In a recent article in the New York Times about the Common Core, I was quoted saying that some kids don’t need to go to college. I was trying to explain to the reporter that the New York Common Core tests used absurdly high standards that resulted in a 70% failure rate. Not every child will make an A, I told her, and we should not fail B and C students.
This was the printed summary of our interview:
“Some critics say the new standards are simply unrealistic. “We’re using a very inappropriate standard that’s way too high,” said Diane Ravitch, an education historian who served in President George W. Bush’s Education Department but has since become an outspoken critic of many education initiatives. “I think there are a lot of kids who are being told that if they don’t go to college that it will ruin their life,” she said. “But maybe they don’t need to go to college.”
I have since heard that my remarks were elitist because everyone should go to college.
So, it is time to clarify what I believe.
Who should go to college? Everyone who wants to.
What prevents them from doing so? The cost of college today puts it out of reach for many students, and those who get a degree spend years paying back their student loans.
Education is a basic human right. Every state should have free community colleges for anyone who wants to go to college. In recent years, states have increasingly shifted the cost of higher education to students, when it should be paid for by taxation.
Does everyone “need” to go to college? No, and not everyone wants to go to college. Some people choose to go several years after high school, and some get on-the-job training.
Last week, a terrific auto mechanic fixed my car. He had not gone to college. He loves his work.
When my refrigerator broke down, two expert mechanics arrived, diagnosed the problem, and fixed it. They were proud of their skill. They were not college graduates.
In my professional life, everyone I interact with has one or several degrees. In my real life, where things break down and someone has to do work that is essential to my daily life, many–most–do not have a diploma. Should they? That should be their choice, not my compulsion.
In my ideal world, higher education would be tuition-free for those who can’t afford it. Then everyone who wants to go to a college would not be kept out by high tuition.
So to those who want a higher rate of college attendance and participation, I say “demand tuition-free colleges, open to all.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And there are kids out there who will never make it in college because they don’t have the intellectual capacity. There’s nothing wrong with that but what is wrong are students who have striven and worked hard to read and do math on a 3rd or 4th grade level and told that they can go to college. Sure, the Community College will put them in remedial classes and take their money and in the end, the will fell less than. In today’s high schools no one is allowed to talk about this at I.E.P. meetings. Except for me, who represents a career and technical school and I have to tell students and parents that they need to read at a certain level and be able to think on their feet to be an Emergency Medical Technician. These students have worked hard to achieve what they have and should be told the truth about their disability, thus giving them options for meaningful work. Also, life long learning is important and it doesn’t have to take place in a college setting.
Dit is op From experience to meaning… herblogden reageerde:
I’m agreeing with Diane Ravitch to the extent that money shouldn’t be a barrier for education. I also agree with the fact that graduating at the university doesn’t mean that one without a college degree is any less. I only want to add one thing to the idea that everybody who wants to can go to college, I would have written everybody who wants to and who is able. I know some people who want to be a famous singer, but who just can’t sing. Orientation and study counseling is also a crucial part of the story.
Good for you!!! I teach at a freshman course at a state college. Every semester I have some students who are lost, bored, ignored, bullied and generally miserable. They end up binge drinking, doing drugs and finally flunk out after having been forced to sign up for student loans they do not want and can not afford. College is a wonderful thing if you want to go but if you don’t it is torture. We need post high school educational opportunities for those who for whatever reason, are not likely to succeed in college. If and when these kids are ready, college will be there. In the meantime, feeding them “the big lie” does no one any good.
CC
Diane, this is a great piece. Thank you for writing it.
Last year, one of my former students returned to visit me at school and tell me he is pursuing an education in underwater welding. We talked about the “college compulsion” of CCSS. I told him that proponents of CCSS would not count his ambition as
“success” but I do. I told him how proud I was of him and how society needs underwater welders and most don’t even know it.
I’d be surprised if Joel Klein, David Coleman, or Arne Duncan could do underwater welding. It bothers me how working with one’s hands is looked down on in our society, yet it is important, meaningful work, which requires a great deal of “critical thinking.”
There is a wonderful book by Matthew Crawford called _Shop Class as Soulcraft_. The author had a Ph.D. In sociology and worked at a DC think tank (the kind where the benefactors expect you to come up with support for their agenda). He quit and opened a motorcycle repair shop instead.
And they make WAY more money than I do as a teacher. I guess I’m a loser. Of course, wait a minute, I went to college. Let’s see, an Associates, Bachelor’s, Master’s, and a Doctorate.
I’m not sure what I really am at all.
My husband is a carpenter by trade and owned a construction company. He made more money in a week than I earned in a month. He has a high school diploma. I have a Masters degree. I grew up in a small town of boat builders, welders, and farmers. After high school we all had options. Some of my friends went to trade school, while others went straight to work. A few of us went to college. We all have jobs now and are successful and happy. I think we were much better prepared to make real choices about our futures back in the late 70s and early 80s. Nothing “Common” about our education. It was diverse and interesting, and filled with the arts, literature, science, math (business math, accounting, financial math, advanced math, geometry, etc.), carpentry, welding, music, foreign languages… Learning was both fun an relevant. Ah! The good ole days!
