A reader whose tag is “Not a Public School Teacher” reacts to the news that Robert Reich has come out in opposition to the overuse of standardized testing:
“I was very grateful to see Reich’s stance in “Inequality for All”, but frankly, I think it’s about time he took a stand on K-12 public education. HIgh-stakes standardized testing is not a new issue. We’re talking about 12 years of standardized tests under No Child Left Behind (NCLB), longer in many locations, as well as ever increasing numbers of tests now, with the roll out of Race to the Top (RttT) and the Common Core national standards.
“If you look at the “Inequality for All” website, Reich was curiously silent on K-12 education, so this is a good start. However, Reich does not go far enough. For example, Reich made no mention of the ongoing national assault on public school teachers, the primary aim of which is to break unions and deprofessionalize the field, replacing unionized career educators with low paid non-union workers, such as the five week trained “teachers” from Teach for America.
“Reich also said nothing about the scheme to privatize public education. Does he not realize that, under the guise of “school choice,” neighborhood schools are being closed and replaced with unregulated or minimally regulated charters that have no elected boards or PTAs, which effectively eliminate community participation and democracy in education? That benefits no one more than corporate and entrepreneurial profiteers, such as the 16 charter school CEOs in NY who earn $500K per year –more than Obama is paid?
“On his “Inequality for All” website, Reich indicates strong support for Obama’s new policy plan for higher education. As a college professor, Reich should know about the fiscal issues of colleges, because their funds are certainly not going to the majority of college faculty, 70% of whom across this nation are non-union, low paid contingency workers with no benefits. He should also know better than to support the plan for higher education without very carefully scrutinizing it, because it is as much a TROJAN HORSE as K-12 policies are under NCLB and RttT.
“If Reich does not fully understand what’s happening in education, then he should read Diane’s book, “Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
If the intent of standardized testing over the past decade, under NCLB, had been so that teachers could increase student learning, then formative tests would have been used and the results would have included item analysis, so that teachers could target interventions for individual students. Instead, summative tests were used and teachers received the results, with no item analysis, in the summer –after students left their classes. These kinds of tests have been purely punitive, in order to tag teachers and schools as failing.
That was a very cunning way of further promoting the manufactured crisis claimed in the 1983 “A Nation at Risk,” setting the stage for “free” market capitalism to take hold as the supposed savior of public education, including firing teachers, shutting down schools and handing buildings over to profiteers waiting in the wings to privatize education.
It would indeed be wise for Reich to read Diane’s book.
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Robert Reich is one of my heroes. His relentless reiteration of his basic economic message he knows to be true inspires me to relentlessly reiterate the pedagogical message that I know to be true.
I heard him talking about education on KQED radio recently. He seemed to think that fixing America’s residential segregation on the basis of race and class would make a big dent in the achievement gap and inequality generally. I agree this would help –but only a little. He might look in his own backyard: Berkeley Public Schools are very integrated and yet the black/white achievement gap remains huge. I think E.D. Hirsch has the best thinking on this topic: underprivileged kids have a giant knowledge deficit because their parents do not infuse their minds with as much world and word-knowledge as professional parents do. Only a knowledge-rich curriculum can get these kids up to speed. Unfortunately, that’s not what most American schools offer. Ironically, in our effort to focus on basic reading and math skills, we’re starving kids’ minds of the robust content knowledge that would actually make them strong readers and thinkers. American teachers have been fed pedagogical snake oil –the false notion that reading is a function of teaching and practicing a kit of metacognitive “reading strategies” such as using context clues to figure out unfamiliar vocabulary. Sounds convincing to lay people like Reich, but these strategies only help a little, as E.D. Hirsch shows. Reading ability is mostly a function of how much background knowledge one possesses; ergo, schools need to teach lots of knowledge.
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I second the motion!
Spot on Ponderosa. We went down a very dark road when the teaching of facts, concepts, and ideas, (along with the languages of our disciplines combined with rich conversational vocabulary) was replaced with trying to teach thinking strategies and processing. Sounds convincing to well educated people because they cannot fathom what it feels like to have virtually no background knowledge while trying to learn something new.
