This article arrived in my email unexpectedly, and I decided to post it because it contains a good analysis of how decision makers get stuck defending bad decisions.
Sean Brady explains the dangers of cognitive bias. He writes that it is “becoming increasingly apparent that he [King] may be doing more to undermine the implementation of the Common Core than he is doing to support it. For example, his approval of cut points on the 2013 assessments that resulted in the vast majority of the state’s grade 3 — 8 students to be deemed failing has created a firestorm of criticism, galvanized his critics in New York and stalled the implementation of the Common Core in some other states.
“Commissioner King is clearly a very smart man. Why might he take actions that do not support what he is trying to achieve? A search for cognitive biases and fallacies may provide some insight. There are a number to consider. King’s positive assessment of New York’s Common Core implementation despite mounting evidence of serious problems suggests optimism bias. His reference to a few, narrow data sets to defend his policies points to confirmation bias. However, two others seem to be at the the root of his troubles….”
King, he says, suffers from certainty bias and the sunk cost fallacy.
This is well worth reading.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
This is only a guess, but I’d say his ego supercedes his ability to make common sense changes in course mid-stream.
Evidence that King is a smart man is that he sends his children to a private Montessori school that does not have to deal with the Common Core, teaching to the test, and improperly evaluating teachers based on test scores. The problem is that he inflicts this BS on public school students in NYS who do not have the cash to opt out as he does.
Exactly.
John King is spending tens of thousands of dollars (of money paid to him by corporate reformers, btw) to make sure that his own children are figuratively as far away from Common Core as they possibly can be—in a Montessori school with curriculum and minimal testing that is diametrically opposed to Common Core—while at the same time, telling the millions of parents (of New York, and nationwide) that these parents and their children are going to have to accept Common Core even if King and his fellow “corporate reformers” have to forcefully shove it down their throats…. and no matter how much they protest at these sham public hearings, these parents have no power to change this.
This hypocrisy of his should be the end of the debate as to King’s lack of character.
I think the more likely explanation is much simpler. The élites, like King, are essentially revolutionaries; they want to change the world into their images. The élites have the money and education that, in their eyes, give them the right, the power, and the responsibility to remake society. The only thing that matters to them is complete victory; the fact that the implementation suggests a disaster means nothing to them, since this is a work in progress towards a Utopia.
Since the élites “know” better than everyone else, as demonstrated by their education and wealth, they don’t have to listen to anyone outside their clique.
The best model for these people is the Bolshevik movement. They are the Vanguard of the market-driven society. They are the true believers.
This.
Except they are supporting an anti-market system–one that replaces a free market in ideas about standards, frameworks, testing, curricula, pedagogy, and teacher and school evaluation with invariant instruments created by a centralized Common Core Curriculum Commissariat and Ministry of Truth envisioned and funded by a few plutocrats to serve monopolistic ends such as creating national standards, which create economies of scale that ensure the hegemony of the monopolists.
The market forces are the use of the “market” to provide all of those things you list. The CCSS creates the need, and, as has been described here elsewhere, the companies owned by the CCSS supporters will take care of the rest (for a price).
The market is transactional, not intellectual (as the so-called marketplace of ideas).
Yes, they are radicals, but of the counter-revolutionary sort, revanchists who have a compelling need to take control of the schools away from the (relative) humanism that guided them in the post-WWII era.
It’s back to the future with these people, as they whip everyone, except their own children, of course, onto a forced march to The Electronic Dark Ages.
The deformers would do well to read Einstein on education–on his experiences with the no-excuses schools of his youth. The ed deformers definitely have a spare the rod, spoil the child mentality. Often, when my mind turns to the current ed deforms, I think of this verse from the New England Primer, which I believe to have been the first book published by Europeans in this country:
Tell B for the Beast at the end of the wood;
He ate all the children when they wouldn’t be good.
Ed deform appeals to authoritarian types who see everything through a simplifying technocratic lens. Everything is simple. SIMPLY make a list. Teach that list. Test that list. Evaluate based on the list. And punish failure. That’s deform in a nutshell.
“Commissioner King has invested enormously in the implementation of the Common Core. There are, of course, the billions of dollars of state and federal resources. But he has also staked his personal and professional reputation. And as we all know, the greater the investment in a course of action, the harder it is to write off. We continue to justify that effort.
