I was thrilled to receive this wonderful review by Jonathan Kozol in the Sunday New York Times.
Archives for the month of: September, 2013
Aaron Churchill of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, takes issue with Bill Phillis’s negative view of Ohio charter schools. He says that critics like Phillis compare charter schools to districts instead of to schools.
Fordham is a charter authorizer in a ohio.
Churchill writes:
“Charter school naysayers are quick with their “what’s wrong with” quips, and the criticism is at times deserved. Many of Ohio’s charter schools must be made “righter,” to help more students—especially our neediest kids—succeed in school. But by focusing–gleefully, it would seem–on only low-performing charter schools (and making a poor comparison, to boot), critics are blind to the shining examples of charter schools that provide a great education for students, many of whom come from disadvantaged backgrounds and/or arrive at their school grade levels behind. And worse yet, they ignore the rot in their own backyards.
“Rather than wallowing in the dregs of charter and district schools, wouldn’t our time and energy be better used learning from exemplar schools, quickly rooting out the dismal ones, and pushing for constructive change in K-12 education, so that all Ohio’s kids have the knowledge and skills to face a different world than generations past?”
David Leonhardt of the Néw York Times interviews Arne Duncan, Mitch Daniels, and John Engler on the state of the “reform” movement.
How fitting that Duncan would be paired with two of the very conservative Republican ex-governors, and the three sound alike.
What is interesting to me is that I hear a subtle shift in tone. They are admitting that scores are up and graduation rates are up, but that whatever progress we have made is not good enough. Do I detect a new line of rhetoric? Did someone summarize the first few chapters of “Reign of Error” for them?
Did they skip the chapter about international comparisons?
Jersey Jazzman reports on the annual meeting between State Commissioner Chris Cerf and the New Jersey superintendents. Unlike previous meetings, there were few questions, few signs of life.
Have they given up, JJ wondered. He unites a news story, which says:
“Compared with previous convocations at which tensions were high and questions were plentiful, the more than 300 school leaders gathered yesterday at Jackson Liberty High School appeared to be getting used to the new world order under Cerf and his boss.
Gary McCartney, the South Brunswick superintendent and president of the state’s superintendents group, which hosted the event, said he saw the three years of convocations with Cerf as a period of evolution.
“I think people are beginning to assimilate,” he said. “In the first year, it was kicking and screaming, hoping (the initiatives) would go away. The second was wringing your hands and whining, thinking they would go away. Now you say, I don’t have any more tantrums, I think we’re going to do this.”
JJ points out that any one of the three superintendents in the room knew more about education than Cerf and his Broadie fellows.
He writes:
“The primary function of this blog over the past three years has been to catalog the many sins Christie and Cerf have committed against New Jersey’s public schools, including:
*A failure of state control in Newark, Paterson, Jersey City, and now Camden.
*Cerf’s insistence on bringing unqualified, poorly-trained staff into the NJDOE and the large urban districts.
*A despicable retreat from funding equity in our schools.
*The imposition of an innumerate teacher evaluation system that has never been properly field tested.
*The imposition of bizarre schemes that have never worked, like merit pay.
*The imposition of curricular and testing changes that have never been properly vetted.
*A rampant expansion of privatization that both undermines democratic control of our schools and rewards poor educational and fiscal practices.
*The lowest morale of the NJ teaching corps seen in a generation, precipitated by Christie’s blatant lies to educators about their compensation, his truly reprehensible behavior in public appearances, and his personal hypocrisy regarding his own children’s education.
As JJ says, “They only win when you give up.”
Help is on the way.
I am speaking to the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors on October 17. They will hear you, JJ. They will hear you loud and clear. They will not give up. And they will win, despite the efforts of Cerf and Christie to break their spirit.
This is an interesting first-person account by a young person who felt lucky to be accepted into the super-elite Teach for America and reports on her year in the Atlanta Public Schools.
Two observations. The five week training program drilled into her that children fell behind because of their bad teachers. She was constantly reminded that she would close the achievement gap because she was better than those ordinary–not TFA–teachers.
The other striking impression: her five weeks of training did not prepare her for reality:
“During my training, I taught a group of nine well-behaved third-graders who had failed the state reading test and hoped to make it to fourth grade. Working with three other corps members, which created a generous teacher-student ratio, I had ample time for one-on-one instruction.
“That classroom training was completely unlike the situation I now faced in Atlanta: teaching math and science to two 20-person groups of rotating, difficult fifth-graders—fifth-graders so difficult that multiple substitute teachers would vow never to teach fifth grade at our school again.
