchange between people for their stored work. The customer pays over some coins that are HIS stored work, to the baker, and the baker gives him a loaf he can eat to sustain his strength. Enlarge that a thousand times, and involve hundreds of people, and you have a business and jobs. How else is one’s labor enabled to provide what needs in order to live? The cash to buy the grain we call capital, and the cash to build an oven, and the cash to buy fuel for it. The know-how is sometimes called intellectual capital, and is the essential connection between raw materials and Th product. The labor mixed with the grain and knowledge is also a part of the value equation. The more a laborer needs to know to make a product out of the raw materials, the larger the share that labor gets of the selling price of the finished product. Labor usually thinks it should have more of the “value” of the finished product that he usually gets (Labor Theory of Value), but if the labor is unskilled, the capitalist can replace a worker asking more with one who won’t. What labor, in my view, doesn’t like to acknowledge is the essential role of capital in producing his wage. The capitalist thinks he is owed the major share of the selling price because 1)he risks his money buying raw materials, 2)he supplies the know-how to apply to those raw materials, and 3)he markets the product. That’s why capitalists are always looking for profit, but that’s natural. In a labor intensive industry like education, productivity can hardly be automated, thus larger class sizes or efforts to replace teachers with video and technology. In my experience that doesn’t always work very well. Education, the transfer of knowledge (i.e. skills), is a very personal thing. That’s why the CCSS are so pernicious. In an effort to make the transfer more efficient, teachers are being told to work harder on threat of losing their jobs. But most of us know that a kid can’t learn something until his brain and growth are ready for it. It is a process that just, in my opinion, CANNOT be made more efficient. You have to let the bread rise before you can bake it. You have to let a kid mature, physically almost, before you can teach him stuff, or before he’s able to learn stuff. Nevertheless, middle class parents start talking to their children in educated language from the first day. The brain hears and sees and absorbs in a reciprocal exchange with the environment (parents). Thank goodness human beings are programmed to learn language on their own. Since culture is language in large part, that immersion of a baby in the atmosphere of what actually makes it human—i.e. language—is essential for that child to join the human race. And from the “mother tongue” springs more formal knowledge of how to transform dirt into the stuff of life. Capitalism is just a more formalized version of what is fundamentally natural to babies in families. It takes time, but there’s little dispute about the goals. Abstract thinking is what makes babies able to transform raw material into a product. When a kid has the bad luck to be born into a family who does not know how to make those transformations, but relies on gifts from those who do (welfare), he has trouble catching up. But since he needs food to live, he will learn how to transform SOMETHING. Drugs, theft, a job at McDonalds are all transformations of time and effort into enough to live on—water and food—and since man does not live by bread alone, he transforms his minutes and hours into what pleasure he can achieve. Thus everyone’s life to the extent it is productive is a capitalist enterprise. You invest your knowledge + time + energy(i.e. work) and you come out with a product that you try to sell for more than you paid for it. No one can even life without seeking profit, largely considered. That’s what the Declaration of Independence means when it mentions “pursuit of happiness.” The constitution recognizes that life itself depends on capitalism in the sense I have been describing it, and that if you have a right to life, which must be protected, then you also have a right to make a profit from your knowledge + time + labor and that is why the pursuit of happiness is also mentioned explicitly. No one is supposed to interfere with your efforts to live, i.e. to make your time profitable. The more you have to invest, the greater possible return. Carnegie started by saving pennies. Anyone can do it if they understand the realities of life. That’s what The American Dream means, the opportunity to start with a penny or two, and by investment of time + labor + knowledge get to be a rich man. What the boy in the ghetto is not taught is that he MUST be a capitalist in order to have a secure life, in which he is not dependent on others, but invests his knowledge + time + labor to gain food, shelter, pleasures.
Much as I love being schooled by the words of wisdom that fall like inexhaustible bounties of fruits and nuts from the intellectual cornucopia of a genuine “real mind”, I must play hookey today till sometime after the Children’s Hour.
But for the sake of my later review and continuing edification, let me record a sample of Les Vérités Incontrovertibles with which we have been graced so far, to wit, or not, Harlan Underhill’s Axioms.
HUA 1. There Is No Public Sector As Such.
HUA 2. All Money Comes From Capitalist Activity.