According to Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, “The decision to invest additional resources in a losing account, when better investments are available, is known as the sunk-cost fallacy, a costly mistake that is observed in decisions large and small.” The sunk-cost fallacy prevents us from cutting our losses when we should. The trick, says Kahneman, is to avoid “the escalation of commitment to failing endeavors” and to “ignore the sunk costs of past investments when evaluating current opportunities.”
Great piece. I think the sunk-cost fallacy is huge in ed reform. I also think reputational risk is huge. They’ve assembled some really powerful and wealthy people to advance this narrow agenda. We are simply not going to get an admission that all these CEO’s and billionaires may be wrong. There’s too much riding on them being RIGHT, on a personal and “legacy” level.
I also think the “bipartisan” nature of ed reform has stifled and limited debate. The same thing happened in the run-up to the Iraq war. Pundits love it when
everyone agrees” on X, Y or Z, but the benefit of disagreement is a REAL debate. When Duncan’s view are identical to those of Jeb Bush (just to use two examples) we don’t really have a debate, and we’re worse for it. An opposition would have benefitted Common Core. An opposition would have questioned it and slowed adoption and asked about downsides.
CC proponents point to “bipartisan agreement” on ed reform as a good thing, but all it means to me is racing ahead in lockstep, right off a cliff. My overall sense is of recklessness and herd behavior, not due diligence and responsible actions based on rigorous debate.
Chiara,,
You are so right. The supporters of Common Core have refused to permit any debate, have demonized critics as extremists and ideologues. When a new policy is not open to democratic discussion, it is doomed.
Chiara Duggan: I do not think your Iraq war analogy is inapt.
There is an eerie and sickening parallel to “education reform.” Almost all the leading figures that had the authority and responsibility for carrying forward the invasion and occupation of Iraq still think—defying facts, logic and decency—that they were right. If there were or are any problems, they contended then and contend now, it was the fault of, well, everybody else, perverse obstructionists who didn’t share their visionary plans and forward thinking and deep thoughts and humanitarian concerns blabhblahblah.
And just like their edubully counterparts, the more they have been proven wrong, they deeper they have dug in their heels.
Thank you for your comments.
😎
The Army Times–the official publication of the U.S. Army, recently ran a cover story saying, ten years on, what is our mission over here? And the story goes on to say that that mission was NEVER articulated. We have already incurred six trillion dollars in sunk costs for these wars, according to the Cost of War Project.
I am reminded of Vietnam. At the time of the Vietnam War, half the country thought it was a great idea. And a decade later, most of the folks who thought it was a great idea at the time were pretending that they knew all along that it was a quagmire.
About the question posed in the post: The cognitive biases answer and the hubris answer and the financial interests answer and the toadying to and so sharing power answer are ALL correct. One of the most dangerous of human cognitive biases is the tendency to look for single causes for complex phenomena. The Pareto Effect is often involved–there are multiple causes, one of which accounts for most but not all of the effect. A recent popular trade book asks, why are there so many ants on the sidewalk? And the answer is a) that people drop stuff that ants eat on the sidewalk, b) that sidewalks are good for laying down the chemical trails that ants follow, but (and this is the big one) c) there are ants EVERYWHERE; you happen to be able to see them on the sidewalk.
Robert,
In light of our discussion in another thread, do you think that the “sunk cost fallacy” applies to virtually every state and local standard in mathematics that predates the common core state standard?
There’s a competing hypothesis. He’s a liar and a crook. He doesn’t really believe in the ideas but promotes them for his personal gain. He knows if he’s able to push through tremendously unpopular policies, there’s a bright future in the Democratic Party. My guess is he’s being groomed as a NY version of Cory Booker.
Obama worked out very, very well for the oligarchy. One can have neoconservative policies as long as one has progressive rhetoric and charisma. But King can’t run for higher office after this testing debacle. No possibility there. Booker is another matter. He has a lot of charm. He has totally bought into ed deform. He hasn’t had a big failure yet.
As Rick Hess indiscreetly, but honestly, wrote on his blog last year, the great hope of the so-called reformers is that the cascading failure rates on Common Corporate Standard- based exams – guaranteed by the political decision of King and Tisch to establish cut scores that would insure widespread failure – would shock suburban parents into realizing that their public schools were “failing,” and that the hostile takeover of public education could expand beyond its initial beachheads in urban districts.
The avarice and will to power of the so-called reformers is so intense, their lack of self-control so complete, that they are in danger of destroying the very project they have spent billions of dollars and years of effort creating.
Let us hope that engaged parents – unfortunately, the teacher unions are hopeless at this point – will stop these arrogant greed heads before they completely destroy this irreplaceable public resource.