Great piece, Diane.
It is un utter failure and hypocritical of a society to emphasize how critical higher education is in its “college and career readiness” fervor, yet not create systemic ways to make college truly affordable for those who want to attend.
In the realm of education, I almost cannot think of a bigger contradiction.
How horrible that our young adults have to deeply think twice about going to college because its cost is now equal to buying a home or at least is the down payment.
How seriously we all need a youth movement to fight for the future generations of the middle class!
College cost should not be a factor, as it is not in so many other modern countries.
Our youth are torn! Take a look, and for those of you who are organized to fight against the costs of higher education, feel free to lift the image and incorporate into your own literature.
http://thetruthoneducationreform.blogspot.com/2012/12/blog-post_8962.html
I personally am outraged by our ersatz democracy…..
AGREE!! Many students I have had didnt go to college – some are very successful contractors, electricians, and plumbers! College is not for everyone and because we live in a free country it is everyone’s right to not go. My son wants to be a construction worker and he may not go to college. We knew what you meant Dr. Ravitch. Journalistic hacks like Cunningham and political hacks dont get it – that is whay they are trying to destroy public education. They dont speak the truth but you do! The dont get it but YOU DO!
No, they get it; they are just feigning misunderstanding in order to spew thin, rhetorical nincompoopery.
Alan: yes, this is rhetorical, tactical game the deformers learned from the radical right. Take the views and causes of progressives and accuse them of being opposed to those things. Find some tiny opening to make it sound like a progressive has come out against what you know perfectly well s/he supports. Make yourself (the corporate shill, the life-long reactionary or conservative) sound like what not long ago you’d have called a “bleeding-heart liberal.”
It’s a sick game. People with no knowledge of history are liable to fall for it. Those of us who weren’t born yesterday? Not so much. Particularly if we’ve got a track record working for progressive causes that goes back to, say, 1963 or so.
I know Diane, that you’ve gone through movement in your political views, particularly regarding education. For what it’s worth, my perception has been that blogging with Deb Meier and fact-checking, among other things, played a key role in that process. But there’s more to it than that. You have to have a fundamental honesty, and great intellectual courage, to have done what you have in the last 5 years or so. It’s admirable, to say the least, because you’ve had to do it more publicly than a lot of folks would have. And it’s cost you, too.
Hearing some who are playing on the wrong side of history attack you in such unscrupulous ways is actually intriguing. It shows just how badly you’ve hurt their cause. Since they can’t find facts to support their attacks, they just make it up as they go along. And today’s attack fooled just about no one.
Keep up the yeoman service in the name of public education and democracy.
Gates and Zuckerberg are college dropouts.
That fact alone makes me want to prohibit dropping out of college by law – god knows we don’t need any more of them!
70% of the jobs available today are low wage jobs. It is not like there will be millions of good jobs for all these college graduates that will magically appear. Perhaps the common core tests can say who goes to college. This seems to be the point. The top 25%-30% should plan on college and the rest should find some other path. This can be a “reality check” for parents. Not all kids are equally intelligent, etc. Give me a break! Why do you need a college degree to work at Walmart or McDonalds? Also, as Dr. Ravitch points out, there is nothing wrong with being a plumber, electrician, roofer, etc. We need to go back to having trade schools for those kids who enjoy working with their hands, etc. It’s cruel to tell all kids that they have to be an “intellectual” and go to college, even if they aren’t capable of doing so. It is as ridiculous as telling all kids that they have to play a division 1 level sport, or they are failures. Unrealistic! Crazy!
My brother, an engineer, recently was laid off because of the sequester. The contractor he was working for lost the contract because there’s no money. He’s in a STEM career and he doesn’t have a job. And yet everyone is always talking about STEM, STEM, STEM.
Glut the labor market so that STEM jobs pay a dollar a day.
That’s the plan!
Do you have any evidence whatsoever to support your assertion? Do you have any idea what it takes to get an H1-B visa for someone to work in the US? Do you know the % of college STEM graduates in the US compared to our key global competitors?
Do you?
Linda:
For the sake of providing evidence here are the most recent data from OECD
Science and Engineering as % of all first degrees
China (2007) 47.1
Korea 36.9
Germany 27.2
France 25.7
Mexico 25.2
Russian Federation 24.5
Japan 24.1
United Kingdom 22.5
United States 14.7
Figure 5.2.:
See http://www.oecd.org/edu/eag2008
For me these numbers are pretty scary.
As for H1B visas, I had to sign off on them at my company. I know the process well.
Who pays for all of these students to attend and earn STEM degrees in these other countries? We are going in the opposite direction. We expect something for less. Conclusion: import low cost labor in any field possible. By the way, have these %’s changed much in the last 20 to 40 years? I remember seeing that Russia had a huge number of STEM graduates compared to us back in the 80’s when Reagan was bashing our school system. Remember, A Nation at Risk was a call to change. By the way, a few years later when our politicians for once did something for our common good, we had the greatest productivity in history. Thanks to George Bush, Bill Clinton, and others like Newt Gingrich and Al Gore we passed sensible laws that paved the way for growth and progress for all, not the 1%. America is heading in the wrong direction when we want
one size fits all national curriculum and therein national goals. We need to do more of what we know works. Being the most creative, innovative, and industrious people in the world.
