Today the New York Times ran an admiring article about Teach for America.
I almost missed it because it was in the business section.
The young people interviewed intend to move on to six-figure jobs on Wall Street after they put in their two years in the classroom. Some say they are making quite a financial sacrifice by deferring their entry into their “real” career.
The comments are almost as interesting as the article.
Wendy Lecker is a civil rights lawyer who lives in Ciponnecticut. She worked on the lawsuit for more funding for high-needs schools in New York, called the Campaign for Fiscal Equity and has just agreed to become the lawyer for the Campaign.
In this terrific article, she asks whether there is any superintendent in Connecticut brave enough to stand up with such leaders as Joshua Starr of Montgomery County, Maryland, Heath Morrison of Charlotte-Mecklenberg, North Carolia, and John Kuhn of Texas, all of whom have forthrightly criticized the misuse of standardized testing.
Is there one? Two? Please speak up.
Josh Eidelson explains in Salon.com what happened in Bridgeport, Connecticut, when the corporate reformers promoted a referendum to abolish the elected school boards and give the public schools to the mayor. Despite the active support of Michelle Rhee and a heavy infusion of money, the voters of Bridgeport decided they preferred to keep their right to choose those who control their schools.
Will Fitzhugh created The Concord Review to publish exemplary historical research by high school students.
He has long waged a struggle to persuade teachers and schools to assign histories by leading scholars, not just cut-and-paste, pedestrian textbooks. Since many state standards emphasize coverage, not depth, this has been a hard sell. Real histories are exciting to read, but they take time. Few teachers, unless they teach advanced students, have the time for 400-page books.
The immediate problem, for both teachers and students, is time but the deeper problem is our vision of teaching and learning, which now values the right answers on standardized tests, not the ability to read a book or construct an essay based on research. Changing books does not solve the problems inherent in a cramped and narrow vision of what education should be.
This is what Will wrote last spring:
History Books
Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
10 April 2012
I majored in English literature at Harvard, and had such wonderful professors as B.J. Whiting for Chaucer, Alfred Harbage for Shakespeare, Douglas Bush for Milton, Walter Jackson Bate for Samuel Johnson, and Herschel Baker for Tudor/Stuart Drama. In my one year at Cambridge after graduation, I had the benefit of lectures by Clive Staples Lewis, F.R. Leavis, Joan Bennett, and R.T.H. Redpath.
But in high school and in college I didn’t read any history books and I didn’t think twice about it. Many years later, when I was asked to teach United States History at the high school in Concord, Massachusetts, I panicked. I read Samuel Eliot Morison’s Oxford History of the American People to get started and I have been reading history books ever since (thirty years), but I never knew enough history to be as good a history teacher as my students deserved.
Since 1987, (I left teaching in 1988) I have been the editor of The Concord Review, the only journal in the world for the academic papers of secondary students, and we have now published 1,044 history research papers by high school students from 46 states and 38 other countries. This has only increased my understanding that high school students should be not only encouraged to read complete history books (as I never was in school) but assigned them as well. It is now my view that unless students in our high schools get used to reading at least one complete history book each year, they will not be as well prepared for the books on college nonfiction reading lists as they should be.
In addition, as adherents to the ideas of E.D. Hirsch know well, understanding what one reads depends on the prior knowledge of the reader, and by reading history books our high schools students will learn more history and be more competent to read difficult nonfiction material, including more history books, in college.
When I discuss these thoughts, even with my good friends in the education world, I find a strange sort of automatic reversion to the default. When I want to talk about reading nonfiction books, suddenly the conversation is about novels. Any discussion of reading nonfiction in the high schools always, in my experience, defaults to talk of literature. It seems virtually impossible to anyone discussing reading to relax the clutches of the English Departments long enough even to consider that a history book might make good reading material for our students, too. Try it sometime and see what I mean.
I realize that most Social Studies and History Departments have simply given up on having students read a history book, even in those few cases where they may have tried in the past. They are almost universally content, it seems, to leave the assignment of books (and too much of the writing as well) entirely in the hands of their English Department colleagues.
