Let’s face it. If Arne resigned, as the delegates to the NEA convention recommended in Denver, teachers would be thrilled to see one of the worst Secretaries of Education go away, but would we get someone worse? Would it be Ted Mitchell, who makes no bones about his love of privatization and for-profits? Would it be the teachers’ nemesis Michelle Rhee? Most reformers make too much money to step down to a cabinet job, so maybe it would be one of Jeb Bush’s Chiefs for Change, like Deborah Gist of Rhode Island or Hanna Skandera of New Mexico or John White of Louisiana? What does it say about Obama that his likely choice would have to be acceptable to DFER, Stand on Children, Bill Gates, Eli Broad, and the other reformers?
One thing we would not miss: Arne Duncan’s affinity for the term “game changer.” Here is parent Matt Farmer of Chicago, remarking on how frequently Arne sees some phenomena as a game changer.
Farmer wrote in 2013:
“Let’s go back to 2010.
That February, Duncan called a proposal for increased funding of student loans “a real game-changer.”
By mid-July, he deemed “shared standards for college-readiness…an absolute game changer.”
His thinking had obviously evolved by the end of July, when he concluded that “the big game-changer is to start measuring individual student growth rather than proficiency.”
August, however, brought another epiphany. Duncan realized that the “big game-changer…revolves around the issue of teacher quality.”
In September, he concluded that the “new [Race to the Top] tests will be an absolute game-changer in public education.”
And Duncan, like a lanky philanthropist filling the tin cups of educational panhandlers, continued doling out change in 2010.
In November, he hit Paris to address the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Arne changed the game so often during that speech his UNESCO audience needed copies of “According To Hoyle” just to keep up with him.
After noting that in “the knowledge economy, education is the new game-changer,” Duncan assured the crowd that the sweeping adoption of “common college-ready standards that are internationally benchmarked . . . is an absolute game-changer.”
The secretary of education then called a “new generation of assessments aligned with the states’ Common Core standards” a “second game-changer,” even though it was actually the third “game-changer” Duncan had offered the assembled UNESCO masses during that difficult-to-diagram, five-minute rhetorical stretch.”
If Arne left, would it be a game changer or would President Obama go back to DFER to get their pock?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
What “game changer”?
If Mr. Moron resigned, then there are, like, 1,000 people similar to him to take his place.
Ms. Rhee-jected and Rhee-pulsive is licking her chops. So is Joel Klein or just about any state commissioner of education eating out of the palm of the National Governor’s Association.
This will take more than ventriloquist puppet Dunca’s resignation. It will take a different course set by Congress and the President, but doing so is like coitus interruptus for them. They won’t bother. Too much political fornication has only made this harder.
I say we look to parents and educators across America to put pressure on DC . . . .
It’s the only way.
“. . . but doing so is like coitus interruptus for them. They won’t bother. Too much political fornication has only made this harder.”
They are sycophantic obligatory onanists who practice mental masturbation in pursuit of a little power and money in their lives.
If nothing, this blog is helping to improve my vocabulary.
I had a picture drawn up by one of our art teachers (as I am terrible with that sort of thing) that I use as part of a “standardized test” question* that shows a cow with tail raised and the pile labelled “standardized testing and each mid air dropping labeled MAP, EOC, etc. . . or for whatever those tests are named. The cow is looking at the viewer and is saying “mmoo!” which stands for “mental masturbation (and) obligatory onanism” in reference to what, standardized testing, is occurring at the back end of the cow..
*The question is “What does the acronym MMOO stand for?
It appears that the US Department of Education is in need of either disbandment or restructuring.
It has immense power and authority with the ability to make mandates that have to be followed regardless of the benefit to students.
Initiatives such as No Child Left Behind, with its high stakes standardized testing and the granting of huge federal student loan guaranties to schools of dubious stature
suggest a lack of comprehension of governance and organizational effectiveness.
Bain & Company performed a study published in the Chronicle of Higher Education which suggested that one third of the colleges in its study group of 1,700 higher education institutions had unsustainable spending patterns when compared to their endowment reserves.
http://chronicle.com/article/One-Third-of-Colleges-Are-on/133095/
It appears that there is a provision in the student loan provision which writes off student loans in those cases in which the college has failed. I suggest that you, the taxpayer who funds the folly initiatives of the Washington Beltway ivory tower elites, are facing a
virtual replication of the horrendous mortgage loan frauds of a decade ago.