HUA 3. All Money Is First Made In The Private Sector.
(Okay, I know he’s just channeling Rush, or some other tight wig ranter from right wing radio, but I give HU credit for bringing these “obvious” and “incontrovertible” truths to our attention here in the Hinterlands.)
I am glad to see that you are slowly moving away from mere snarky, verbal contempt (though not far enough in my estimation), to begin to engage on the substance of national economy. I will await your return from your duties to your children to a time when you will be able to address by rational discussion the HUAs which you summarize so succinctly and accurately.
I am glad to see the implication that YOU are taking care of yourself, first of all, and your progeny, second. That assumption brings us to the boundary of common ground, though has not yet enabled us to step in the propositional circle. That fits with your later (lunchtime) post by Franklin that each man has an indisputable natural right to the property necessary to maintain himself and his children.
I would reach back to an older economist to begin a discussion of the source of wealth:
“THE annual labour of every nation is the fund which originally supplied it with all the necessaries and conveniencies of life which it annually consumes, and which consist always, either in the immediate produce of that labour, or in what is purchased with that produce from other nations.”
Adam Smith
I posted this on FB and think it fits here. I edited one word to B.S. instead of the full word.
Two specific quotes from the article below that bring out the dilemma of teachers (Hint: we do a job that is actually worthwhile): 1) “An objective measure is hard to find, but one easy way to get a sense is to ask: what would happen were this entire class of people to simply disappear? Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics, it’s obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. A world without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in trouble, and even one without science fiction writers or ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place. It’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish. (Many suspect it might markedly improve.) Yet apart from a handful of well-touted exceptions (doctors), the rule holds surprisingly well.”
And 2) “It’s as if they are being told “but you get to teach children! Or make cars! You get to have real jobs! And on top of that you have the nerve to also expect middle-class pensions and health care?”
Complete article below. I didn’t use a link because the word is used instead of “BS” and I didn’t want to offend or break rules.
by David Graeber…On the Phenom of BS Jobs
In the year 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by century’s end, technology would have advanced sufficiently that countries like Great Britain or the United States would have achieved a 15-hour work week. There’s every reason to believe he was right. In technological terms, we are quite capable of this. And yet it didn’t happen. Instead, technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more. In order to achieve this, jobs have had to be created that are, effectively, pointless. Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul. Yet virtually no one talks about it.
Why did Keynes’ promised utopia – still being eagerly awaited in the ‘60s – never materialise? The standard line today is that he didn’t figure in the massive increase in consumerism. Given the choice between less hours and more toys and pleasures, we’ve collectively chosen the latter. This presents a nice morality tale, but even a moment’s reflection shows it can’t really be true. Yes, we have witnessed the creation of an endless variety of new jobs and industries since the ‘20s, but very few have anything to do with the production and distribution of sushi, iPhones, or fancy sneakers.
So what are these new jobs, precisely? A recent report comparing employment in the US between 1910 and 2000 gives us a clear picture (and I note, one pretty much exactly echoed in the UK). Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, “professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers” tripled, growing “from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment.” In other words, productive jobs have, just as predicted, been largely automated away (even if you count industrial workers globally, including the toiling masses in India and China, such workers are still not nearly so large a percentage of the world population as they used to be).
But rather than allowing a massive reduction of working hours to free the world’s population to pursue their own projects, pleasures, visions, and ideas, we have seen the ballooning not even so much of the “service” sector as of the administrative sector, up to and including the creation of whole new industries like financial services or telemarketing, or the unprecedented expansion of sectors like corporate law, academic and health administration, human resources, and public relations. And these numbers do not even reflect on all those people whose job is to provide administrative, technical, or security support for these industries, or for that matter the whole host of ancillary industries (dog-washers, all-night pizza deliverymen) that only exist because everyone else is spending so much of their time working in all the other ones.
These are what I propose to call “b.s. jobs.”
It’s as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working. And here, precisely, lies the mystery. In capitalism, this is precisely what is not supposed to happen. Sure, in the old inefficient socialist states like the Soviet Union, where employment was considered both a right and a sacred duty, the system made up as many jobs as they had to (this is why in Soviet department stores it took three clerks to sell a piece of meat). But, of course, this is the sort of very problem market competition is supposed to fix. According to economic theory, at least, the last thing a profit-seeking firm is going to do is shell out money to workers they don’t really need to employ. Still, somehow, it happens.
