I know that it is hard to feel hopeful when the corporate reformers have so much money and are in control at the top of both parties.
But never lose hope.
The fact is that corporate reform policies have failed wherever they are applied.
Here is something from Fred Smith, a testing expert who now advises the anti-testing group Change-the-Stakes:
Hold fast to dreams
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams
For when dreams go
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
And this too has stayed with me, ever since I saw it.
Realists vs. Idealists
Call the “reformers” profiteers, one-percenters, privatizers, corporatists, powers-that-be, smart-money guys–call them realists. And call us parents, teachers, dreamers, organizers–yes, call us idealists. But don’t call us losers. Because in the end we’re going to win.
~fred
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I believe the reformers will loose, but I fear the biggest loosers will be our children. They’re the pawns in this chess game.
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Perhaps more like the board itself being trampled upon by the pawns (teachers who go along to get along) and kings and queens alike (do I need to name names for those two?)
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You’re absolutely right. America’s children are the ones who are at the front lines of the battle between reformers and those who understand the way education should work. The sooner the reformers lose, the better. But I’m not hopeful that it will be anytime soon.
Book Lust
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The other educational emails I receive are all brightly written promises of how company X has produced materials aligning with the Common Core that will solve all your problems, and how school district Y is ready to implement CCSS in 2013-2014 using systems purchased from vendor Z.
Given the inherent preference of American parents for choice, or what looks like choice, the anti-reform voice seems to be caught between a rock (the school districts buying into CCSS) and a hard place (the charters, both non-profit and for-profit, which state laws are permitting which are NOT buying into CCSS).
It’s the federal money that is tipping the scale. Rejecting the CCSS is a non-paying proposition for state departments of public instruction. As Deep Throat said, “Follow the money.” Diane is a voice crying in the wilderness, but there will come no god to save us. While we are worried about Syria, we will be crushed by the juggernaut of Reform.
I am Jeremiah not John.
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Here’s a statement from Kabo Yang, a first generation college graduate, and a member of our staff about one of Minnesota’s school choice programs. This allows 10-12th grade high school students to take courses on college campuses. The program has encouraged many high schools to create new collaborative courses with colleges taught in their high schools, as well as new AP and IB courses.
Many families and educators see this program, established in 1985 as an expansion of opportunity. For some it’s “corporate reform” because it was backed by a broad coalition of groups, from war on poverty agencies to the Mn PTA to corporations. It’s also a form of school choice. For some that makes it “corporate.” For many of us, well designed school choice programs are expansion of opportunity…one of the central principles of this country.
6/26/2013
By Kabo Yang
Center for School Change
Though he had not heard of the term “dual credit” until he began his career in the education field, Meng Her enrolled in dual credit courses in high school and had earned over 20 college credits by the time he graduated from St. Paul’s Johnson High School. This allowed him to take on a second major in his fourth year in college after completing his first major only in three years!
Meng began by taking pre-AP courses in ninth and tenth grade, preparing him for Advanced Placement (AP) courses as a junior and senior. To further ensure his preparedness for college, Meng followed some of his relatives’ path and participated in Post Secondary Enrollment Options (PSEO) during his junior year. He enrolled and took college courses on a college campus with a college professor and college students. Despite having to rely on public transportation and a long commute to his class, the experience opened his eyes to college campus life, especially as a first generation college student. Finally, in his senior year, Meng enrolled in College in Schools (CIS), also known as Concurrent Enrollment, courses. These are college level courses offered by the high school at the high school. He enrolled in a CIS leadership course offered through Metropolitan State University where he learned program development and networking skills. Through his CIS writing course at Johnson High School, he had fulfilled the writing requirement when he entered the University of MN-Morris, where Meng ultimately received a Bachelor’s Degree with dual majors in Math and Statistics and recently received a Master’s Degree in Education. He currently is an Admissions Counselor with the University of Minnesota-Morris, guiding other students toward college success.