One documented case reported in The New York Times relates to for-profit colleges of veterinary medicine based in the Caribbean that serves the large population of aspirant animal doctors who were rejected by the admissions committees of the land grant colleges of veterinary medicine.
One might logically infer that that population might well be of lower caliber of ability than those who were approved for admission by the land grant schools.
The NYTimes piece relates how the legends of graduates spawned by these island vet schools frequently have federally insured student loan indebtedness in the $300,000 range. The piece also related as to how many of the island vet school graduates were having difficulty securing positions as professional veterinarians.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/business/high-debt-and-falling-demand-trap-new-veterinarians.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
For any who might be of the illusion that new vets are candidates for Ferrari ownership, let me clarify that gross misconception. Being an animal doctor is a calling, not the road to riches. The work in school is exceedingly difficult, with fifteen to seventeen hours per day at the top schools being the norm.
After you graduate, you find that the delivery drivers for UPS earn more than you start for. If you are money motivated, this is definitely not your field. It has enormous rewards, and no one is more highly respected than the family’s veterinarian, but the Ferrari dealership is not likely to see you unless you run in a 10K race past the dealership.
Those who are in the field tend to love their careers, just as outstanding teachers love their careers. The best in both are not money motivated. They have responded to their calling and they have self-actualization, something most billionaires never achieve.
Goodness, Duane, and TAGO!
Ah, Robert, you were just treading into my verbal territorial waters-ha ha!
Hope you and yours had a good holiday!
I recommend Cami Anderson. She has the proper game changing qualifications to implement One USA.
NJTeacher: thanks for sharing this as many of us have been watching Newark etc. and what has happened there. It’s important to know what is going on in the different states. As an aside I wanted to share that when Christie gave his long press conference that several people were counting his words and analyzing. If you count the number of times he uses the “Listen” command at the beginning of a sentence it will remind you of “now hear this” … many times over and over; and, he uses it a lot with reporters. So does Scott Brown (in NH now)…. and their scorn and condescending attitude towards the reporters is almost as harsh as what they use on teachers. So we always get back to “i’m the decider ” in one form or another.
It goes back to the adage “better the devil you know, then the devil you don’t know”.
Let’s get Dennis Van Roekel to take his place
Um…no…
Retired, Dennis has been a part of the educational process all of his life. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone with more experience.
Yeah and look where that got us.
You’ll have to explain that to me.
Ay, ay, ay, ay, aiiyy!
Said with a disgusting tone of voice.
When thinking about game changer, it’s he impact on the 2014 election the Dems should be thinking about. The far right is making CCSS a big issue. The Dems are losing the teachers on evaluation, and losing parents and teachers on testing.
What they need is not just a Duncan dump but a complete policy shift.
the problem is the policies to which Obama has been willing to agree. Duncan is not driving policy where Obama does not want to go. So long as people on domestic policy council and in high-ranking positions below Secretary in Dept of Ed are CAP types or from Gates Foundation, or from things like New Schools Venture Fund, it is irrelevant who is Secretary of Education, the policies will remain the same. Getting Duncan out solves nothing if his replacement is someone like the current #2, Ted Mitchell, or someone like Sen. Michael Bennet (who ran Denver schools). Were I guessing the first choice would not be any of names you have mentioned, but John Deasy of LA, previously at Gates, before that at Prince George’s Maryland (where I was employed during his tenure) and before that a smaller district in California. However, his handling of the Ipads in LA may have made him too toxic.
Ultimately, one of the worst failures of this administration will have been what it did to damage public education, building upon and continuing the destructive policies of its predecessors particularly in the administration of George W. Bush, but also to some degree in the Clinton administration – which is one reason why some knowledgeable educators are less than enamored of the likelihood of a President Hillary Clinton.
Let’s not forget that V.P. Biden’s brother Frank is a big charter operator in Florida.
At the rate his game keeps soiling itself, it’s no wonder it keeps requiring changes.