One outcome of this, in my view, is that even when the Common Core people talk about the need for more nonfiction, it is more than they can manage to dare to suggest a list of complete history books for kids to read. So we find them suggesting little nonfiction excerpts and short speeches to assign, along with menus, brochures, and bus schedules for the middle schoolers. Embarrassing.
Nevertheless, if asked, what history books would I suggest? Everyone is afraid to mention possible history books if they are not about current events, or civics, or some underserved population, for fear of a backlash against the whole idea of history books.
But I will offer these: Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough for Freshmen, Washington’s Crossing by David Hackett Fischer for Sophomores, Battle Cry of Freedom by James McPherson for Juniors, and The Path Between the Seas by David McCullough for Seniors in high school.
Obviously there are thousands of other good history books, and students should be free to read any of these as they work on their Extended History Essays or the very new Capstone Essays the College Board is beginning to start thinking about. And of course I do realize that some history took place before 1620 and even in countries other than our own, but these books are good ones, and if students read them they will actually learn some history, but perhaps more important, they will learn that reading a real live nonfiction history book is not beyond their reach. I dearly wish I had learned that when I was in high school.
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“Teach by Example”
Will Fitzhugh [founder]
The Concord Review [1987]
Ralph Waldo Emerson Prizes [1995]
National Writing Board [1998]
TCR Institute [2002]
730 Boston Post Road, Suite 24
Sudbury, Massachusetts 01776-3371 USA
978-443-0022; 800-331-5007
http://www.tcr.org; fitzhugh@tcr.org
Varsity Academics®
http://www.tcr.org/blog
Gary Rubinstein was one of the first members of Teach for America. He is now one of the leading critics of TFA and corporate reform.
His blog is consistently thoughtful and informative.
A few months ago, Gary decided to write to the top figures in the corporate reform movement.
His letters and the replies he received make for fascinating reading.
The Noble charter chain in Chicago has picked up millions of dollars from the Chicago public school system for running its dozen charter schools.
Next year it is budgeted to receive $69.9 million.
It is also getting a nice chunk of change by fining parents when their children misbehave.
The schools charge $5 for each rule-breaking.
This is not the first complaint about the charter chain’s policy of fining students for misbehavior. Last year, a civil rights group complained after learning that Noble had collected nearly $200,000 in the previous year by fining students.
Apparently, nothing has changed.
In the most recent incident, a mother complains that she has paid $2,000 in fines.
Her son was suspended fifteen times; he was held back a year and required to attend summer school at a cost of $1,400.
His infractions (according to her): Godard said her son’s offenses have included having shoes untied, buttons unbuttoned on his polo shirt and failing to keep eyes focused on the teacher — all at three demerits apiece.
Julian Vasquez Heilig of the University of Texas is beginning an investigation of the effectiveness of vouchers.
He writes here about Texas but his conclusions would apply to any other state as well.
He examines whether vouchers are cost-efficient and how they affect the public schools.
Until the past few years, vouchers were a dead issue.
Since the Republican sweep of statehouses in 2010, they are back.
This is well worth reading.
Maureen Reedy, veteran Ohio teacher, writes:
Mary, Linda, Lisa, Ann, George, Cheryl, Neil, Marcie, Ron, Robin, Stef, Joe, Ms. Cartwheel Librarian … and other Public Education Patriots,
Great! Great! Great!
I am so inspired by our growing group interest in Public Schools Across America/Hands Across America ~
Together, we are going to figure out a way to pull this off!
I am collecting emails for those interested, please email if you want to be in the loop:
maureen.reedy@gmail.com (I wish I was more tech savy!)
I have pitched our idea of Public Schools Across America/Hands Across America to Parents Across America and have a conference call with them next week.
• You ask about pre-planning, that definitely is key…
• First, each of us needs to think of any contacts in our state/region whom you think would be interested in helping to organize.
• Start a list so that when we are ready to roll with a definite framework beyond the conceptual phase, we are ready with key contacts in each state.
• Think of anyone in the public education universe who is pro-public ed that you know; Mary, I’ll bet you have great contacts in the Statehouse being a former State Rep…..
We need teachers, superintendents, state school board members, local school board members, administrators, etc., parents, legislators, council members, PARENTS are HUGE, any well known folks whom are reputable and known to be public ed supporters ~ writers, singers, actors, etc.