He takes his marching orders from above. Governor Cuomo’s political ambitions are the only reason this was rushed forward. King will change his mind when Andy tyells him to.
It is hard to make a man understand a thing if his paycheck depends on him NOT understanding it.
Upton Sinclair wrote that way back when.
Thank you. I could not remember the source.
John King was a classroom teacher for three years. He would still be considered a “new teacher” in any public school classroom. New teachers tend to hold rigidly to their plan – no matter what – and do not want to be challenged by their students, because they don’t have the skill set to field the unexpected. This is why teaching is so challenging! As a group leader you are navigating constantly changing variables. Knowledge of your content will certainly help your navigation, but experience – real experience and a variety of referents is what keeps you “with it.”* (*a phrase used in the past to train NYC public school teachers). When you scramble through the way Mr. King is, through these forums, you sincerely can’t wait until next year, when you can start again with a fresh new batch of students, and you hope word of mouth from previous students has not already biased the new ones against you. There is no other way to learn this other than doing. Had Mr. King taught in NYC public schools before his lofty appointment, he might be having more success implementing his Common Core agenda – but not without many many compromises and modifications. This is what effective group leaders do. And this is my own teacher evaluation of Mr. King.
Jane: other commenters have made excellent points, but I think that—on a personal level—this is one of the most revealing.
To expand on your point: he’s still a novice at managing and educating people. How did such a newbie ever reach a position where he could tell vast numbers of experienced and competent educators what to do?
He is clueless—a description, not an insult.
😎
His cluelessness was one reason for his being hired. After all, so-called reform-choked districts are invariably led by arrogant know-nothings who, at most, had a cup of coffee in the classroom.
The arrogance, the class bias, the smugness and self-satisfaction are apparently job requirements for these people.
KrazyTA, – Thank you for your thoughts. I agree – as we know the way that systems work – in any era – there are always proxies: Those who are willing to carry out the orders of the alleged power strata, such as John King. Back in fifth grade, we kids would refer to these types as “brown noses”. If you work in any industry, you see these everyday by the scores. The yes people who sit in meetings and agree with everything that’s been proposed, even if these things are against the common interest. The people that I find very troublesome, though, are administrators (I’ve had some of these) who are silently compliant with this latest batch of Reform dictates. They are afraid of losing their positions, and pretend that they aren’t happy about the CC and teacher evaluations – they’re the “nice guys and ladies” who occasionally buy refreshments for staff meetings, but, through lack of action, through lack of courage to push back – they are in effect, by default, supporting Reforms that are not in their own students’ best interests. (I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night!) It baffles me how certain administrators are too afraid to take a position until the parents of the community take a stand. But parents of public school children have the most at stake here – something more important than a six digit salary.
Michael Fiorillo: another nail, hit squarely on the head!
If you are a member of the Billionaire Boys Club and “education reform” is your latest “vanity project” [thank you, Diane Ravitch!] then what would ever prompt you to put a self-critical, reflective, honorable person with a backbone in charge of carrying out your assault on a “better education for all”?
The caliber of people who serve as the hired guns of the edufrauds and edupreneurs are selected precisely because their moral and intellectual shortcomings suit them for a role that no intelligent and honorable person would or could fill.
Would you unjustly fire a Patrena Shankling as LAUSD Superintendent John Deasy did? Would you nationally humiliate on video a principal you are firing like former DCPS Chancellor Michelle Rhee did? Would you post tweets when your edubusiness plans go awry like “Strap up, there will be head injuries” like Dr. Steve Perry did? Would you unfairly treat an Irma Cobian like Ben Austin of Parent Revolution did?
I think that there is a better than 98% satisfactory [thank you, Bill Gates!] chance that no decent person would or could do those things. To meet the requirements of the job description of “edubully” requires a stern commitment to doing to perfection what the vast majority would find abhorrent and immoral.
But never fear—where $tudent $ucce$$ is concerned, edubullies are willing to do the dirty work no self-respecting human being would care to be associated with.
Or perhaps, that is when fear is justified.
😎
Heck, that’s three more years of classroom experience than Duncan has. He’s practically one of those old, entrenched types.
1. King is ‘smart’: so what, lots of ‘smart people floating about. More to the point, King has no moral compass; he disdains democratic process. .