Meng describes the “power of place” as a key learning through his PSEO experience. In addition to introducing him to college-level academic skills, the placement on a college campus among college students and professors exposed him to a whole new setting. Meng not only credits dual credit coursework to his success in college (he received straight A’s in his first year in college), but also in developing time management skills and strong study habits.
His participation in dual credit continues to impact how Meng views education. He plans to stay in the education field and remain an advocate for increased diversity in higher education institutions. While he highly encourages participation, he also cautions students to be realistic and not enroll in all dual credit courses. It is more important to take fewer courses and receive good grades rather than take many courses with low grades.
By sharing his story and experience, Meng hopes to inform and encourage high school students to take advantage of dual credit courses. These free courses prepare students for college and develop skills to become independent young adults. If you are interested in participating in dual credit courses for yourself or for someone you know, please contact Kabo Yang at the Center for School Change at kabo@centerforschoolchange.org or (651) 645-1000 ext. 169. You can also learn more at http://www.centerforschoolchange.org or http://readysetgo.state.mn.us/RSG/index.html.
This article is available on the Hmong Times website at: http://www.hmongtimes.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=4940&SectionID=31&SubSectionID=&S=1
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“Many families and educators see this program, established in 1985 as an expansion of opportunity. For some it’s “corporate reform” because it was backed by a broad coalition of groups, from war on poverty agencies to the Mn PTA to corporations. It’s also a form of school choice. For some that makes it “corporate.” ‘
You are really stretching, Joe. Your comment is a little disingenuous. You know exactly what people object to when they talk about corporate reform. I see no evidence of top down dictation or profit making schemes that place money making as a priority. You are playing semantic games.
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While it does not seem like expansion of opportunity to you, 2old2tch, it does seem expansion of opportunity to many families.
in this community alone, new district school options have been created for and with families seeking French immersion, American Sign language, Montessori elementary and Spanish immersion. Charter options have been created that include a downtown performing arts school, Chinese immersion, a high school for recording arts, a project based school run that has a number of teachers and parents on its board of directors, and programs that include East African seniors and recent graduates as part of the staff working with students.
Those are only a few examples.
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You need to read my comment again. While it might have been clearer if I had not included the sentence about “expansion of opportunity,” my comment is clearly directed at the definition of school reform and school choice you chose to lay on “some.”
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Who, today, remembers the insane Behaviorism craze that swept U.S. PreK-12 education in the 1970s? Who remembers how almost every state department in the country and almost every school district required that all lesson plans spell out the behavioral objectives that were to be met and that all be PURGED of “mentalese”? Who remembers all those teacher trainings on operant conditioning in the classroom? All the books and workshops on how to turn your classroom into a Skinner Box?
Who remembers all the pundits who were CERTAIN that if we just stopped concerning ourselves with silly, unscientific stuff like WHAT KIDS WERE THINKING AND FEELING, if we simply drank from the magical Behaviorist elixir, then no child would ever, again, be left behind?
Who remembers how CERTAIN the political right was that Behaviorism offered THE GOLDEN KEY to every door of learning, the PHILOSOPHER’S STONE to bring about every sort of educational alchemy?
That oh-so-scientific EDUFAD absolutely DOMINATED U.S. education DECADES AFTER Behaviorism had been dealt death blows by Lashley’s paper on serial behavior and Chomsky’s review of Skinner’s pathetic Verbal Behavior. The pundits and the educrats, the plutocrats and the politicians had been slow to catch onto it–they are slow learners generally–but when they did, they knew that they had found THE WAY. O, the religious fervor of which they spoke of how students were just like those rats in those mazes!!!
The current reforms are likewise pseudo-scientific nonsense–the educational equivalent of alchemy and astrology, phrenology and eugenic cleansing.
I remember with particular delight the psych grad students at Indiana University, where Skinner taught, burning an effigy of that crank and crackpot, that extremist zealot, in front of the Psych Building. (Today, those grad students would doubtless be arrested on terrorism charges, alas.)
Diane, who is right about so many things, is right about this. This current horror, too, will pass. Read her Left Back. She knows a lot about kooky failed education reforms.