Assessments… Buzz, click, whirr… Accountability… Buzz, click whirr… Game changers… Buzz, click, whirr… College and career ready… Buzz, click, whirr…
How about a full one page ad on the duplicitous nature of the Obama administration in regards to public education. After all Obama sought, and got, the support of teachers and their unions in 2008 and 2012 (I voted Green Party for 2012). Let’s call him out on the disastrous charter movement, his disastrous testing strategy to rate students and teachers, derived no doubt from Microsoft’s failed “stack ranking” system pitting employees against one another that lead to its “lost decade”. A nice full page ad in the NYTimes enumerating candidate Obama’s statements with those of President Obama. Obama seems to be pivoting to help the middle class recently (2014 elections???). Let’s not allow him to dupe the public again. Let’s hold him accountable. So many followers here along with BATS and, dare I hope, NEA, AFT/UFT chipping in, it could be done. I would be willing to contribute more than I have to any politician.
Michael Brocum: you are quite right to connect “stack ranking” to high-stakes standardized testing. Both label, sort, rank and then reward [few] and punish [many].
Here’s what it did at Microsoft:
[start quote]
By 2002 the by-product of bureaucracy—brutal corporate politics—had reared its head at Microsoft. And, current and former executives said, each year the intensity and destructiveness of the game playing grew worse as employees struggled to beat out their co-workers for promotions, bonuses, or just survival.
Microsoft’s managers, intentionally or not, pumped up the volume on the viciousness. What emerged—when combined with the bitterness about financial disparities among employees, the slow pace of development, and the power of the Windows and Office divisions to kill innovation—was a toxic stew of internal antagonism and warfare.
“If you don’t play the politics, it’s management by character assassination,” said Turkel.
At the center of the cultural problems was a management system called “stack ranking.” Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees. The system—also referred to as “the performance model,” “the bell curve,” or just “the employee review”—has, with certain variations over the years, worked like this: every unit was forced to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, then good performers, then average, then below average, then poor.
“If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, two people were going to get a great review, seven were going to get mediocre reviews, and one was going to get a terrible review,” said a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”
[end quote]
Link: http://www.vanityfair.com/business/2012/08/microsoft-lost-mojo-steve-ballmer
“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” [Albert Einstein]
😎
Last sentence from Einstein was used by Obama in his 2008 campaign. Once elected he did exactly that. Appointed the same old crew which of course gave us the same policies that allowed banksters to walk away without indictments, collect million dollar bonuses on the tax payers dime, all the while letting home owners in financial difficulty lose their homes. Truly a despicable leader. I trust history will not be kind to him.
The system you describe has just been installed in Maryland, with a rebranding of Drucker’s 1954 management by objectives (MBO) as SLOs–student learning objectives. The most widely copied template for this system of stack rating teachers originated with Denver’s pay for performance plan, jump started in 1999 with money from the Broad and other foundations. Teachers in Maryland are expected to “embrace” this failed method of trying to improve the “productivity of teachers” with the primary measure of effective production those documented gains in test scores– wrongly and misleadingly dubbed “student growth.”
Somehow it seems that business management methods were deemed superior than those where competition/productivity/profits were not part of the equation such as the public sector. The public was sold a very bad “bill-of-goods”. Slowly but surely the public is catching on. The public would catch on much faster if the editorial boards weren’t so broadly (inexplicably?) supportive of the destructive educational policies of the Obama administration.
Microsoft has been called the world’s largest mom & pop company, because nothing happens there without the fingerprints of Messers.
Gates and Balmer being attached.
One of these days, he’ll make a Freudian slip and say: “[insert Bad Policy here] is a ‘change gamer’.”
‘change gamer’ = TAGO!
I don’t expect this to change anything in the administration. However, I think it is a game changer for the NEA.
Arne is just a cog in the corporate takeover machine. As Obama, he was bought and paid for by the Wall Street ownership class.
we must focus on Hillary Clinton and insist that she renounce the privatization of public education. any ideas?
Do you think Hillary Clinton is a champion for public schools, teachers and children? She served on Wal-Mart’s board of directors, remember. Elizabeth Warren is a much, much better choice.