2. The comparison with The Bolshevik’s holds no historical water. Can you remember that the nature of the Bolshevik struggle was to bring down the Czar and to eradicate the existing social and economic structures; that was not a democratic process and we know the consequences: millions upon millions dead or exiled.
3. How about situating King with whom he belongs: the right wing ideologues and the top 1%, for whom he carries ‘the water’. It would seem that King has the full support of the Board of Regents, regardless of his rigid ideology. Now that is scary
4. At this point, public school supporters have more than sufficient information regarding the ‘reform’ movemen to at least slow it down, if not bringing it to a screeching halt. The ‘reformers’ have a plan, to irrevocably damage public schools. The question now is ‘what is to be done’? What are the next steps? Can we be as ‘ tough’ and single-minded as our opponents?
There is a tradition in New York politics (especially, but not limited to NYC) that commissioners of police and education – and maybe any other crucial area with lots of competing stakeholder goals and needs – are only considered to be effective by the media if everybody is furious with them pretty much all the time.
The other way they’ve narrowed the debate is by framing public ed advocates as “self interested.” Media picked that up and ran with it, so all opposition is given this kind of cynical treatment, where opponents are dismissed as “self interested”
I thought the worse thing about Arne Duncan’s “suburban moms” comment was how cynical is was. Duncan cannot imagine parents acting as advocates on behalf of their children or a public school unless it’s tied to their own self-worth (“geniuses”) or property values (suburban).
That’s an extremely transactional view, and it misses the larger role of public schools in communities. I’m amazed that reformers STILL can’t see it, because it’s so obvious to me. These schools MEAN MORE to people than test scores. For Duncan to assume that passion has to be about parental ego or property value means, to me, that he doesn’t understand public schools at all.
Why did he think the parents in Chicago fought so hard to keep their schools? Ego? Property values? Their schools ARE their communities. They’re (rightfully, in my view) afraid reformers will destroy them. I’m afraid of it myself.
Chiara, another brilliant comment.
Diane
Thanks. I saw it play out here when we recently (finally) passed a bond issue to replace two aging elementary schools. It was literally a 2 year debate. There were three iterations of The Building Plan. It was hotly debated, really emotional, because it involves tearing down a neighborhood school that dates from 1906. We talked to hundreds of people to get it passed, and there are only 7000 people in this city.
Obviously, public schools are more than physical facilities and test scores. People feel they own them, and they’re RIGHT. They do own them.
Maybe King is baffled by this. If parents are dissatisfied with a change in his childrens private school or in the charter school he came from they simply choose another school.
These parents aren’t going anywhere. They feel they own these schools. They expect HIM to go before they do 🙂
well said
I took a course in creative leadership and learned about this type of bias (and others), which block(s) productivity. I am surprised many reform leaders do not have people advising them to help steer clear of these pitfalls. I remember thinking about reformers when I took the course.
King is the reformers’ Common Core front man in New York – selected to force a false narrative and a billion dollar failing endeavor on parents, students and taxpayers. When King and the Common Core fail in the state (domino effect), those who are behind the curtain and stand to gain mega profits using students, teachers and tax funds to churn profits will lose.
He’s in place to serve as cover for Joel Klein, Rupert Murdoch, Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, Jeb Bush, David Coleman, Susan Pimentel, the Regents, certain Governors, General Electric, etc.
Billions in taxes have been wasted on the US Department of Corporate Education, Common Core Curriculum modules, inBloom, Race to the Top, Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium, Partnership for Assessment and Readiness for College and Careers, Wireless Generation iPads, Pearson curriculum/testing, and Common Core Inc.
YUP, a lot of sunk costs, and people don’t like to accept that those were wasted. Particularly unlikely to come to that few are people who are so presumptuous that they think that they have the expertise and right to overrule every teacher, administrator, curriculum coordinator, curriculum developer, school board, and education theorist in the country–that theirs is the way, the truth, and the light.
Diane Ravitch hit the nail on the head back when she started this blog. She said that education deform is a religion. That’s quite accurate. Talking to these people about the problems with their policies is just like trying to talk to Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church about carbon dating and Australopithecus afarensis.
cx: Particularly unlike to come to that CONCLUSION are people who are so presumptuous that they think that they have the expertise and right to overrule every teacher, administrator, curriculum coordinator, curriculum developer, school board, and education theorist in the country–that theirs is the way, the truth, and the light.
Cuomo is King’s ventriloquist; that would make King, Cuomo’s . . .
Well, it means that Cuomo has his hand up King’s proverbial arse. The question is does King like it?
. . . dummy?