Mark:
The issue is the % of degrees in Science and Engineering, so the cost question is of marginal significance. You get some interesting comparisons when you look at the % of Asian American receiving first degrees who major in STEM.
In the 80s I was directly involved in the analysis of this type of data. To the best of my recollection these numbers are pretty comparable – though my attention was more on Japan at the time.
The H1-B visa process does not allow you to import STEM workers at lower than salaries set by the Department of Labor. As I have said, I know since I had to sign off on some of these hires.
The purposes of inappropriate curriculum and tests are two-fold: one, it makes teachers look like they aren’t doing their jobs when the majority of students invariably fail, and two, it’s a way to screen kids out of higher education (higher education, in the neolibs’ world , means high school) to track them into low wage employment in order to compete with China and India.
Being smart does not necessarily lead to success in college. I know several brilliant drop outs. Being motivated is what matters more.
My younger daughter had central auditory processing problems, but was determined to go to college. She received her BA in Psychology at SUNY College in Buffalo (it took 5 years). She did fail a few courses, but she learned how to do well in school by the time she graduated. We are very proud of her.
My point is that the child has to really want the degree and be willing to put in the extra work. (Of course, my daughter had the advantage of 2 parents who have various college degrees, are teachers, and were willing to guide & help her when she was struggling.)
Well, we have an 18 year old high school senior and a 15 year old high school freshman (and a 9 year old 3rd grader, but we digress!), and the main concern about college is indeed the expense.
Our genuinely wonderful Fort Wayne Community Schools offers an array of dual-credit courses for high school students, wherein $150 gains admission to a dual-credit course (calculus, for example, amongst other courses), and this will definitely help.
But Indiana and our anti-public education former governor, not-my-man-Mitch Daniels, got a golden parachute out of the governor’s mansion and into the executive suite at our land-grant university, Purdue(!!!). So he hacks and whacks away at public support for state colleges.
The irony is manifold, and might be funny, someday, but is merely vexing right now
Anyway, I only ever attended a technical school after high school, and got an associates degree in electronics…an education that I ultimately never used at all.
But the guy who hired me into the job that I’ve had for the past 27 years graduated from a similar technical institute, and so to that extent I can attest that my 2 year post secondary education DID help me!
But beyond that, enjoying reading and learning (especially history, which is a very fluid and complex thing, rightly understood) has always served me well, and this above all else is what I try and impress upon our young folks, as they proceed toward independence
“So to those who want a higher rate of college attendance and participation, I say “demand tuition-free colleges, open to all.”
Great point.
I live in Fort Wayne’s district. One of the most brilliant young males in this city, never went to college. Instead he skipped college, developed a start-up and now works for Peter Theil. He saw that the test didn’t teach him the real world experience needed in life.
And, many of his mentors (the owner of Pizza Hut and the owner of Sweetwater Sound) did not go to college.
Alan Shartok on WAMC in Albany NY says we should have colleges without tuition so more people could afford it….. I agree with him… I prefer him to the Boson stations that I normally get.
Great thing about working at a skilled trade like plumbing and mechanics is that your job can never be outsourced.
Not yet. Eventually robots will do those jobs too.
It should not be our goal to produce goods and services using as much labor as possible.
TE:
I cannot make up my mind whether Ron is being facetious or not. His comments are too detached from reality to be serious.
“Who should go to college? Everyone who wants to.” Absolutely! Children, especially very young children should not worry about that. School is about the joy of learning, engagement and growing. Little kids should not be worrying whether or not they are on track for college or career readiness and either should parents. I hope children have the power to choose based on whatever they are passionate about. Right now I have a son who wants to be a lawyer because he likes to argue and solve problems. Another son who wants to be save the world and help people in some capacity. When I asked my youngest what he wanted to be when he grows up he said, taller so he can ride roller coasters…. Let them dream. It should not be dictated based on scores or a worry for the young ones. Parents and educators help guide and give kids tools to help them learn. The result will be they will have the power to make the best decision to lead their lives.
My university used to admit any state resident with a high school diploma. They found this unworkable as the criteria for graduating from high school changed.
TE:
Do you have the attrition rates and degree completion rates for your State schools? The ones for Massachusetts are extremely depressing. Such an enormous waste of time and resources.
Retention is around 80%, 6 year graduation rate in the mid 60%. About average given our relatively low admission standards (automatic admission for in state students who achieve a “C” average in 4 English classes, 3 science classes, 3 math classes, and 3 social science classes. If the student does not have a “C” average in those classes they will also be automatically admited with an ACT score of 21 or if their class rank is in the top third of their graduating class)
TE:
Those are not unreasonable numbers. Is the 80% a first year retention number? How much variance is there among institutions. In Mass 6 year graduation rate at the Flag Ship UMass Amherst is 65% while at UMass Boston it is 38%. Average % of students returning for their second year – I assume your retention rate – is 75%. But again there is a huge variation among institutions.
The 8 year metric for this analysis plus the delays in reporting mean that these results apply to the cohort who started their degrees in 2002.