• Start imagining the event itself… “order of the day” so to speak…. the messages need to be visual, visceral, vivid and emotionally, logistically accessible to the general public. We are seeking an audience that is not just preaching to the choir …. we are seeking to educate, convince and connect our cause to the general public while bringing down the for-profit education emperors/empresses with no clothes… and we all know who they are!
• My idea is to state by state, the same afternoon, same time, across the USA…. rise up as a collective and…
• Celebrate Public Ed with key stories, testimonies from students, teachers, parents AND • Present the cold, hard facts of privatization to the general public to bring down the smokescreen created by Waiting for Superman and Rhee, etc.
• For example, the following link to an article I wrote resonated hugely with general public in Ohio because it had cold, hard facts about Ohio’s charters which the general public tax payer parent/citizen DID NOT KNOW…
• Think of Lisa Meyers, “Letter to America:”
https://dianeravitch.net/?s=Letter+to+America
Lisa’s letter had and can continue to have, a HUGE impact on unveiling for the unseeing, privatization brainwashed public what has happened to teachers and MUST STOP, for our Kids’ sake… for our country’s sake… for our democracy.
Please email so we can get our group up and running,
THANK YOU Friends, THANK YOU Diane,
and here is to a Happy New Year for Public Education,
Maureen Reedy
maureen.reedy@gmail.com
Parent/29-year public school teacher
Columbus, Ohio
I disagree with this post by a faithful reader. But I think it deserves discussion.
There are many reasons to object to privatization.
One is that there is no evidence that privately managed firms that operate public services provide more efficient or less costly service. Another is that privately managed firms, when operating for profit, extract public dollars for investors that taxpayers intended for children, for educational programs that directly benefit children, for reduced class sizes, —and not to enrich shareholders. Privately managed nonprofits often pay salaries that would be unacceptable in the public sector. Privately managed firms tend to exclude the costliest clients to minimize their own costs, thus leaving the hardest cases for the less well funded public sector agency. And last, to destroy public education, which is so inextricably linked to our notions of democracy and citizenship would be an assault on the commonweal. Let us not forget that public education has been the instrument of the great social movements for more than the past half century–desegregation, gender equality, disability rights, and the assimilation of immigrants. Once it is gone, it is gone, and that would be a crime against ourselves.
The reader writes:
“Ladd and Fiske correctly identify the four risks to the public education system of the privatization movement, but they assume that the public education system is an unqualified “good.” What if privatization produces different and better goods? Public education implements mainly a “progressive” philosophy of government. By the word “democracy” it means government control of education and almost everything else it can get its hands on. “Social justice” is the well-worn substitute term for ‘redistribute the wealth.’ I mean no name calling to point out that has been the communist agenda from the beginning and remains the communist agenda.
“The whole point of privatization, then, is to free American education from the statist agenda (which implies ‘community’ responsiblity for every individual and submission of every individual to the tyranny of the community). Most here see public education as an unmixed good. It’s opponents think otherwise, and their motives are clear.
“What is most surprising, however, is to find the Obama Education Department so staunchly behind the measures that we ALL agree are destroying the public school systems. NCLB? RTTT? CCSS? What true educator can support that testing to extinction? It baffles me why Obama/Duncan want to eliminate the public school systems when their objectives in every other area of life, especially health care, is anti individual freedom.
“Ladd and Fiske, then, are totally correct in saying that the privatization movement sees public goods as merely the sum of the individual goods arising from education. I say that is the way it should be in America. What are claimed as social goods lost by privatization are, in my view, really social “bads.” They are mainly accustoming citizens to acquiesce in state control of their lives. There’s been enough of that already.”
According to Connecticut blogger Jonathan Pelto, CNN has severed its relationship with Dr. Steve Perry.
Dr. Perry became best known for his putdown of teaches and unions, as well as his claims about his own miraculous achievements as director of a magnet school in Hartford.
Pelto does a good job deconstructing those claims.
Jersey Jazzman deconstructed his claims last year in multiple posts. See here. And here. And here.
Could it be that CNN executives read Jersey Jazzman?