Again, read Carl Bernstein’s Hilary book, section RE: Arkansas Teachers Assn. & there having to be “a villain.” (In this case, according to Hilary, the ATA.)
The press and all of conservative think tanks will likely take the call for Duncan’s resignation as more evidence of the union’s undue influence on what happens in school, desire to protect teachers from accountability, and so on.
Laura is right in terms of the coverage or response that it will get. There are still a lot of places that don’t cover it at all or , if they do, reduce it to tea party extremism. The more parents, taxpayers, neighbors, local newspapers we can influence ….. I for one am not having great success even influencing family members. When Christie got elected in NJ I had to prepare ahead for family holidays because the NJ family would attack the grandfather in MA who spent his lifetime in education and they would use Christie’s attacks on teachers in a personal way. There is a lot of work to be done with friends and acquaintances as well as the petitions, the letters to editors, the calls to the reps etc….. we can’t give up on this and take steps on all these fronts.
Unions have to stop being on the defensive and reacting to attacks and go on the attack. Let’s point out the duplicitous nature of the Obama administration. How about a national one day strike. That would get parents attention. Involved parents see what is going on and are demanding an end to all the testing that is used to punish students and especially teachers which is the real goal. How else to get rid of unions and make teachers at-will employees with low salaries, no job security, and no pensions. I would also like to see a one day full page ad in the NYTimes pointing out the duplicitous nature of the Obama administration: candidate (2008) Obama v. President Obama statements about teachers). Let’s hold Obama accountable! (and send a message to Hillary).
Duncan’s constant use of sports metaphor has always been abhorrent to me. Sometimes it might be appropriate depending on the audience or the purpose? but as a general rule of thumb it enrages me.
Falcon and Wolf who do communications analysis state : “If I were watching someone play poker, just as Matt Damon explained in Rounders, I’d be looking for tells. In my field, you look for tells too, but they’re in the language, the emphasis, the point of view. ”
I fall back on the pejorative “drugstore cowboy” with no substance…. (my own bias);
a content analysis (manifest content, latent content) is beyond my ability at this point but I don’t find the substance of Arne’s talk to be other than propaganda, bandwagon, name calling, and I always think of the Dorothy and the Scarecrow (which is not quite as pejorative as “drugstore cowboy” that came from our insight back in the day.)
Of course Obama would replace Arne with a clone. The problem is Obama—not Arne. Arne is a reflection of his boss, the president.
Right, Lloyd–just look at his recent pick of Ted Mitchell, when POTUS had the chance to choose someone of better stead.
President Obama’s “education policies” are a disaster because they have accomplished so very much of their goals. Progressive’s and liberals need to come to grips with the fact that NO Republican could have accomplished so much distruction on our public school system. The Dems never would have let McCain or Rommney get away with all Obama has done. Their opposition would have been politically motivated BUT at least it would have existed.
FURTHER, Hillary Clinton = 4 more years of Obama education policy. Too much money involved for any other outcome.
Public education needs either a miracle (warren) or a moron (Christie? Cruz?) in 2016.
Either way though, very tough road ahead. Bloggers cannot do it all. We need a rebellion and sabatours.
Obama hates public ed. He would definitely find a clone. Funny you didn’t mention Michelle Rhee as a possible candidate. But with her record of donations to Right Wing candidates, I suppose that would be pretty stupid for any Democrat to want her in the position. However, whoever is the next president will keep this momentum going–including Hillary!!!!
I’m not sure where all that comes from about Hillary continuing Obama’s ed policies. During her 2008 campaign for the nomination she clearly stated that if she was elected she would end NCLB. I don’t recall Obama criticizing NCLB although he did say the right about teachers at that time. But then I guess that’s just one reason why I refer to Obama as “Duplicitor”-in-Chief”.
Obama could replace him with Karen Lewis. That would be cool.
Dream on!
The root cause of lack of effectiveness in academia in the United States is that the thousands of whims that have been started with much fanfare as being the silver bullet, only to be quickly abandoned have never been subjected to the scrutiny of The Scientific Method to see if there is validity and reliability in that particular protocol.
For generations, the two think tanks, The Brookings Institution and The Rand Corporation have released studies identifying the root causes of a litany of reasons that domestic public schools have failed to equal the performance of peer schools in foreign countries.