The picture for associates degrees is more depressing.
Click to access Massachusetts.pdf
The 80% is first year attrition. The admission standards are uniform across four year state institution, the 80% is just for the state flagship.
There is another way of viewing college attrition. Those who do drop out, either pushed or volunteer, may do so for a host of reasons, but i would hazard a guess that at least a majority recognize at some level that college was not a good choice at that moment in time. Better sooner than later. Or as the expression goes, better to try, then not try at all. Sometimes a student surprises us and sometimes disappoints, but any case it is a lesson learned.
My university is in the process of trying to figure out why these folks leave and where they go. I agree that in general the sooner the better for students that figure out college is not for them right now, but for the sake of their pocket book and the hardworking taxpayers in my state it would be best if they could figure it out before they started attending.
te:
Interesting. You got me thinking. In my former life I would have recommended an approach like the following:
Identify a random sample of 30 students who dropped out. You can narrow the sample to focus on the groups were the retention issue is most severe.
Identify another sample of 30 students who stayed and who roughly match the leavers.
Ask these 60 students to identify a friend who they thought could have gone to college but decided no to.
Then you carefully interview all 120 as to how they recall they went about making the decision to go to college and, for 60 of them, how they decided to leave or continue.
We used a variant of Ferguson’s Critical Incident Interviewing technique. Roger Shank’s Tell Me A Story approach will work as would any protocol designed to model expert decisions.
You could use a survey as well if folks have a good idea of the key process features and decision criteria.
Given the size of the issue, it would certainly justify the R&D investment.
P.S. I used a similar approach to pinpoint the factors driving turnover amongst Software Engineers at a major electronics company and high potential women at an oil company.
.
The results could be quite interesting. I am quite intrigued by the approach Bernie1815 suggests, especially including the sample of those who elected not to go to college.
In an ideal world, it would be wonderful if a student could say no to college (at the present time) and not feel guilty or inadequate or have later regrets. How does an 18 year old really know that going to college will be a good decision, setting aside the financial hurdles, and for some how do they know without trying. i have seen enough students, many ill-prepared, blossom and thrive, sometimes after a most painful first year. And i applaud the older student, with a better sense of self, decides now is the time for college. I have also seen too many kids discouraged about attending college who, in my opinion, would thrive – and some did despite the pessimissm.
Not exactly comparable, but I entered a doctoral program in mathematics, discovered I liked being a teaching assistant far more than contemplating the essense of zero. I grew up to serve as a superintendent of an urban school system, best job ever.
Corkie:
I am not sure there are any solutions that do not have significant drawbacks. For example, in the UK there used to be the tradition of a gap year. Students after being accepted would spend the following year gaining life experiences by working and/or travelling on the theory that they would be more mature and focused when they finally took up their places. It certainly made for a more interesting student body. It seems to me that it is a low cost option that might increase the first year retention rate. I would not, however, recommend a gap year for certain majors like Math. It is too damn hard already.
I have nothing but applause for your words here, Dr. Ravitch.
The current folly of preparing everyone for a four year college experience is just that a folly. Significant numbers of students will not graduate from H.S. and of the number that do graduate many will not go to college. Those who do enter college will need 5 or 6 years to complete course work for a degree and be thousands of dollars in debt. Imagine how many students we would keep in H.S. if the trades and/or industrial arts were offered? This one path fits all is denying … cheating so many of our students of an education they want, in which they would do well and would lead to employment. So is college for everyone? I think our students have answered that question quite clearly and the answer is NO!!
To add to your excellent post, there are so many other barriers behind a yes-no decision to attend college .
For example, iIn my part of the world, too many Latino students are told to not consider college, that they are not good enough. The bar of expectations is set quite low. There are still fathers who believe college is not a good choice for their daughters, a waste of money.
Then there is the dilemma of students asked to make a decision about what they want to do the rest of their life at too early an age. There seem to be even fewer options to explore and experiment. How many are ready to make that decision at 13 or 18 or 22. How often is student told tuition (and room and board) dollars should be spent on something practical.
Free tuition would be a great first step to eliminating some of the barriers and maybe as a result some attitudes could be changed. However, sadly, on the current path, the decision to attend college is fast becoming an absolute for a select few.
Yep. I have a 15 year old and a 12 year old. My husband and I are both teachers and are struggling financially. I don’t think we will be able to afford college for either of them. I am a 4th generation college graduate, and I think that will end with me. Tuition is going up so fast that there is no way to afford it, particularly for my oldest, who has a learning disability and has struggling grades. He will therefore not qualify for any scholarships and we can’t afford the tuition. He really wants to go to college, and I don’t have the heart to tell him that it won’t happen.
I am not sure that free tuition would be the best idea. Students need to have a reason to attend college. Having to pay at least a little would help them think about it.
Dude! What happened to your normal avatar? Anyway, some cost is fine, I guess, but the costs these days are completely ridiculous. It’s pricing a lot of people out of the ability to go. A person can’t even work and go to school as well–too expensive.