While corporations may engage in ruthless downsizing, the layoffs and speed-ups invariably fall on that class of people who are actually making, moving, fixing and maintaining things; through some strange alchemy no one can quite explain, the number of salaried paper-pushers ultimately seems to expand, and more and more employees find themselves, not unlike Soviet workers actually, working 40 or even 50 hour weeks on paper, but effectively working 15 hours just as Keynes predicted, since the rest of their time is spent organizing or attending motivational seminars, updating their facebook profiles or downloading TV box-sets.
The answer clearly isn’t economic: it’s moral and political. The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger (think of what started to happen when this even began to be approximated in the ‘60s). And, on the other hand, the feeling that work is a moral value in itself, and that anyone not willing to submit themselves to some kind of intense work discipline for most of their waking hours deserves nothing, is extraordinarily convenient for them.
Once, when contemplating the apparently endless growth of administrative responsibilities in British academic departments, I came up with one possible vision of hell. Hell is a collection of individuals who are spending the bulk of their time working on a task they don’t like and are not especially good at. Say they were hired because they were excellent cabinet-makers, and then discover they are expected to spend a great deal of their time frying fish. Neither does the task really need to be done – at least, there’s only a very limited number of fish that need to be fried. Yet somehow, they all become so obsessed with resentment at the thought that some of their co-workers might be spending more time making cabinets, and not doing their fair share of the fish-frying responsibilities, that before long there’s endless piles of useless badly cooked fish piling up all over the workshop and it’s all that anyone really does.
I think this is actually a pretty accurate description of the moral dynamics of our own economy.
*
Now, I realise any such argument is going to run into immediate objections: “who are you to say what jobs are really ‘necessary’? What’s necessary anyway? You’re an anthropology professor, what’s the ‘need’ for that?” (And indeed a lot of tabloid readers would take the existence of my job as the very definition of wasteful social expenditure.) And on one level, this is obviously true. There can be no objective measure of social value.
I would not presume to tell someone who is convinced they are making a meaningful contribution to the world that, really, they are not. But what about those people who are themselves convinced their jobs are meaningless? Not long ago I got back in touch with a school friend who I hadn’t seen since I was 12. I was amazed to discover that in the interim, he had become first a poet, then the front man in an indie rock band. I’d heard some of his songs on the radio having no idea the singer was someone I actually knew. He was obviously brilliant, innovative, and his work had unquestionably brightened and improved the lives of people all over the world. Yet, after a couple of unsuccessful albums, he’d lost his contract, and plagued with debts and a newborn daughter, ended up, as he put it, “taking the default choice of so many directionless folk: law school.” Now he’s a corporate lawyer working in a prominent New York firm. He was the first to admit that his job was utterly meaningless, contributed nothing to the world, and, in his own estimation, should not really exist.
There’s a lot of questions one could ask here, starting with, what does it say about our society that it seems to generate an extremely limited demand for talented poet-musicians, but an apparently infinite demand for specialists in corporate law? (Answer: if 1% of the population controls most of the disposable wealth, what we call “the market” reflects what they think is useful or important, not anybody else.) But even more, it shows that most people in these jobs are ultimately aware of it. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever met a corporate lawyer who didn’t think their job was b.s. The same goes for almost all the new industries outlined above. There is a whole class of salaried professionals that, should you meet them at parties and admit that you do something that might be considered interesting (an anthropologist, for example), will want to avoid even discussing their line of work entirely. Give them a few drinks, and they will launch into tirades about how pointless and stupid their job really is.
This is a profound psychological violence here. How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labour when one secretly feels one’s job should not exist? How can it not create a sense of deep rage and resentment. Yet it is the peculiar genius of our society that its rulers have figured out a way, as in the case of the fish-fryers, to ensure that rage is directed precisely against those who actually do get to do meaningful work. For instance: in our society, there seems a general rule that, the more obviously one’s work benefits other people, the less one is likely to be paid for it. Again, an objective measure is hard to find, but one easy way to get a sense is to ask: what would happen were this entire class of people to simply disappear? Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics, it’s obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic. A world without teachers or dock-workers would soon be in trouble, and even one without science fiction writers or ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place. It’s not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs or legal consultants to similarly vanish. (Many suspect it might markedly improve.) Yet apart from a handful of well-touted exceptions (doctors), the rule holds surprisingly well.