But this time, before that happens, before the country regains its senses, a lot more damage will have been done. More than a decade after NCLB, a lot of damage has ALREADY been done. And these kooks who are running this deform show are just getting started. The cost of these crackpot, totalitarian standards-and-testing “reforms” will be very, very high, indeed, I fear, before EVERYONE figures out that he or she was against this all along.
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New technologies have created, today, the perfect storm for edufad reform; that’s why, this time, it’s going to be a LOT worse.
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“The current reforms are likewise pseudo-scientific nonsense–the educational equivalent of alchemy and astrology, phrenology and eugenic cleansing.
Yep! Psychometrics = phrenology = eugenics = blood letting = alchemy = astrology. (thanks for adding to the list, Robert)
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I can think, Duane, of some psychometric instruments that I would dearly love to see developed for diagnostic purposes, ones that could be invaluable. But about this one-size-fits-all summative testing, I couldn’t agree with you more.
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Tests developed to determine mental illness are one thing (and even then one can question the validity), as are tests developed by the teacher to help the student to assess where they are in the learning process. Those tests though should be only one small part of the complete evaluation process. And I contend that diagnosing mental illness is fundamentally different than the teaching and learning process.
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Skinner seems to be back in fashion in some of the PBIS programs. I was well schooled in Skinnerology. Fortunately, I had some subversive professors as well. One professor detailed how he was able to “extinguish” some (operant) behavior manifested by a mental patient only to have it expressed as hives. I guess something must have been going on inside that patient beyond that demonstrated by weird behavior.
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IF the country ever regains its senses.
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There are an array of efforts to improve public schools. Some help, some don’t.
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That’s a deep one, Joe. Can we expect “Water is wet” from you in short order?
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Michael – It’s a brief response to this assertion: “The fact is that corporate reform policies have failed wherever they are applied.”
I have a longer response that is “awaiting moderation.”
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I agree, Joe, that that statement is too broad. Japanese Lesson Study, for example, is very much an application to schools of an idea borrowed from the business world–that of quality circles. By all accounts, it’s been extraordinarily successful and empowering for teachers. Education is the most complex business there is. We need to take our learnings from everywhere. But we also need to be very careful about unintended consequences, about seizing a truth and making ourselves into grotesques because of our overzealous application of it, about treating everything, because we have a hammer, as though it were a nail. This is very much, BTW, what the new “standards” in ELA do.
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Thanks.
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However, I hasten to add that the given the level of the damage being done by these lousy standards and the lousy summative testing attached to them, it’s quite understandable that someone might write that “corporate reform policies have failed wherever they are applied.” And, of course, the truth of that statement depends upon what the extension of corporate reform policies is. There are a great many policies to which that refers that have, indeed, failed wherever they have been applied. And if the intension of the phrase is corporate reform taken as a whole, then again, I think that what was said here is demonstrably so.
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I’d like to consider myself to be a “realist” and not an “idealist”. The differing definitions over time of those words makes it hard to distinguish the two.
Realist to me means looking/viewing/seeing/being the world through a rational, scientific state of mind with scientific meaning more than just analyzing data disquised as numbers (or is that numbers disquised as data-have to think that one out some more).
I take idealist in the Platonic sense of perfect “ideal forms” outside the realm of human thought that can be “discovered”.
Using those definitions I’m a realist.
Now if by Idealist one means seeking a “better/more just” world of human interaction, then I’m also an idealist.
If by realist one means, “hey it’s just the way it is, deal with it” then no I’m not a realist.
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How does one bring a Platonic ideal down to the real world, Duane, if by definition such Idea(l)s are transcendent?
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I’m not sure that a Platonic ideal is necessarily transcendent as it is a creation of a human mind. It is purported to be such but how could one know about “transcendent” if one isn’t and can’t ever be “transcendent”. In other words I don’t agree with Platonic transcendents any more than I believe in a god, devil, big foot, unicorn etc. . . . So I find no need to “bring a Platonic ideal down to the real world”.