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Yes, educated people tend to be blind to the role their own vast background knowledge plays in their day-to-day mental functioning. Once you learn it, it enters the unconscious where it works invisibly.
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Great Post!
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My favorite is to teach HOTS (higher order thinking skills) without anything to think about. There must be a foundation for everything before anything higher can be accomplished.
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TAGO, drext 727!
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Now that Gates/Obama (note who comes first) have started targeting colleges, I believe that Mr. Reich will start to notice.
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I think that the outcry over testing has finally become large enough for him to notice. I seriously doubt that he is up to speed on what has been happening inK-12 education, at least I hope that is the case. Similarly, I think he has been so focused on his expertize that I doubt he really has thought very deeply or done any serious research about what has been happening in higher education in the last couple of decades. It seems hard to believe that he has failed to see the role business has played in the change in higher academic culture. The focus no longer seems to lie with fostering learning but in how much can be made off of the current high flyer specialties.
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C’mon, Robert.Time to catch up.
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Here in Palm Beach County, FL, we definitely are experiencing way too much testing. Diagnostic testing fills up the months of September and January. The FCAT, the annual standardized test, takes up another half of a month. Here’s my talk before the School Board tonight:
http://youtu.be/beBKR1cqxOw
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Good for you, Andy!
Florida sounds like a nightmare for teachers. Is that the state where if you get two evaluations with low test scores they take away your teaching license? It’s really sick! I teach in a northern state and am well paid, but they are quickly dismantling our pensions, taking away our tenure, and freezing our salaries as well. No state will survive this tsunami. I went to public middle school in Boca Raton. I wonder what happened to the teachers I liked so much. I think of their kind faces, and then I think of the Florida politicians who smile as they sign legislation ruining the lives of teachers in Florida. It’s really sickening. I feel great empathy for teachers all over this country. It is such a hard, exhausting job and to be attacked in the public sphere as well is very mentally taxing. I will never allow my kids to be teachers and be treated like this. Good luck to you! All of this is really surreal. How long did it take to completely ruin a great, meaningful career? Our country has really taken a dark, sinister turn… How many countries in history have turned on their own teachers and schools and destroyed them?
Perhaps Dr. Ravitch can answer that one.
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His main focus is on the labor and public policy at macro-level. I’m not exactly sure if he ever discusses the role of K-12 public education in his research. I remember he mentioned the problem with privatization of public education briefly in his lectures, mostly in Q&A sessions. He’s strongly against tax cuts for the rich and further curtailment of penions for public workers. So, I think that’s where his point could meet with the critique of Obama administration and Democrats on education reform. Hope he would take that path in the future.
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In agreement. Perhaps, Dr. Reich will respond to these suggestions; he is VERY pro-union and has often pointed to the success of Germany’s trade unions, especially since 2008. With the great role Neoliberal education reform is playing in creating the “inequality for all” described by Reich, perhaps that can be his NEXT book. (Such a subject would require its own book, if not more.)
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Read Reign of Error! Good advice!
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Haven’t read it yet.
(just because Diane wrote that she was hashing out the book through the blog for the prior year or so. I’ll get it eventually, and I’ve been thinking about buying it for all of our school board members and the admin, although I’m a cheap SOB and would prefer to buy a paperback if I could)
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Robert Reich has recently talked about how bad schools are and I think he does buy into the common rhetoric except for the standardized testing. It would be good to reach out to him more and educate him on public education policy. http://www.ontheissues.org/celeb/Robert_Reich_Education.htm
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Thanks for sharing that link, lellingw.
OMG. Reich wrote, “School vouchers… would improve overall school performance by introducing competition into the school system”
in Aftershock, by Robert Reich, p.135 , Apr 5, 2011
For someone who is so alarmed about the poor quality of day care programs in this country, as indicated on his “Inequality for All” website, Reich has not learned the most important thing from that. Those are largely private but state licensed and regulated child care programs, many of which receive government vouchers, that compete with each other for students, but generally their quality is abysmal.