Unless we are willing to abdicate leadership in all key indusries to foreign companies, it is absolutely essential that we improve the “yield” that we get on our students outcomes.
It is no accident that South Korea is moving to dominate major industries, now that they have access to superbly developed employees.
What exactly has Korea developed? The U.S. is still the leader in innovation so I’m not sure how/where you get your ideas from. The U.S. invents, others copy. Think, iPhone, iPad, Internet, Digital HD Television, medical advances such as joint replacements, Facebook (debatable) and less desirable ones, such as the nuclear bomb. Surely You must know that our military is the best equipped with the most advanced technology. I would venture to say that most if not all of these is the result of people who attended public schools.
Sir-
I would invite you to visit your local library and review the editions of Consumer Reports that deal with product reviews of appliances, consumer electronics, autos, and cameras.
I suggest that you will find that those products most highly recommended as being the most reliable are not made any more in the US, but instead are manufactured by Asian based companies, though some do use US manufacturing sites.
Names like Samsung, Hyundai, and Canon prevail because they have mastered marketing research, Six Sigma manufacturing and exceptional customer satisfaction management protocols.
They are making the big bucks manufacturing; the tiny margins made by US retailers actually selling these superb products does not go far in supporting a higher quality of life.
Far too many of the graduates of US universities are incapable of working in any culture other than a hierarchical structure, where the workers are told what to do, when to do it and how to do/
Meanwhile those knowledge workers in foreign companies possess true “creative class” attributes and are continually improving in better. cheaper, smaller, and quicker goods and services.
Unless we initiate immediate and transformational improvements in the US human capital development infrastructure, you can expect funds to support key functions of our culture and society to continually get leaner and leaner.
The placebo educations that we have been imposing on our best and brightest are now coming home to roost.
You ignored the creativity part of my statement. I am a long time reader/member of CU. Again products designed and developed in the U.S. then built in Asia with much lower cost of labor often under abusive conditions. Creativity is what the U.S. excels in. Asia excels in low cost labor. In fact many of the designs & technology used in Asia were exported by American manufacturers to cut labor costs. One of my favorite examples is Schwinn Bicycles. A venerable brand many years ago that decided to cut cost by manufacturing in China under agreement with Giant Bicycle maker. Once Schwinn delivered the technology Giant copied the design and technology and sold their bikes using Schwinn designs. Whatever advantage Schwinn had in design was lost and Giant could now sell its “Schwinn” bikes at lower cost. By the way, one of the most important developments enabling offshore manufacturing for the U.S. market was the invention of the giant shipping containers that dramatically reduced the cost of maritime shipping. Without this development it would’ve been much harder for manufacturers to send their manufacturing overseas. This was invented by an American, Malcolm McLean. Lets not confuse low cost manufacturing with developing new products and ideas. Another hugely important innovation in manufacturing was the Deming (again American) idea that quality control during the assembly process would cost less than quick and sloppy assembly that would create costs later for repairs under warranty along with creating dissatisfied customers. Mr. Deming was unable to convince the American auto makers to use this system so he wound up selling it to Toyota. The rest is history. Ford was the first American auto maker to adopt it if I remember correctly, some 30 years or so after Toyota. Much of Japanese manufacturing techniques and management use the Deming model. In fact there is A Deming holiday in Japan. Imagine that. Holiday honoring the ideas of an American. Also it appears that his parents were definitely not well-to-do so I’m fairly confident to say he attended public schools.
If we could only get the public school establishment in the US to adopt and follow the guidance of W. Edwards Deming, I suggest that our future might be much brighter.
As it is, our grand children and their grand children are doomed to a far lower standard of living than our generation has enjoyed and messed up for future generations to clean up an pay for.
Kotlikoff & Burns “Coming Generational Storm” puts this rather bleak situation into perspective.
Another point: simply inventing a better widget produces almost no national wealth or wealth for for the entity holding that intellectual property.
For wealth to be created, it has to be scaled up to meet the needs of a significant portion of those who could benefit from it.
As an example, Xerox Corporation owned the classic R&D lab, Palo Alto Research Center or PARC, which was among the most fertile sites of innovation in the history of civilization.