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Excellent point. You put your finger on the exact problem of Plato’s argument, how are the Ideas copied down into reality. The human created imagination of a perfect line, let’s say, or triangle, is still the foundation apparently of geometry. We can imagine a point (i.e. a circle with a radius of zero) but we can never find one.
You delight me Duane.
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Thanks for the kind words! And I appreciate reading what you write which to some may seem odd considering perhaps our differing social and political views.
I only write is as I think it.
(Not without a lot of reading in the background-which I wish more people would do and put down the channel changer)
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Did people see the terrible article on Diane Ravitch in the NYTimes this morning? http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/education/loud-voice-fighting-tide-of-new-trend-in-education.html?hpw
The article says Diane sometimes gets emotional, and even used the word “hell”.
I wrote the author a response: “That was NOT a two-sided article on Diane Ravitch. If some think her strident, could you not have referenced the number of teachers now displaced by TFA, or the number of neighborhood schools closed and replaced by charters? The events occurring today have huge impacts; your article mentioned none. And these are not teacher union issues, rather they address the quality and future of public education. Sheesh.”
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The story quotes people who agree and disagree with Diane. And some who agree in part and disagree in part.
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The article doesn’t discuss the issues or the stakes. It puts the disagreements on a personal level, out of context.
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Joe, are you auditioning for the lead in Captain Obvious?
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Michael, I was responding to the following comment: ““That was NOT a two-sided article on Diane Ravitch.”
Actually, I think there are many “sides” on issues in public education, not just two.
For example, some people agree that there should be choices among public schools, but public funds should not go to support choice that includes private and parochial k-12 schools. Some people don’t like the idea of giving families choices across district lines, but are ok with choices within a district. Some people are ok with the idea of some public (district) schools having admissions tests. Others (like me), are not.
That’s just a few examples from one issue.
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I couldn’t get past the caption under the picture without getting annoyed. She “opposes conventional wisdom”? More like she opposes conventional insanity.
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Consider it a backhanded compliment to Diane. The need to attack someone personally comes when you know you can’t defeat them on the argument.
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In my limited experience, personal attacks arrive anyway and are never accompanied by any awareness that the attacker’s position cannot be defended rationally. Something in the prejudices of the attacker is animated by something someone else says and the attacker proceeds to personal destruction without even bothering with considerations of rationality.
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“She calls the current formulas for evaluating teachers ‘bad science.'”
Considering what I call those “formulas” Diane is being nice by calling them “bad science”.
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We’ve had 16 years of “market based” ed reform in Ohio, I’ve had three children through the same public school system, and I cannot point to a single benefit my local public school has gained.
I’m now going to watch as “local teachers evaluated by student test scores” goes in state-wide. It went up on the school website yesterday. I may never know if this harms or benefits my local public school, my youngest is 11 and this latest experiment may take a long time but based on past performance I’ll be surprised if it in any way “improves” our existing public school system.
As we start the school year with 1.6 million a year less in funding due to the state budget that “reformers’ lobbied for and won, I’ll now be paying for a teacher evaluation system that I didn’t ask for and don’t want. I’ll also be paying to upgrade online capacity so my son will be able to take his common core test sitting in front of a screen.
Meanwhile, we have a retired social worker volunteering as the “art lady” and our kids haven’t had a field trip since my daughter was in school, and she’s grown and on her own.
I really, really resent how 5% of charter school chains are driving state and national policy for the 95% of existing public schools. I did not “choose” a chain charter school and I did not consent to having my local public schools turned into an imitation of a chain charter school with these reform experiments.
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“Detroiter
September 11, 2013 at 8:41 am
The article doesn’t discuss the issues or the stakes. It puts the disagreements on a personal level, out of context.”
It’s inaccurate. There’s nothing “new” about this “trend” in reform. It’s more than a decade old, at least. They’ve simply scaled it up and imposed it on the whole country.
Can the reporter point to something “new”? I can’t.
Are we really going to give Arne Duncan credit for inventing Head Start?
I was reading his Twitter feed yesterday, and he’s just discovered that many public schools allow high school students to attend community college for credit while in high school. I live in the middle of nowhere and we’ve been doing this since 2005. I hope he doesn’t think he invented it.