If there is any large scale example of how free market competition does not result in high quality schools, the 330,200 regulated child care programs in this country would be it!
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And BTW, those child care programs are regulated, in all states, in order to ensure that standards are met for our nation’s youngest and most vulnerable children.
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That speaks volumes about Reich. Who do you think this man interacts with? Obviously not anyone with real experience. He acts like he is such a champion of workers yet, he supports vouchers and so called “competition” which we all know is a farce. Clueless.
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I don’t know where Reich gets his info about education, but both of the Clintons have been Reich’s close buddies since their college days. Reich is a political economist and, although he may have broken with neo-liberalism to some extent, clearly, his belief that free market competition somehow automatically results in improvement remains.
And it truly baffles the mind. Where do they get this stuff? This is hardly applicable to social programs where what is produced is intangible, but even in retail markets with tangible products, competition does not necessarily lead to better products.
I’ve been waiting for McDonalds to produce a top quality half pound burger for decades. They do just fine being a producer of mediocre burgers though, so no need to add that. Even though a lot of us have long gone to other places for higher quality burgers, and McDonalds has added some new burger options to their menu recently, like about 50 years after the fact, I’m still waiting for them to produce something that comes anywhere near the high quality burgers found at competing restaurants.
When businesses can make profits regardless of quality, as with private child care centers, charter schools and Big Macs, competition does not automatically serve as an incentive for companies to raise their bar and aim for excellence. Blind faith in market competition is unwarranted.
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The Resistance was never meant to be an exclusive club, even though historical accuracy is going to continue to be important. After all, had more personalities (and academic celebrities) been helping the resistance back in the day when it was Susan Ohanian, Jerry Bracy and a few of us scattered from Chicago to Seattle, New York and other places, maybe we wouldn’t still be facing the odious months of testing ahead in 2014. But — c’est la guerre. As we said in Chicago after we read “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” — Better late than never. And when “Reign of Error…” arrived, I made sure that everyone in CORE who wanted a copy could buy one, and so far our total has exceeded 50 — with more people picking up “Reign of Error…” every month. So, now that Reich has arrived, let’s just open the bar, buy him a drink, and welcome him into a growing club.
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Reign of Error should be required reading for every school board member in America. Let The Resistance be with you!
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@Georg Schmidt… I am with you on this. I much admire Reich and feel (based on much of his leanings) that with some true investigating into what has been going on in public education, he will be of great assistance to the cause of returning sanity back to public education. So yes, “let’s welcome his to the growing club” as you say.
As to my first reaction to this particular blog article… I feel confident that he will investigate fact from myth in the public education debate. Maybe the testing issue is the initial spark. True educators are now out in force as they to help him question the degree of spin put out by “reformers”. I have every confidence that this scholar is already aware of the latest Ravitch book and he hopefully is doing more investigating to separate myth from reality. I would not expect Ravitch to go full force into all important subjects of our time. I am glad she has remained focused on education! But when one of those important subjects clearly impacts a subject near and dear to her (yes linked to public education), I would anticipate her investigating. So, likewise, I would not express surprise that it has taken this long for Reich to reflect on the public education debate. Now that testing has got his ear, it is my hope as a political economist that Reich pays attention to how campaign finance “reforms” have upset the checks and balances so vital to democracy and that he sees a connection to how this is effecting the future of public education.
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Wanted to finish with…
Mega millionaires have way too much “buying power” in government thanks to changes in laws regarding PAC money and how it connects to our politicians in the highest offices of govt. So everything seems to be for sale to the “highest bidder” and this has exacted ENORMOUS INFLUENCE on national education policy from elementary to high school level and now onto university level!
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>I feel confident that he will investigate fact from myth in the public education debate.<
In a perfect world this would be an education debate. Diane, R Reich, and Mercedes v. Coleman, Duncan, and Rhee. Teachers debating teachers. Developmental experts and cognitive learning specialists invited to the table. Listening, responsiveness and flexibility from from the inexpert reformers. But NO none of this is allowed. If we continue to view this as a discussion or debate – WE LOSE.