NYT,
Fail, does not answer my question-ha ha!!
Hoping it has nothing to do with his wife’s career:
http://www.albany.edu/chsr/msteelking.shtml
Click to access AlbProm-PlenaryRecap-4-02-13.pdf
King is an opportunist and career ladder climber . . . I see nothing wrong with advancing oneself in a career, but in his case, it’s criminal that he is doing it based upon bad, damaging policy and a virutal absence of democratic process.
Sorry, but Tiberius’ town hall meetings with Livia Drusilla are cosmetic pandering at best. Someone should tell this politically incestuous pair that Rome will not last forever given their politics . . . .
The angry suburban moms and all types of parents are the ones who will burn Rome to the ground, and pity . . . not even a plutocrat around to play the violin while it burns, as the arts are being cut left and right from the public schools . . . .
John King will do plenty of hearing; he will do not listening.
Correction: ” . . . . he will do no listening.”
Whoever convinces WordPress to add an edit feature will make a fortune.
“Future generations of educators will study CCSS as a colossal education blunder.” The quote is from an earlier post on this blog.
“The trick, says Kahneman, is to avoid ““the escalation of commitment to failing endeavors” and to “ignore the sunk costs of past investments when evaluating current opportunities.””. This second quote is from the article by Sean Brady, also linked to in the current post on this blog. I want to expand on these nuggets to illustrate something of which I have great certainty, which may be perceived as “certainty bias” by some, but please hear me out. First, by way of introduction:
My paternal grandmother was a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in rural Pennsylvania. My favorite aunt, whom I visited often and with whom I lived briefly was a teacher in a small backwater in PA, who then became the principal of a fairly large consolidated district nearby. My best friend of forty-odd years was a teacher and his daughter is now a teacher in Las Vegas who was featured in a newspaper article last year. I don’t respect and admire teachers or believe that the profession is a noble endeavor merely because I was taught to show respect by my parents, or because I had great teachers as a child. I have known many teachers as an adult and took many classes with prospective teachers and from former teachers and know from personal experience that many are professionals who sacrifice for their students and are highly competent, caring, and committed.
In addition, I have demonstrated strong support for unionization and have spoken out against the people who have tried to use teachers and unions as scapegoats, or who are trying to sell the ludicrous notions that cutting teacher pay, phasing out tenured teachers or eliminating tenure and seniority, and employing other budget-cutting scams that hurt children are acceptable methods of saving money.
Nevertheless, I am obliged to admit that there have been far too many indicators of negative consequences connected directly to schooling that cannot be written off as statistically irrelevant, as the fault of the students or parents, or simply as the work of a tiny handful of bad apples or poorly trained teachers in poverty-ridden districts. The scope and nature of problems reveal to anyone who is paying attention and anyone willing to be truthful with themselves, that there are some profoundly serious fundamental issues in our approach to schooling that urgently need attention and action, which that aren’t due primarily to some new insidious influence.
The paradigm under which we have been operating for generations does things to teachers and students that are harmful to many of them if not most, and things have devolved to a point where teachers are not revered as they once were; teacher colleges do not recruit the best of the best in many instances; conditions often work against their professional development, and teachers become demoralized, cynical, fatigued, and desperate, frequently leading to burnout and flight from the profession altogether.
My close friend mentioned above was one of two teachers who first introduced me to the critical literature about the failures and serious shortcomings of schooling and who greatly influenced my thinking. Many of the authors were teachers or people who wrote on behalf of teachers. I’m thinking of books, such as; John Holt’s books, Paul Goodman’s “Compulsory Mis-education & The Community of Scholars; Edgar Z. Friedenburg’s , “The Disposal of Liberty & Other Industrial Wastes”; Illich; George Dennison’s “Lives of Children”; A.S. Neill’s, “Summerhill”, Jonathan Kozol’s lengthy list of books, and “The Great School Legend”, by Colin Greer, mentioned in an earlier comment.
In addition, I discovered, “A Study in Student Development: Rebellion and Delinquency as Alternative Responses to Schooling”, by Rettig, “Legislated Learning”, by Arthur Wise, Postman & Weingartner’s, “Teaching as a Subversive Activity”, Tolstoy on Education, essays edited by Weiner, “Dumbing Us Down”, by Gatto, “Why Our Children Can’t Think” by Kline, and Education in Crisis, by Ronald Corwin, among many others.