Virtually no wealth from this ever accrued to Xerox Corporation, because the numbsculls who PARC reported to could not visualize the need for any product other than a copier or printer.
Others saw the amazing breakthroughs and ran with them reaping all of the profits.
Bob Metcalfe invented Ethernet at PARC, got PO’ed at the ineptitude of the Xerox guys, left and founded 3COM, one of the greatest success stories ever.
The ability to scale up and to manage growth is essential to building wealth.
I agree on scaling up. But our management sought to cut cost and ship manufacturing overseas. As foreign labor costs rise some manufacturing will return. It is my understanding they Apple has or is planning to return some of it to the U.S. as are other companies as foreign labor costs rise. Blaming public education in the U.S. is not the answer.
quote: “Blaming public education in the U.S. is not the answer.”
dormund has started out with the blaming. It is common in our society today; …. I still maintain that Galbraith had the view correct in his Economics and the Public Purpose…. but the current milieu seems to totally destroy that concept of “public purpose” or “public good” and anyone who doesn’t fathom that is in a different world.
Dormund is using a different paradigm from what I personally hold and I think he is on the wrong path but so are a lot of politicians and “business” types (but that is a euphemism because the people I know who worked in family business had a sense of good will that went along with their business ethic).
Two different worlds….
thanks to Jan Ressenger for this quote from Wellstone
: “”That all citizens will be given an equal start through a sound education is one of the most basic, promised rights of our democracy. Our chronic refusal as a nation to guarantee that right for all children…. is rooted in a kind of moral blindness, or at least a failure of moral imagination…. It is a failure which threatens our future as a nation of citizens called to a common purpose… tied to one another by a common bond.” —Senator Paul Wellstone — March 31, 2000
I don’t think if you really hold this as a worthy and valuable goal that you would be finding all the blame for economic difficulties with public schools or “academia”….
Joseph Stiglitz stated recently that one of the reasons for the huge increase in income/wealth concentration and lack of support for the public sector is the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was important to show that capitalism was superior to communism (more accurately socialism) by having a large middle class to prove that capitalism provided the best economic standard of living for the greatest number of people. If this country, and others, don’t change direction regarding income/wealth concentration I foresee at some point social unrest and/or another financial calamity.
Paul Toner is looking for a new position, I believe.
In other news, the NEA representative assembly has voted to oppose child deportations.
Other than NCLB, I am grossly ignorant of the accomplishments of the US Department of Education.
Since its inception, does its contributions to society outweigh its significant flawed judgments which carried the weight of federal mandates?
If not, I suggest that sunset is the appropriate direction.
“Power corrupts,
and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Lord Acton
Since the executive positions in the US Department of Education are determined by the political party of each successive President of the United States, that makes these political positions which might be awarded to the party faithful with no concern as to organizational effectiveness nor advanced astuteness in education on a macro scale.
With the massive disarray and lack of effectiveness readily apparent in both of our major political parties, I suggest that this is far too important a function to be left to the functional equivalent of FEMA Director Michael Brown of the Hurricane Katrina fame.
http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1103003,00.html
Another alternative would be to examine and consider emulating the British model of bureaucracies which have far higher quality career executives and far less authority by political posts filled by the political party de jour.
Human capital development is just far too important for it to be left to the whims of
political patronage individuals. Some have been outstanding, but the losses by the next generation when we have in power individuals who are either inept or corrupt or who fail to comprehend organizational effectiveness is a very great risk.
“Other than NCLB, I am grossly ignorant of the accomplishments of the US Department of Education.”
You are “grossly ignorant” because there has been no “accomplishments” of any type in the last 14 years minimum including that educational malpractice, NCLB.
cx: resseger
look at her blog this past week for her comments where she explains the vote for governor in her state for upcoming elections…
http://janresseger.wordpress.com/2014/07/02/stiglitz-inequality-is-not-inevitable/comment-page-1/#comment-1409
Got to hand it to Vallas, he’s a survivor. Destroyed school systems one after another yet here he is. Amazing.
since you mentioned Vallas, here is R.J.’s comment about voting in his state. “as an Illinois voter I’m stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place in the governor election this November. Bruce Raunner is a determined school privatizer. It’s been said he makes Wisconsin’s governor, Scott Walker, look almost progressive by comparison. The problem for this voter is that the current Illinois Democratic governor, Patrick Quinn, has chosen as his Lt. Gov. candidate, Paul Vallas. Vallas has left in his wake of city school leaderships around the country, including Chicago, an increase in charter schools at the expense of the public schools. I’m beginning to get a sense of perhaps what General George Armstrong Custer felt that afternoon long ago at Little Big Horn.