This is a political battle. It is complete with talking points (propaganda) and out right lies from the reformers. And it will have a winner and a loser. The reform group at this point is not only better funded and more politically powerful, but also much more organized. We can repeat their propaganda verbatim: "US schools are failing" "Teachers are lazy, ineffective babysitters" "We have the solution to make students college and career ready." "CCSS teaches higher order, critical thinking skills" "CCSS written by states with lots of teacher input." ALL OF IT HOGWASH.
The Resistance as George Schmidt so aptly dubs us are politically orphaned (even our own union have sold us out); we only work pro bono, and we must seem quite disorganized with our message – all over the map really. My point here is that the one aspect of the Resistance that we must improve that is within reach is the organization of our message. We need effective talking points that are not lies or propaganda must truth. The reform argument has so many cracks that the light pours through. We need to stay on point with a message that resonates with out closest and most important allies -the parents. They love their children too much to let their long cherished neighborhood schools be dismantled by the neoliberal gang that really cant shoot straight.
Suggested talking points to start the list:
1) PARCC/SBAC are writing TESTS designed to TRICK and TRAP
and WEAR DOWN children into FAILURE. Parents,
OPT OUT NOW!
2) NOT ONE reform member is willing to subject their own children to
Common Core standards, instruction or tests. They have all opted
out and want to experiment with other people's children.
3) CC standards and tests were written by NON-EDUCATORS with
no teaching experience. Its NOT the implementation, its the
standards and testing stupid.
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I’m glad to have company on this score. With all due respect to Robert Reich, whose laser focus on inequality is admirable, I’m troubled by his dismissal of education–not only K-12, but early childhood education–as a critical factor in the inequality equation. In a nation where 25% of children under six are living in poverty (with poverty rates for African-American and Native-American children even higher), we cannot afford to ignore the development of human capital.
More here: http://www.ecepolicymatters.com/archives/1906
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@Susan Ochshorn… human beings are not “human capital”. I fear that the push for early childhood pre k education is really a thinly veiled strategy for the corporate profiteers to come in and design tests and booklets for schools nation-wide wholly for corporate profit and certainly not for the benefit of young children whose developing brains need hands-on, experiential learning. And working on the poverty problem first and foremost would go a long way toward improving education in this country… FIRST AND FOREMOST.
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Exactly, artsegal. The term “human capital” makes me ill. It means tools for profiteers. That should be the furthest thing away from a definition of our youngest children. I also suspect that corporate “reformers” pushing universal PreK intend to make that drill and kill, too, in order to create more compliant low-wage workers. No need to address poverty if most people can be taught to be grateful just to have a job and accept being poor.
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I know many academics, and among them I have observed a lot of ambivalence about the reform/resistance dynamic,and have met many otherwise traditional liberals who buy into much of the “reform” agenda. Everything we say about the perniciousness of pseudo-reform may be true. But it’s also true that many college instructors (which is what Reich is) have to deal with large numbers of HS graduates who are borderline illiterate and/or innumerate and in no way capable of doing college level work. Employers dealing with HS grads or grads of lower tier and community colleges face the same situation. This is a real situation and was not made up by the “reformers”.
The “reformers'” diagnosis of why it’s happening and their prescriptions may be BS. However, they have been some of the loudest voices over a long time crying out about large portions of the the population not being college and/or career ready. For this they have a lot of credibility in both academic and business circles. To many well-intentioned, well-informed, and thoughtful people it is not immediately obvious that the “reformers” are wrong and that poverty and inequality is the main driver of poor educational outcomes and further poverty and inequality. The market-based ideology actually does work in some domains. For people who have experienced it working in those domains, it takes time and major shifts in their thinking to understand why it doesn’t work in other domains.