In the last fifty years, what have been equally convincing for me are the innumerable books and articles that aren’t written by or for educators, and that aren’t focused on education or schools at all, but that nonetheless have found it relevant to discuss how poorly students are treated or how poorly they are prepared by their school experience, whether or not they graduate. Postman, cited earlier wrote a book entitled, “Amusing Ourselves to Death”, which is more about media, which might be a good example. Another was a book “The Right to Create”, by Judith Groch. There have been hundreds of such books and articles filled with critical observations of schooling on every subject from anthropology to women in history, from psychiatry to linguistics, and everything in between.
The point is that, if I have a bias, it is a bias against certain facets of the institutions we call schools, such as rigidity, regimentation, and stratifying features, not any sort of personal bias based on subjective beliefs from experience or ideology, or due to a lack of rigorous study and objective analysis based on science. I may have a rebellious bent, however my rebellion has been directed against the lack of responsiveness of these bureaucratic monoliths, not toward particular participants or categories.
It’s entirely possible that someone like Greer may have had a bias or may not have always given proper credit to schools, due to misinterpretations of data and statistical records. It’s possible that some of the others writing about these chronic failures, such as semi-literate graduates, drop-outs, abusive practices, obsessions with testing, or dozens of other controversial issues may have employed rhetoric too freely or engaged in some type of exaggeration or zeroed in on particular pet peeves. Yet, the sheer volume and frequency of criticisms and negative analyses can only be disregarded if educators or advocates have been affected by the “sunk cost fallacy”, optimism bias, confirmation bias, certainty bias, or similar cognitive biases.
That same friend, who has long been retired, has spoken many times about the conversations that he heard in teachers’ lounges that I found quite shocking when I first heard of them in the 1960’s. Teachers that were recognized as good teachers then were in the habit, according to his firsthand reports, of speaking disparagingly about students, often making unkind remarks and jokes about them. He has also said that quite possibly a majority of students are not ready for any serious academic study until they are young adults, and that some will never find satisfaction in the sort of pursuits foisted upon them in school.
The great trepidation felt by everyone in this country the second that compulsory attendance is mentioned is a supposition that, without our schools and without the laws that require near universal attendance, things would quickly become much worse. Parents who lack an appreciation for education, it is imagined, would neglect the education of their kids, and those poor children would grow up to be boorish, ignorant, and uncivilized. All sorts of horrors are imagined and everyone has a story about a family or several families where parents take no interest in or responsibility for the education of their progeny. Bias. Cognitive error at work. Sunk cost fallacy. Mass hypnosis. Future generations should now realize that compulsory attendance was a colossal blunder.
My first question here would be about how one defines education and whether or not what is received by a sizeable percentage of students currently is indeed education by any definition. We seem to be plagued by a lot of boorishness, ignorance, and uncivilized behavior. The next question is whether or not school and whatever is offered there has become so much a part of the culture and so much a part of the fabric of daily life that the number of people who would opt out is truly negligible. We do have social welfare laws apart from school attendance laws that protect children from exploitation, abuse and neglect, including educational neglect. Thirdly, I’ve read statistics that claim that literacy was actually higher prior to the passage of attendance laws. Fourth, schools are, in Randi Weingartner’s words, the first responders for a wide variety of services, and they are recognized for the socializing and indoctrinating that they do. They have become indispensable, whether or not we are comfortable with all they do. Taking the coercion out of the equation would certainly not cause parents to suddenly turn their kids loose without any thought of their safety and welfare.
What is the alternative to compulsory attendance? The alternative is publicly financed schools that are not based on coercion, threats, intimidation, and oppressive authority. The alternative is parents who do not feel as if their obligation to teach their children or provide education for them has been usurped and who do not take it for granted that the professionals must have a vastly superior ability to educate. The alternative is decent schools with teachers and students whose autonomy is not systematically curtailed and controlled (resulting in little or no autonomy). The alternative is more effective and hospitable schools that don’t have chronic problems with discipline, truancy, tardiness, abuses of authority, a rigid hierarchy in which everything is prescribed and micromanaged, or a politicized bureaucratic climate in which accountability is a curse, instead of a matter of following one’s conscience and addressing the questions and needs of children.
You and I might indulge ourselves with visions of a world where all children are Einsteins, all students are “A” students (actually, Einstein didn’t fit in well in school) and all schools are “A” schools, but reality intrudes on such frivolous fantasies. Not all students have the ability or desire to become scholars and some may become literate or skilled at a pace that would earn failing grades in most schools. Schools will not save us from ourselves and they simply don’t merit the undying praise and worship that have been bestowed upon them by sentimental enthusiasts.