“I had few insights or resources to draw on when preteen boys decided recess would be the perfect opportunity to beat each other bloody, or when parents all but accused me of being racist during meetings. Or when a student told me that his habit of doing nothing during class stemmed from his (admittedly sound) logic that “I did the same thing last year and I passed.” The Institute’s training curriculum was far too broad to help me navigate these situations. Because many corps members do not receive their specific teaching assignments until after training has ended, the same training is given to future kindergarten teachers in Atlanta, charter-school teachers in New Orleans, and high-school physics teachers in Memphis.”
Douglas County, Colorado, has a school board that is enthralled with choice and apparently disdains public education.
Former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett spoke in Douglas County on September 25. According to the local media, he was well compensated. Rick Hess has also been busy consulting and promoting the school board’s plan to bust free of the cage of government schools.
Unless the public selects a new school board, Douglas County might become the first district to privatize public education.
EduShyster provides her typical dazzling overview of the situation. Unfortunately, there is not much humor here. Some of the nation’s wealthiest choice advocates have decided that Douglas County will be a fine Petri dish for a Milton Friedman-style experiment, along the lines already established in Chile and now unwinding there.
Andrew Delbanco of Columbia University contrasts the recent books
by Michelle Rhee and me in the New York Review of Books.
Read it and let me know what you think.
Reporting because I forgot the link!
Peter DeWitt is an outstanding elementary school principal in upstate New York. He has established a reputation as a dedicated and kind person who cares about the social and emotional health of his students, as much as (perhaps even more than) their test scores. He also happens to be a man of great integrity and courage.
In this post, he reviews Reign of Error.
He writes:
In Reign of Error, Diane begins by focusing on the misinformation that is provided by “Reformers” when it comes to corporate reform, graduation rates, and the “failures” of the public school system. She takes on her critics like Michelle Rhee (StudentsFirst) and Teach for America. In addition, she provides a much more holistic view of charter schools; how they began and where they are now.
Diane doesn’t focus solely on what is wrong with Corporate Reform, she also explains what we need to do differently to make the teaching profession stronger. Yes, Diane Ravitch believes we have room for improvement. She understands, as a historian and professor, we all need to strive for continuous improvement. She just doesn’t believe you have to brow beat people to get there.
And he adds:
Too often the educational conversation is controlled by those with the most money. Teachers, principals, students and parents may not believe they can compete with the power and money that is controlling public education, but with Diane’s voice they certainly have a better chance than they think.
Thank you, Peter. Education policy should be in the hands of those who are tasked with implementing it and those who have spent years teaching children. The current model of top-down mandates from the U.S. Department of Education and Congress is harming children, teachers, and schools.
We are citizens. We must stand up for what is right, not for what is expedient.
Peter DeWitt is an outstanding elementary school principal in upstate New York. He has established a reputation as a dedicated and kind person who cares about the social and emotional health of his students, as much as (perhaps even more than) their test scores. He also happens to be a man of great integrity and courage.
In this post, he reviews Reign of Error.
He writes:
In Reign of Error, Diane begins by focusing on the misinformation that is provided by “Reformers” when it comes to corporate reform, graduation rates, and the “failures” of the public school system. She takes on her critics like Michelle Rhee (StudentsFirst) and Teach for America. In addition, she provides a much more holistic view of charter schools; how they began and where they are now.
Diane doesn’t focus solely on what is wrong with Corporate Reform, she also explains what we need to do differently to make the teaching profession stronger. Yes, Diane Ravitch believes we have room for improvement. She understands, as a historian and professor, we all need to strive for continuous improvement. She just doesn’t believe you have to brow beat people to get there.
And he adds:
Too often the educational conversation is controlled by those with the most money. Teachers, principals, students and parents may not believe they can compete with the power and money that is controlling public education, but with Diane’s voice they certainly have a better chance than they think.
Thank you, Peter. Education policy should be in the hands of those who are tasked with implementing it and those who have spent years teaching children. The current model of top-down mandates from the U.S. Department of Education and Congress is harming children, teachers, and schools.
We are citizens. We must stand up for what is right, not for what is expedient.
Mercedes Schneider, that brilliant teacher in Louisiana with a Ph.D. in research methods, takes a skeptical look at the way the state is playing statistical tricks in New Orleans and the Recovery School District.
After you read her post, you will never believe anything that you read or hear from Louisiana officials or the media about the “miracle” of the Recovery School District.
One thing we should have learned in the past dozen years is that it is dangerous to allow politicians to tie their ambitions to schools. When that happens, the Department of Education–whether it is a district or a state–turns into the Department of Political Propaganda, dedicated to burnishing the image of the governor or the mayor. How can we know whether schools are improving when huge amounts of money are spent to spin the results so the politician in charge looks good?
Diane Ravitch's blog 