In Reich’s case, it’s important to note that today he seems like a classic liberal favoring a traditional liberal agenda on all fronts, but that’s not the way he has always been. He was a Clinton-ite third way true believer for many years. It took working for Clinton (who was very much a proponent of extending the market paradigm to other domains) and experiencing personal and policy disenchantment with him to push Reich away from this approach. I suspect if he has now moved away from third-way-ism with respect to education, this is a matter of it being the last of many layers of scales needing to fall from his eyes.
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Are you saying Reich taught students that were borderline illiterate? Honestly? Borderline illiterate? Like, 4th grade reading level? Why would community colleges or even regular colleges accept students of this level? That is a bit extreme. Students who are not quite on level can still succeed at college.
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I’m not saying Reich taught students who are borderline illiterate. He taught at Harvard, Brandeis, and UC Berkeley (mainly grad students, SFAIK), and he personally has probably mainly faced very high-level students. But he’s an academic who swims among other academics who do deal with many students who are severely under-prepared. My acquaintances who are professors at non-elite colleges have shown me countless undergrad term papers and exam books that are completely incoherent on every level (ideas, grammar, spelling, logical coherence, grasp of subject matter). These are not needles in haystacks. They are large percentages of the papers that get submitted. As to why colleges accept them, well, they do. Some have explicitly remedial missions, some are diploma mills, some fall in between the two.
I work in the public sector and deal with many employees who are HS, community college, or lower-tier college grads. I’m not exaggerating when I say that many of them are borderline illiterate and innumerate. I spend literally hours of every week just trying to figure out what people are talking about or trying to accomplish because they can’t string together a coherent sentence or thought. I spend hours every week trying to sort out problems resulting from peoples’ inability follow basic procedures and instructions. If you work in a business that hires mainly graduates from middle and top tier colleges you don’t see much of this. But if you work in sectors that hire people at the median or lower level of educational attainment you see it all the time. People can’t read, write, think, do basic algebra, or understand the most basic elements of what’s going on around them in the workplace.
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Why would you hire and keep such incompetent workers?
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I think much of what you are describing is more of a cultural problem than an educational one. By the time a student complete 8th grade they have spent a maximum of 5% of their life in front of a teacher.
Its really hard to dent the other 95% of influences in what you are essentially describing as a lack of seriousness, lack of work ethic, and general common sense/intelligence. If you expect the average young adult to apply the algebra skills taught in 9th grade in the workplace you really must tone down your expectations. Most of them don’t understand it when there 15.
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” can’t read, write, think, do basic algebra, or understand the most basic elements of what’s going on around them in the workplace.”
And you didn’t notice this before you hired them?
Blame your HR dept not the local school!
I don’t mean to be snarky, but I hear this often from friends in the “real world” (business, don’t ya know is the real world).
When pushed further they admit these “totally unprepared, borderline illiterates” are found in very low paying positions. So, supposedly only less well prepared candidates apply, since those with better skills go for the higher paying/better/non dead end jobs.
Or they admit to just hiring anyone because it is a churn and burn type position.
And sometimes, when really pushed, they even admit to snobbery, classism even some borderline racism because these “borderline illeterates” are very much from a different culture that my friend(s) simply has no experience of ,or ability to be comfortable with or really even work with.
(To be clear, I am not accusing you of racism or anything else! I am only sharing my experiences as you shared yours)
I always remind my business savvy friends they get what they pay for..in workers as well as materials.
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You are perpetrating another talking point myth. College remediation can only be blamed on the colleges who more than willingly take the tuition fees from students who’s HS records show them ill prepared for immediate success. Why not mention the thousands of hard working HS students that entered college with all the knowledge, skills, and work ethic required to flourish. I think most of the problems associated with freshman success have to do with social adjustments and time management. A sudden burst of independence can play havoc with some. I also find fault with college de-fact policies that fail to restrict alcohol and drug use. I don’t know about you, but when I see a one of the huge college stadiums filled with students cheering on their football team, I don’t see them as a bunch of illiterate and incapable kids.