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Simply beautiful! Thank you for the smile! … thank you for the energy!
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Detroiter
September 11, 2013 at 8:41 am
The article doesn’t discuss the issues or the stakes. It puts the disagreements on a personal level, out of context.
I’m also amused that I am on The Left according to the NYTimes. Everyone who disagrees with the last decade of market-based reform is now on The Left.
Wow. I guess that’s true if you define Governor Walker, Governor Jindal and Jeb Bush as The Center. I can’t imagine who is on The Right.
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Diane Ravitch says that those who oppose corporate style “reform” –– the idealists –– are going to win the day. I hope she’s right. But I have very serious doubts.
There is an enormous problem.
We are engaged in the wrong kind(s) of “reform” for mythical reasons. Worse, many (if not most) public school “leaders” – like the ones cited in the Daily Progress article in my comments below – are, to put it bluntly, real tools. They are not leading at all, they’re just recycling the pap.
There are few who will come out and admit that we’re doing some really stupid stuff, much less challenge any of it.
And even worse, some of those “leaders” get appointed to important positions. For example, the superintendent mention in the Progress article was recently appointed to the Virginia State Council for Higher Education by disgraced conservative Republican governor Bob McDonnell.
Think about it.
(1) Why did she get that appointment, from a very conservative governor (who loves vouchers and virtual schools and merit pay)?
And (2) the potential damage she can do in that position.
It sure seems to me that this interconnected goofiness ––– market-based corporate “reform,” Common Core, the College Board and its faulty products, STEM, economic competitiveness –– is something that Diane ought to be emphasizing.
But it seems to me that I only see it presented piecemeal….the bigger picture is missing.
In previous posts I’ve addressed the connections between Common Core,the College Board, and corporate “reform.” In comments below, I address STEM, and economic competitiveness. But they are all interconnected.
And that is seriously problematic.
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Part 1
If you want to see just how goofy public education “leadership” has become, read this piece in the Daily Progress.
http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/former-defense-ceo-stem-focus-needed-in-schools/article_3c8f8984-19c3-11e3-a74f-001a4bcf6878.html
In the article, Norm Augustine is portrayed as some kind of education expert. He’s not. Augustine is one of those who pushes very hard for a corporate-style –– and corporate friendly –– “reform” agenda based on the notion that American “competitiveness” is dependent on “improving” public education. Yet, the dim-bulb brain trust in Albemarle County schools invited Augustine to visit and share his “expertise.” And in turn, Augustine praises the county schools “leadership” for focusing on STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education, calling it vital to the “future of our economy.”
Let’s examine more closely.
As CEO at Martin Marietta, Augustine brokered the merger of that company with Lockheed to produce Lockheed Martin and got taxpayers to subsidize nearly a billion dollars of the merger cost, including tens of millions in bonuses for executives (Augustine netted over $8 million). And then the merged company laid off thousands of workers. The promised efficiencies and cost savings to the government (and taxpayers) have yet to materialize.
Lockheed Martin is is now the largest of the big defense contractors, yet its government contracts are hardly limited to weapons systems. While Lockheed has broadened its services, it is dependent on the government and the taxpayers for its profits. It’s also #1 on the ” ‘contractor misconduct’ database” which tracks contract abuse and misconduct. Meanwhile, while Norm Augustine touts the need for more STEM graduates (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and STEM teachers for public schools, Lockheed is laying off thousands of engineers. Research studies show there is no STEM shortage, but Augustine says (absurdly) that it’s critical to American economic “competitiveness.”
A 2004 RAND study “found no consistent and convincing evidence that the federal government faces current or impending shortages of STEM workers…there is little evidence of such shortages in the past decade or on the horizon.” The RAND study concluded “if the number of STEM positions or their attractiveness is not also increasing” –– and both are not –– then “measures to increase the number of STEM workers may create surpluses, manifested in unemployment and underemployment.”