In the debate over free tuition, one should not forget all the ancilliary costs to attend college. even if one is lucky enough to live somewhat near a college, there is the cost of commuting, e.g. car ownership and fuel, and, the outrageous prices for books, student fees and for those who can not commute, of course, room and board. The decision to attend still requires a substantial investment and commitment.
Not everyone who wants to go to college is encouraged to, and many receive strong messages that they are not college material. I know many high school students who cannot schedule appointments with their guidance counselors, because the counselors are too busy placing the “top” students. I think not only of racial minorities who often fall into this category but in our country’s history, I also think of the many women who were not encouraged to even consider college as an option. Bernice Sandler, a feminist who was instrumental in creating Title IX (sex discrimination) spoke last year at Meredith College and described how women she knew who had PhDs were give appointments as secretaries while their husbands were given faculty positions. She gave countless examples of the structures that kept women out of higher education, or if they somehow managed to get in, faced even greater workplace obstacles. I think we need much more dialogue on making college accessible to everyone not just financially or academically but also psychologically. This means creating a “culture of possibility” as Gandara speaks of in referring to what Latino families do for their children through aspirational capital, so that we make it easy for even the most challenged educator, counselor or administrator to envision all of his/her students continueing their learning in a college setting. We need to do this in tandem with creating the structures that facilitate a clear pathways to college.
I believe we should try a small experiment in maybe a few counties or a state where we pay for public school attendance up to say 16 and then if a student wants to try some form of work or apprenticeship, we should let them, but in the meantime, the state would set aside the money normally used to complete the student’s high school education so if/when the student wants/needs to go back to school, there will be money waiting for them to pay for it. They may realize they need specialized training to improve their skills or they may decide to switch careers or they may just want to become more informed citizens or whatever. The point is that the money was set aside so this could happen at any time. The money would have been spent on someone who may not have been ready to learn when they were 17 and did not see a reason for taking a math or science course at the time, but later realized the need to take say a computer class or science class to help them in pursuit of some goal they set for themselves.
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
Very interesting and it all rings true.
My own experiences which support your comments:
A teacher in one of the Buffalo Public Schools lower performing high schools was not getting good results from her students on the Regents exam and was asked to transfer. Forced transfers get first choice in selecting an open position, so she went to a higher performing school. Low and behold, her passing rate on the Regents skyrocketed. Amazing how quickly her teaching improved.
One additional point:
It has been my experience that the amount of parent participation in the education process of their children has a direct impact on how well their children do in school. At open houses in the city, it is not uncommon to have the parents of high achieving students attend, while those parents who the teachers most need to see (because their children are not doing well) never attend. A good open house has a third of the parents participate. The teachers of special ed classes are lucky if anyone shows up. In suburban schools, each grade has to have a separate night because the parents and even grandparents attend and there are only so many parking spots.
Schools with strong PTAs are also an indication of a higher achieving school. In Buffalo, some schools even offered payment (equal to the minimum wage of the time spent) to parents who attended and still got small turnouts.
Poverty has repercussions which are unimaginable to the middle class and above.
Diane….I love you. Simply stated and totally on point!
When I read the original article by the individual that name dropped being friends with Arne, I new you were misquoted. That’s the game today. There are many successful people who did not attend college etc. No names mentioned. Clearly a few of them do not inderstand education but they choose to meddle in it. College success is great but it is one of the variable excuses being used for reform. We never know who should or should not attend college. Test scores most certainly do not. When I was in high school I was focused on music and less on grades and I grew up without my father in a time when it wasn’t acceptable. During my senior year my guidance counselor told me “when you graduate, get a job at the plant, don’t go to college, you won’t be successful”. She is the only person in this world that I now expect to call me Dr. I didn’t need to do well on a standardized test to be successful. I needed a mother who supported and loved me and teachers that inspired me. Tests do not determine success. Tests do not motivate nor inspire individuals. People do. Dr. Ravitch, keep up the excellent work. You are inspiring.
I have a very real problem with telling all students they must go to college, that the price is extraordinarily high, and that the burden of debt cannot be shrugged off even in bankruptcy.
We are asking students at 18, to make the biggest purchase of their life usually second to a house, though not always, with no way to back out of it, and usually little idea of what they want to do with a college education at that point.
I agree, free basic college to anyone who wants to attain it.
The way it’s structured now, higher education is a piggy bank with the most solid debt around and preys on the most vulnerable ignorant people who usually have the least financial experience we could ask of anyone. They make these large loans with the collateral being the students’ future earnings – regardless of what those earnings are.
I’m afraid that the call for college for anyone isn’t predicated on the best interests of our students or our economy – it’s based on those who own the debt and profit ever more both by making the loans and by collecting endless penalties if a person walks out of college and doesn’t get one of those dwindling high professional jobs that makes paying off the debt possible.
M
Your two sentences seem to contain a fundamental contradiction:
We are asking students at 18, to make the biggest purchase of their life usually second to a house, though not always, with no way to back out of it, and usually little idea of what they want to do with a college education at that point.
I agree, free basic college to anyone who wants to attain it.
Can you explain?
As for
“…the call for college for anyone …(is)…based on those who own the debt and profit ever more both by making the loans and by collecting endless penalties if a person walks out of college and doesn’t get one of those dwindling high professional jobs that makes paying off the debt possible.