Even more perverse, there seems to be a broad sense that this is the way things should be. This is one of the secret strengths of right-wing populism. You can see it when tabloids whip up resentment against tube workers for paralysing London during contract disputes: the very fact that tube workers can paralyse London shows that their work is actually necessary, but this seems to be precisely what annoys people. It’s even clearer in the US, where Republicans have had remarkable success mobilizing resentment against school teachers, or auto workers (and not, significantly, against the school administrators or auto industry managers who actually cause the problems) for their supposedly bloated wages and benefits. f
If someone had designed a work regime perfectly suited to maintaining the power of finance capital, it’s hard to see how they could have done a better job. Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorised stratum of the, universally reviled, unemployed and a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class (managers, administrators, etc) – and particularly its financial avatars – but, at the same time, foster a simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value. Clearly, the system was never consciously designed. It emerged from almost a century of trial and error. But it is the only explanation for why, despite our technological capacities, we are not all working 3-4 hour days.
David Graeber is a Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics. His most recent book, The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement, is published by Spiegel & Grau.
I’m not sure I agree with the premise, only anecdotally supported in any case, that most of the managerial jobs in private business are bullshit jobs. I do agree that much of the bureaucratic supervision in big government is composed of bullshit jobs. The public sector is notorious for adding bureaucrats who push paper around. Profit making businesses are notorious recently for cutting their high-overhead paper pushers. Government is not. 19,000 new IRS agents hired to enforce Obamacare? Obamacare itself won’t, and isn’t, delivering anything so far except higher insurance premiums.
His “poof” test is specious as well, because human intelligence is general. All the tube workers in London can be replaced. As Reagan demonstrated, even firing the whole force of air traffic controllers doesn’t stop air travel. Similarly, if all current teachers were to go “poof” like the icons in the dock of a Macintosh computer, they could be replaced in a week from the unemployed teachers. Perhaps even by certified teachers, at least at the elementary level. The only ones whom it would be difficult to replace would be math and science teachers. Anyone who can read and write can in a pinch stumble through teaching reading and writing as long as they have books. Likewise for arithmetic. These are skills widely spread in the educated population.
It would even be possible to replace anthropology professors with others who know how to marshall real evidence rather than the tendentious impressionism Gaerber gives us.
Just a little break for lunch, and no time to read the Plenary Proceedings of the Re-Constitutional Convention, but —Heavens to Betsy Ross❢ — you’d think we Continental Irregulars bought all our economic theories at the British East India Company Theory Store.
At any rate, the Equal Time Provisions of the Communications Act of 1776 prompt me to supply this Revolutionary Message from one of Our Sponsors —
Perfectly acceptable. The KEY phrase, however, is “Whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition.” What is at dispute is what is necessary for public welfare. Note that the even more fundamental premise is “All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of.” I love that phrase “natural Right.” People DO debate about when a person has enough for himself and his family, of course. That a society can regulate inheritance, and even put a ceiling on acquisition, because an orderly framework or substrate is acknowledged to be necessary, especially in the enforcement of private contracts. You and I will differ on when the rights of the Publick to private wealth needs to be exercised. Everyone needs to contribute to the framework of society. What Franklin seems to me to leave out is the importance of capitalists to have capital to invest back into their businesses which provide jobs. If what might seem to be excess accumulation of wealth and thus subject to publick taking, is truly understood, those masses of money are really not just hoards of piles of gold upon which the dragon of the wealthy man sleeps, but they are capital reinvested in businesses which provide the means of living for many. Franklin assumes a society in which EVERY man is an entrepreneur. In a society in which have the people are on the dole and pay no taxes, that presupposition is not satisfied. The first duty of a man is to look out for himself and his family. When half the population is not doing that, we can’t even begin to talk about the excess beyond what each individual needs to sustain himself and his family. It is NOT legitimate for the state to take away double the excess because half can’t take care of themselves.