A 2007 study by Lowell and Salzman found no STEM shortage (see: http://www.urban.org/publications/411562.html ). Indeed, Lowell and Salzman found that “the supply of S&E-qualified graduates is large and ranks among the best internationally. Further, the number of undergraduates completing S&E studies has grown, and the number of S&E graduates remains high by historical standards.” The “education system produces qualified graduates far in excess of demand.”
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Part 2
Lowell and Salzman concluded that “purported labor market shortages for scientists and engineers are anecdotal and also not supported by the available evidence…The assumption that difficulties in hiring is just due to supply can have counterproductive consequences: an increase in supply that leads to high unemployment, lowered wages, and decline in working conditions will have the long-term effect of weakening future supply.” Lowell and Salzman noted that “available evidence indicates an ample supply of students whose preparation and performance has been increasing over the past decades.”
Beryl Lieff Benderly wrote this stunning statement recently in the Columbia Journalism Review (see: http://www.cjr.org/reports/what_scientist_shortage.php?page=all ):
“Leading experts on the STEM workforce, have said for years that the US produces ample numbers of excellent science students. In fact, according to the National Science Board’s authoritative publication Science and Engineering Indicators 2008, the country turns out three times as many STEM degrees as the economy can absorb into jobs related to their majors.”
So why the STEM emphasis by the likes of Bill Gates and Norm Augustine? Benderly continues:
“Simply put, a desire for cheap, skilled labor, within the business world and academia, has fueled assertions—based on flimsy and distorted evidence—that American students lack the interest and ability to pursue careers in science and engineering, and has spurred policies that have flooded the market with foreign STEM workers. This has created a grim reality for the scientific and technical labor force: glutted job markets; few career jobs; low pay, long hours, and dismal job prospects for postdoctoral researchers in university labs; near indentured servitude for holders of temporary work visas.”
Benderly reports that an engineering professor at Rochester Institute of Technology told a Congressional committee last summer this:
“Contrary to some of the discussion here this morning, the STEM job market is mired in a jobs recession…with unemployment rates…two to three times what we would expect at full employment….Loopholes have made it too easy to bring in cheaper foreign workers with ordinary skills…to directly substitute for, rather than complement, American workers. The programs are clearly displacing and denying opportunities to American workers.”
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Part 3
Norm Augustine is a charlatan of the first order, But the county school superintendent thanked him for visiting and sharing his “vision.” And then she reaffirmed “her dedication” to focusing on STEM, which goes under the moniker of “21st-century education.”
As I’ve noted any number of times, the World Economic Forum evaluates and ranks countries on economic competitiveness each year. The U.S. was typically ranked 1st or 2nd each year, but recently has started to slide down; it dropped to 4th last year (2010-11) and to 5th this year (2011-12).
When the U.S. dropped from 2nd to 4th in 2010-11, four factors were cited by the WEF for the decline: (1) weak corporate auditing and reporting standards, (2) weak (poor) corporate ethics, (3) big deficits (brought on by Wall Street’s financial implosion) and (4) unsustainable levels of debt.
More recently, major factors cited by the WEF are a “business community” and business leaders who are “critical toward public and private institutions,” a lack of trust in politicians and the political process with a lack of transparency in policy-making, and “a lack of macroeconomic stability” caused by decades of fiscal deficits, especially deficits and debt accrued over the last decade that “are likely to weigh heavily on the country’s future growth.”
It’s interesting that the WEF cites the top economic competitors –– those ranking higher than the U.S. –– for efficiency, trust, transparency, ethical behavior, and honesty. Corporate “reformers” like Norm Augustine seem to take absolutely no notice.
Apparently, neither do those who “lead” public school divisions.
Few of these “leaders” are “idealists” when it comes to “reform.” And that is a serious problem indeed.
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another invasion here.
will it be done by licensed guidance counselors or military recruiters?
http://rt.com/usa/california-students-web-snoop-699/
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How Orwell’s Ingsoc would have loved to have these tools! Yikes!
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That box score was clearly an Idealist product, and thus self-irony, because Idealists never win any of the innings but claim always to have won the game.
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