This condescendingly treats students and their parents as mindless dupes. It also shows a complete lack of understanding of how bank lending works. How exactly does a bank cover the costs when the student 3 year cohort default rate averages 13.4%?
See http://www2.ed.gov/offices/OSFAP/defaultmanagement/cdr.html
P.S. My youngest son is attending Community College and paying his own way by working 40 hours a week in a $15 per hour job. 2As and a B last semester. He is carrying zero debt and is determined not to borrow.
A) College should be reachable for students that want it, without forcing them to commit to a life changing debt – at least for initial entry. Once they have an idea of what they want to do and the rigors of college (as most that will drop out, drop out within 2 years), then if they choose to finish a bachelors (and have a minimum of an associates available) then it’s their educated choice.
B) I can’t tell you how many of my students have missing/absent parental figures, many who are first generation college students, and the ones delivering the messages about colleges are not those closest to them. Financial education has been practically removed from our curriculums.
Many are acting blind. Some parents believe the advertising that college will necessarily mean a good job and a good life – that isn’t reality for many but they push their children into it because they believe it – and students aren’t necessarily in a position to say “no”.
The bank covers the costs because the government insures the majority of college loans. Sure there are some private loans and those can be discharged in a worst case scenario in bankruptcy. Government loans though, command much lower insurance rates because they’re also almost impossible to get rid of – ever.
What you linked says that the default rate isn’t extraordinarily high – but I’d say approaching 15% isn’t a small number of defaults either – particularly considering it takes 3 years to be considered in default.
Many expect that rate to grow unless the economy improves with substantially better jobs.
The government insures these loans because otherwise college would be inaccessible because there’s literally no collateral backstopping them – so the loans if they were made, would be at high rates, and banks might not be in a position to delay repayment till after students leave their college program.
On one hand, it makes college accessible to many who otherwise wouldn’t be able to get those loans. On the other hand, it creates a bubble because colleges can continue raising prices, loans will continually be made and guaranteed, and the students don’t realize what they owe many times till after they graduate – many think they’ll just get a job and the degree will pay for itself.
My friends in law school who took out $200k loans to pay for it are learning the high paying jobs they were promised simply do not exist and they owe a debt each month equivalent to their rent – and they were educated with parents that went to college.
@M,
In state tuition at my university runs a little less than $10,000 a year and there are discounts based on academic performance (national merit scholars for example, pay no tuition for four years). The majority of the graduating seniors have no student debt and the average amount of debt for students who do have debt is less than the average car loan,
M:
Thanks for responding in a courteous and constructive fashion.
My apologies that this is out of order it is hard to reply to a comment when the thread gets long.
I see no reason why students going to college should be acting blind, though I do not doubt that many do. Pursuing Higher Ed is a discretionary choice. I would support any move to transfer funds from Higher Ed to Elementary and Secondary Ed.
It seems to me that the decision of whether to go to college, which major to select, the risks and true costs of borrowing for college are topics that every HS junior (and their parents) should cover. Whether or not it is in the curriculum is more or less beside the point. I see no reason whatsoever why I and other tax payers should underwrite this choice in general. For highly capable and motivated students who are intent on majors that have immediate social value, e.g., teaching and nursing, and where career earnings in the field will be modest I certainly would fund performance based scholarships. I see no problem providing scholarships for high performing Community College students to 4-year schools and Universities for selected majors. (This more or less happens in Massachusetts now). For the rest…tough choices have to be made. In short, 12 years of tax payer funded education is enough.
If your friends were actually promised high paying jobs by their Law School, then your friends should use their legal education to sue the school. If there was no such promise then “caveat emptor”. Going to college and graduate school is a significant financial decision and should be approached as such. The costs in loans and lost earnings alone are significant and would be students need to think hard about the decision and do the math to see whether it makes sense for them. IMHO, too many HS school students and their parents see it as some kind of right of passage and a consumption good rather than what it actually is, an investment good. If you spend money on a beach vacation and it rains, you do not get your money back.
Your post is spot on and what you said in the article made perfectly good sense to me.
And thank heavens for the auto mechanics, plumbers, hair stylists, etc.! I can’t do the jobs they do despite my having gone to college!
Dianerev:
I totally agree that designing a core curriculum around readiness for college is too silly for words. But I think the notion of free tertiary level education for everyone who wants it has little merit. A simple look at the miserable graduation rates at essentially open entry colleges in Massachusetts suggests that this is a total misallocation of resources.
Why don’t we just call a spade a spade? The idea that everyone needs to go to college because “today’s jobs are so high-tech” is crap. Many kids today, years after a bachelor’s (even in a tech field) are working part-time or catch-as-catch-can, for a wage that won’t support a 2-career family for another decade; they’re still on their parents’ insurance & praying that Obamacare survives legislative incursions.
Over the last 20 yrs many kids who showed promise in hands-on fields were dubbed ADD & shunted into LD/ remedial programs designed to convert them to academia. Had they had that additional four years hands-on in h.s.– which today could include computers & internships at local mfg facilities– they would be on the road to providing the sort of labor force needed by today’s hi-tech mfrs.