To be prepared for satisfying and remunerative employment, one needs good training, hygiene habits, socialization, and self-discipline. To be prepared for a satisfying and rewarding life, respite from employment and the inevitable vicissitudes of surviving in difficult environments, and for occasional joy and insights, one needs education. Schooling can provide the former. The latter is far too big an order for any school or any set of teachers.
Every American kid should have the opportunity to study and develop his or her abilities and skills, because this IS America. However, this is the best argument against compulsory attendance one could produce. Force or the threat of force and the institutionalization of relationships that should be organic and contemplative in nature are the antithesis of education. The need for education far and wide is precisely the reason that the temptation to try to mass produce it is an exercise in futility. It is an attempt to cure a disease that doesn’t exist with a remedy that is fitting for charlatans. Children are not ill or diseased, nor is education a miracle cure-all for whatever ails society. Education makes the world a better place because it is something that individuals pursue for their own edification and benefit and to make life on this often miserable planet less intolerable. Trying to shove it down the throat of every single child and make them like it is absolute insanity.
If you are willing to fight an uphill battle for better educational opportunities for children and for autonomy for teachers and their students, then why would you not choose to fight for all children, instead of for just a fortunate minority, and for real autonomy, instead of some watered-down simulated pretend version? Do you honestly believe that doctoring and fine-tuning the “common core curriculum” and delaying high-octane testing temporarily are going to meaningfully improve the experience of schooling for many students? Seriously? If so, there is a bridge in Alaska on which I can give you a fantastic deal.
Barry, I am now speaking as a retired teacher from the Buffalo Public Schools.
Our last Superintendent fired all the attendance officers, got rid of all final exams (except the Regents) and wouldn’t allow a grade under 50. This resulted in rampant school absences. Once kids received a total grade of 260, a 65 average for the year, they stopped attending school. If they couldn’t get a 260, they stopped coming to school. In fact, they just didn’t come to school. It wasn’t uncommon for twenty per cent, or more, of a class to be missing each day. This wrecks havoc on teaching. This leads to low graduation rates.
The teachers at one school had an “attendance” pool, where they’d each contribute a couple of bucks, and the one closest to guessing the correct amount of students showing up for the day won the money.
Once an environment is established, it is difficult to change. We are now trying to get the students to come to school regularly, but attendance is still a big issue. Without consistent attendance, there is no learning. And it’s pervasive, starting in Kindergarten.
Another issue you neglected to address is when parents keep their kids home. Older students have to stay home to babysit younger ones. Elementary students are kept home because the parents don’t get them up, or because they have no clean clothes to wear. Older students just don’t feel like going. They’d rather hang out with their friends or be part of a gang.
In a perfect world, our children would be chomping at the bit each morning waiting for the school bus. I don’t live in that world and neither do you. It’s a nice thought, but . . .
NYS may kill the common core with misnamed proficiency scores on grade 3-8 student exams. Imagine BAR and CPA graduates having to achieve over 85 percent correct answers on their exams to pass. Parents in NY should be outraged.
State Ed documents suggests that proficient in reading equates to 560 on the SAT reading and 700 on the SAT math. Meanwhile, everyone should watch King’s address in Albany in November (on engageNY under Network team) in which he compares his efforts to promote the common core to those of Blacks gaining the right to ride a bus. Methinks my students would correctly label that as a false analogy. But logical fallacies are the tools of the reformers.
“But logical fallacies are the tools of the reformers.”
And edumetricians (commonly known as psychometricians).
And they are “reformers” they are edudeformers.
Tonight at Medgar Evers College King said the Common Core Standards would be implemented, it was not a discussion. Only one person was allowed to speak in opposition, then the Rhee team took over.
“Tonight at Medgar Evers College King said the Common Core Standards would be implemented; it was not a discussion… ”
… thought not for HIS OWN kids, however…. they’re safe… figuratively, they will be as far from Common Core curriculum and testing as King’s corporate reform salary will enable them to be… in a Montessori school whose curriculum and minimal testing is diametrically opposed to Common Core.
I heard that the tests have just been finalized and delivered to the printer. Can anyone verify this information? We all knew King really wasn’t listening or, if he was, that he didn’t care….
“Why does John King cling to his views, no matter what the public says?”