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It’s not a myth that many, many, people enter post-secondary education, the workforce, and the polity (which to me is at least as important) at an extremely low level of skill and knowledge and do not progress beyond that level. It’s a myth that it’s their own fault, or that it’s their teachers’ fault, or a product of the tyranny of low expectations. it’s a myth that the “reform” pallette will fix this situation. But the situation is real.
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You seem to be describing an overall level of general incompetence and apathy that is hard to fathom. What do you think could help remedy this problem?
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John A
Maybe what you are experiencing is damaging effects of the self-esteem movement and the equally disastrous constructivist/discovery methods widely employed in schools. I don’t know for sure but what you are describing, if as widespread as you suggest, is quite alarming.
Let me give you a heads up – the new CC reform movement despite its unsupported claims of college and career readiness will only make things worse. Whatever you can do to derail this disaster will help right the ship.
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Yes, NYC, John A is “perpetrating another talking point” myth. I’ve taught at more than a half dozen colleges over the past three decades, from selective upper tier schools to community colleges, which accept anyone. While the quality of student work varies, I have yet to have a single student in my classes who is illiterate or innumerate.
The English Language Learners are often the most challenged, understandably, but even at schools with open enrollments, in order to be accepted in a degree program, students must pass basic English and Math competency tests.
I have always taught English writing skills along with the subject matter in my content area courses, regardless of the school or course level. That is because, often, even the highest functioning students can still improve, particularly because writing in APA style is a department requirement and that is new for most students, so their need for guidance should be expected.
Another myth, which you are perpetuating yourself, NYC, is that constructivism is about discovery learning. Vygotsky’s social constructivism has been the dominant constructivist approach implemented in this country for decades. That emphasises the importance of social influences on learning, and intentional teaching at the student’s instructional level, within their zone of proximal development, is integral to social constructivism. It is not about waiting around for children to just discover things on their own. That is maturationism, not constructivism.
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John A makes excellent points. Most of the college professors I know (SJSU, SFSU, and other public universities) deplore the terrible writing skills and general academic weakness of many of their students. It’s ironic because if there’s anything schools have obsessed over during the last 20 years, it’s writing. Writing workshop year after year. Yet I see no sign of course adjustment amongst my colleagues. Their prescription is the same: more writing workshop. What if the ability to write is best developed by a solid liberal arts education wherein you learn a lot about the world, you learn the words to describe it, and you encounter the works of excellent writers?
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>What if the ability to write is best developed by
a solid liberal arts education wherein you learn
a lot about the world, you learn the words to describe it,
and you encounter the works of excellent writers?<
DING!
Ponderosa, time to put you in charge. Why this simple idea of fundamental importance of developing rich background knowledge/language has escaped so many is truly mystifying.
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“What if the ability to write is best developed by a solid liberal arts education”
Sorry, but this is not new. That’s what “writing across the curriculum” is all about, instead of just focusing on isolated skill building devoid of content. And I’ve seen it going on in schools for a very long time, from Early Childhood on up.
Stop buying and passing along the false failing schools narrative!
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I don’t know where to post this but here is the current NEA s ance on CC implementation. What they once supported has shown to be so poorly implemented that it can no linger retain that support. Lack of educator input us at the top of the list.
http://neatoday.org/2014/02/19/nea-president-we-need-a-course-correction-on-common-core/
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Better late than never; I hope.
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John A – A traditional college education probably requires an IQ of at least about 110. About 25% of the US population is at or above this level but we send a lot more than 25% of the population to college. So many people wind up in college who don’t belong there.
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Don’t buy into Jim’s claim that “A traditional college education probably requires an IQ of at least about 110.” That figure is his own concoction, most likely based on his leaning towards eugenics.
Colleges do not require IQ tests, so it would be very difficult to produce valid and reliable data indicating the IQs of successful college students.
We don’t “send” anyone to college. People go there of their own choosing, often because what they want to do in their careers requires a college education. That said, college is not necessary for all careers, the trades are respectable professions as well, many of which do not require college, and college is not a good match for everyone.
However, there is nothing wrong with being average!
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