Sure, we’ve been in an economic slump causing a dearth of mfg jobs. But we have at least one entire generation missing from the trades: during that slump we had a housing boom which had to be staffed with many low-quality people contributing to inflated prices and extended schedules. And anyone trying to maintain their house today knows they must seek the rare experienced tradesman buttressed by multiple poorly-paid immigrants, & they can expect s long wait.
Vocational education should never have been eliminated from public high school. The rare & lucky live in a community that has county Vo-Tech or BOCES; many adept at hands-on work have little chance at a union apprenticeship, so if they weren’t raised in a family of tradesmen they are SOL.
Once upon a time, the City University of New York was free to all high school graduates. That ended in 1976 amidst a fiscal crisis. I was the in the last class to graduate at that time. I went to Queens College for a small fee of less than $100 plus the cost of books. My father was a postal employee who made, at that time, $14,000 a year and would not have been able to afford the cost of a university education. I know I am lucky to have been given such a gift. That gift allowed many New York working class kids, at that time, to become professionals. Yes, there were many kids at that time who did not make it, but at least it gave them a chance without a $50,000 price tag to find out.
Interestingly, about seven years ago, I was part of a new teacher orientation day for the DOE. A high NYCDOE administrator spoke to the neophytes. He said the goal of was to have every child get a high school diploma and go to a four year college by 2014. One of my co-facilitators, during a question and answer period, asked this administrator how can we expect students who a profoundly retarded to go to college? He then said to this person that she had low expectations. He then said in complete seriousness that a good teacher can turn such a disabled student into a gifted student. I then said something under my breath that I would not write in this blog. By the way, this person has an even higher position in the DOE and is very well known.
Finally, one of my colleagues has five adult children. Four became professionals, but one had many learning challenges. Their neighbor who was a plumber gave him a summer job in his business to help out. The boy found his niche and is today a plumber. By the way, one of his brothers is a doctor, but it is the plumber who drives around in a Porsche and has a bigger house.
On tuition to City University of New York: This came about because the no tuition policy precluded eligibility for Pell grants.The tuition rate was set largely to equal what a low income student would receive in a Pell grant, essentially substituting federal funds for City funds. Unfortunately the orginal premise was quickly forgotten.
In fact, nobody should go to college–universities are out of control, and they no longer teach anything substantive. I went in thinking I’d get 2 Ph.D.s and call it a day–well within my capabilities. I left undergrad with a degree wondering why I’d even bothered.
Wonderful article. So true. My oldest son went through an ROP program in high school that led to the job he now has. The ROP program is, of course, long gone. We need more genuine paths to technical, hands-on jobs. Too many kids with these interests end up in phony for profit “colleges” with a bunch of debt and no skills or job.
My son-in-law lost both his parents before he graduated high school. No college, but he is a self taught computer programmer in high demand earning over $70,000 a year with the potential to earn 6 figures. He just turned 30.
My son has some learning disabilities, got a GED and a job at an upscale restaurant. He wanted to attend culinary school at the local community college but needed to pass the composition class in order to participate in the program. Instead he has been learning as he goes at his job. They love him there because he works hard and prepares good food. They’ve trained him to run the restaurant when the head chef has a day off. He doesn’t make a ton of money, but he has reason to feel proud of his accomplishments. Our education system did not meet his needs since he learns by doing and not by reading and writing. How many others are failing, not due to a lack of intelligence, but because of the way teachers are forced to teach.
[…] Ravitch, by the way, has addressed how her quote is misleading in the NYT article, clarifying her point at her blog: […]
Since my son was 2 years old (really), he maintained that he wanted to be “a jazz singer” when he grew up. We laughed, but at the same time we bought him his first guitar and provided him with music lessons. Throughout middle and high school, he was constantly in trouble, because all he wanted to do, was play his guitar. He was extremely intelligent and could reason like a philosopher, and as unfocused as he was on traditional schoolwork, he still aced Regent’s exams and graduated. We thought he should give college a try, and he obliged us, but after one semester, he told us “I’m tired of waiting for my life to begin,” and dropped out. He was finally able to do what he wanted to do. For a while, he concentrated on playing in the states, but in 2005, he had to get away (from George W. Bush), and went to Europe. He’s been living there, making a living as a musician, if not exactly a jazz singer. He’s been all over Europe, to Africa twice, and (against my wishes) to Dubai twice as well. On an IQ test, he was definitely college material, but it wasn’t for him. For his brother and sisters, yes, but not for Joe. In one of his songs he writes about finding a Bob Marley tape on a school bus in 4th grade and he says ” I learned more from that tape than I did for all of my subsequent education.” College is not for everyone.
Cut funding for public universities, raising tuition, room, board and fees as a result, and requiring students to take on immense amounts of debt.
Embed the commercial banks in the student loan process, whereby they borrow money from the Federal Reserve Bank at 0% interest, and then loan it to students at a much higher markup, virtually risk free, since the loans are federally guaranteed.
Bring in the investment banks to securitize the student loan pool, cutting them in on the skim, so that you now have powerful institutional interests benefitting from the continuation of the process.
Make student loan debt virtually impossible to discharge in bankruptcy, (unlike, say, pension obligations to retired public workers in Detroit).