Because he’s in too deep. The top-down approach forces people to be a yes “man/woman” to stay loyal in order to keep one’s job and have influential power, It was also easy to arrive at this point of our education delimma as governor’s, education adm at state level, superintendents, principals, teachers were all gullible (or following protocol b/c of repercussions). Now education at the state level is being blackmailed w/mandates tied to funding which makes it all the more difficult, let alone corrupt people w/money. It’s sad that this has gone on over a decade.
If parents only knew in every school how much power they have to bully reformers after their children, they wouldn’t stand a chance. King knows it’s wrong, but can’t admit it because he’s in too deep. It’s like working for the mafia–hard to leave for various reasons. I’ll bet it’s eating him away everyday when he hears his name in vain in the media.
Watch the April 2011 videos for evidence that the reformers’ common core fix via Coleman’s Student Achievement Partners was rigged behind the scenes in New York and beyond. When the reformers’ fix fails in New York, common core and the matching high-stakes testing machine will fall like dominoes across the US.
“As you grow up in this world you realize people really don’t give a shit about what you feel or what you think.” –David Coleman at NY State Department of Education presentation, April 2011
“Bringing the Common Core to Life” in New York
http://usny.nysed.gov/rttt/resources/bringing-the-common-core-to-life.html
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2012/04/david-colemans-global-revenge-and.html
So Baghdad Bob had “optimism bias!” Who knew? I just thought he was delusional.
He sticks to his views because that is his job objective. The decisionmaking on this comes from higher up than him. See Arne Duncan. See Bill Gates. See Millennium Development Goals.
The millennium development goals? I am not sure what increasing maternal health, decreasing infant mortality, and eradicating extreme poverty has to do with implementation of the CCSS in New York.
You just negated your whole argument: CCSS has nothing to do with those research backed dominant indicators of education success–socioeconomic indicators.
Libertarianism leads to third world country social profiles and it is nigh impossible to have first world education outcomes (no matter the metric) under those circumstances.
I didn’t think I was making an argument, just asking a question. What do the millennium development goals have to do with “decisionmaking on this comes from higher up than him….see Millennium Development Goals”
Do you know what the MDG has to do with the decisions about CCSS?
I just spent the last two hours watching King on TV and following the Buffalo News blog on the live discussion. Here is the update:
There is a blizzard in Buffalo and more Lake Effect snow is on it’s way. King might be stuck here if he doesn’t leave during a lull.
Despite the blizzard, over two dozen teachers and parents picketed the studio (Buffalo’s PBS channel) prior to the broadcast.
The format was similar to the Presidential debates. Questions were submitted beforehand and the local commentator could ask follow up questions.
The seating was for 300, but not that many showed up due to the hazardess driving conditions.
The forum was for all Western New York school districts. The Superintendents were invited and if they attended they could bring up to three quests. That accounted for half the seats. The other 150 were chosen by a lottery system.
WNED did not share the questions with King or NYS Regent Bennett (from a suburb of Buffalo) prior to the program.
The questions were fair, the answers were misleading. (I wonder if King is being obtuse on purpose, or if he is really clueless. I know Bennett doesn’t have a grasp on reality.)
One answer which surprised me was when Bennett revealed that NYS had asked for a variance for testing ELL students. Interesting if true.
Another comment by King agreed that the state needed to re-examine test length and study the implementation of CCSS for students with disabilities. Has he said this before?
Sometimes it was hard to watch and/or listen to the half truths (sometimes down right lies). When questioned on test length King stated the tests were really an hour long, but they allowed ninety minutes. He neglected to include that both the Math and ELA assessments spanned ninety minutes on each of three – or is it four – days. He also claimed there was no more testing than in previous years.
Any issues about the implementation of CCSS were the faults of the Districts or the teachers. In fact Bennett suggested that parents ask the teachers of PreK if they were certified in Early Childhood Education (implying that non certification must be the reason they are questioning the curriculum of CCSS).
Oh – you’ll love this one – the tests had all been field tested. And teachers were involved in the development of the curriculum.
Finally, there is one school in Buffalo, City Honors, that is one of the top schools in the COUNTRY. Parents purposely live in the city so their child can get a spot in this school. Entrance is determined by an exam as well as recommendations. These kids are the brightest and the best the area has to offer. All of them go to college. On the assessments – 30% were not considered “college ready”. King responded that only 30% statewide were considered college ready. I guess he thought these results were exemplary. My point: If college ready kids aren’t considered college ready, then who is? To me it is more proof that these assessments are invalid (These students are involved in both AP exams and IB diplomas).