Force K-12 teachers to obey a “Get ALL your students into college or you’ll be eating cat food” regimen.
Cui Bono?
Brilliant
I wouldn’t necessarily connect the last point to the prior ones (though I’m sure for some that support “everyone must go to college” that it may be that they have their oars in both the K-12 sector and the College sector).
The never-ending pool of people without financial educations taking out risky 5-6 figure loans that are federally guaranteed every year and that they feel they have to take (because of a lack of cheaper affordable colleges and cuts to state funding – shifting the burden more to students), and the message delivered is “get a college degree or you will be poor forever” would be sufficient I’d think.
Even if they drop out after 2 years, they’re now in at least a 15-20k hole with no better job prospects.
Read this article from Secretary Duncan’s
Chief-of-staff, Joanne Weiss (and fellow
office-mate of Ravitch-detractor
Mr. Cunningham):
http://blogs.hbr.org/innovations-in-education/2011/03/the-innovation-mismatch-smart.html
The comments here of Joanne Weiss,
chief of staff to U.S. Secretary of
Education Arne Duncan, really let
one slip. She wrote in the HARVARD
BUSINESS REVIEW that the Common
Core “radically alters the market …
Previously, these markets operated
on a state-by-state basis, and often on a
district-by-district basis. But the adoption
of common standards and shared
assessments means that education
entrepreneurs will enjoy national markets
where the best products
can be taken to scale.”
Really? Our overall public school
system—both in general and
specific geographic area districts—is
no longer in the public commons?
Not anymore, apparently, because
according to Duncan, Weiss and of course,
Mr. Cunningham, Public education is a
“market”, and individual states/districts
are “markets” where “entrepreneurs”
can get rich, and Arne’s instituting Common
Core to help them do just that.
The best interests of the students?
The best interests of students mean
nothing… it’s all about profiteers getting
rich.
I wish there was a like button. Like!
I’m confused about Jack’s objection to the HBR piece. Full disclosure: this is my first visit to this blog. I saw the Cunningham piece on HuffPost and then came to the Ravitch blog to see if she had a response. I’m a newcomer to this debate. So go easy on me.
After reading a number of articles online and various posts on this blog, it’s apparent to me that there exists a vocal group of people who believe that the charter school movement is driven, at least in material part, by people who want to make money privatizing U.S. public education, i.e., by “profiteers getting rich,” in Jack’s words. That may be, but if it’s so, I don’t think this HBR piece is very strong evidence thereof. The HBR article is about how educational technology product development has historically been stymied by the traditional structure of the public educational system, i.e., that technology decisions were made on a state or district basis, which made it difficult for educational technology products to be adopted on a wide scale, which, in turn, discourages entrepreneurs from developing such products and capital providers from investing in them. The author seems to think that the new Common Core curriculum standards will amerliorate this to some degree and encourage innovation in educational technology. So what?
Don’t get me wrong – this is not an argument in favor of Common Core. I know almost nothing about it. My point is that the possibility or even the likelihood that its adoption could have the happy side effect of encouraging the development of more and/or better educational technology products is really neither here nor there with respect to whether the Common Core is a good idea. It seems to me that Jack has either simply misunderstood the point of the HBR piece or, less charitably, that he is using the fact that an Arne Duncan ally wrote a piece in HBR – a bastion of capitalism, obviously – about this nonessential aspect of the Common Core policy, together with some quotes taken out of context, to suggest that the author, Arne Duncun, et. al, are for whatever reason dedicated to assisting consultants and profiteers, at the expense of students.
I’ll give Jack the benefit of the doubt here, as I’m sure he’s well-meaning, but if he’s going to make the case that education reform is wholly a corrupt. profit-motivated exercise in crony capitalism where “the best interests of the students mean nothing,” as he put it, he should try a little harder.
Dan Healy,
Thanks for visiting the blog. I indirectly responded to Peter Cunningham’s piece here: https://dianeravitch.net/2013/08/18/the-attacks-begin/.
I referenced Paul Thomas’s commentary, in which I deflated Peter’s ridiculous claim that I don’t think minorities should go to college.
Read the blog “Who Should Go to College?” in which I answered, “Whoever wants to,” and if we are serious about making that possible, then there should be free community colleges.
The reference to Common Core as a way to open up the marketplace and nationalize it rankles many people, especially teachers, because they think of children, not markets, and they don’t like to see profit-making enterprises figuring out ways to make a buck from scarce public dollars, dollars that grow scarcer every day.
Keep reading, read some of the archived articles.
Stay around.
Welcome.
Diane
Dan:
Welcome. I am a newbie too. My read of the HBR article is similar to yours in that it is not about profits – though I do not think the article is particularly clearly written nor do I think she demonstrates a real understanding of the barriers to technology that actually exist in education. For example, she mentions spec teams drawn from high performing PS and charters. That is a convenience sample that is genuinely problematic. It is like designing a family sedan by asking only rally and race car drivers. She also displays the optimism of technology folks who seem never to have heard of the NHS fiasco.
You make the point about scale far more succinctly.
Please hang around and comment further. I sometimes feel quite alone.