The principal root cause for companies to move manufacturing operations from Asia to the US is that natural gas costs five times as much in Asia as in the US. GE returned its appliance manufacturing from Asia to Louisville, Kentucky.
Incidentally, business corporations spend billions of dollars annually just to teach their employees basic math and English essential for mastery of their tasks. This should have been accomplished while the workers were in secondary schools.
The costs of providing this education on the basics is far less than the costs of errors and mistakes that would have occurred had inadequately educated employees been performing operations.
First I’ve heard of either one of those scenarios. Documentation?
Michael: I’ve heard it differently ; my nephew has been in “oil” and had to leave Houston because there was no work…. it cost more to bring the oil up from under ground (or when he was on boats , to get it from under the Gulf)… so he went to Colombia to follow the work; then he went to Saudi Arabia to get work; he has moved from Turkey , to Dubai to follow the work and is ready to retire out of London. He went on record in the London Parliament to testify against BP (not what they did in the Gulf but what occurred in London). He would say to me lovingly, “how do you want the oil delivered? through ships into Boston Harbor? or through the pipelines into Vermont, or railway cars coming down from Canada? Of course he is quite intelligent and a product of Houston Public Schools. But that is exactly my point… it is not the public schools who are responsible for the vagaries of the job market and the competition among corporations. So, I wish Dormund would stop blaming the schools with the examples he is brining in from manufacturing, etc. Maybe he is playing devil’s advocate? If so I have another nephew who is an ex-marine who works for the machinists union (Boeing type ).
Also, Dormund is using the wrong paradigm and it is not what I see as the purpose of education (and notice I put the PURPOSE of education at the beginning — not the purpose of making a profit); it becomes the tail wagging the dog. if we think of human beings as only a means to earn profits.
They are attempting to develop new antibiotics in Great Britain because of the resistant MERS and other infections. When asked “why did you put a business manager in charge of the group rather than a scientist who knows medicine?” the answer was: “Because it is a market failure and we have to re-structure to develop new incentives.”So this is what they are applying to schools and it is the wrong paradigm…. it implies the sole purpose of human life and humanity is defined by their view of the world . I have different aspirations about the quality of human life and the values for human beings rather than as pawns or “consumers ” of merchandise.
There have always been theories of “motivation” and incentives such as Theory X or Theory Y (so I guess you have to bring in Deming but I prefer Drucker) but I find the reading wars and the math wars more interesting.
First I’ve heard of either one of those scenarios. Documentation?
Reply Comments
jeanhaverhill@aol.com
Agreed. Some of the biggest scientific advances were accomplished by government funded research with institutions run by experts in the field that was being researched and without competition and worrying about the bottom line. (Although I think it’s fair to say the developers were certainly looking forward to personal gain…financial/recognition.)
“Incidentally, business corporations spend billions of dollars annually just to teach their employees basic math and English essential for mastery of their tasks. This should have been accomplished while the workers were in secondary schools.”
BS dormand, and you probably know it. Please site your source. Linking to google is a cop-out. This is just like the empty claim that there are thousands of jobs that can’t be filled because students from our schools here in the United states are incapable……
List the companies, the jobs and the requirements. These fantom jobs, for that is what they are, would be filled in an instant.
By the way, business should pay to educate their employees on the specifics of a job. Perhaps if they had to invest in the cost of training they would value their employees and build a business based on moral values and loyalty instead of greed and corruption. Business should no longer be allowed to externalize cost and internalize profit at the expense of the larger society.
I am agreeing with the statement that there are “thousands of jobs that can’t e filled” because students from our schools here in the U.S. are incapable. I have cited my family’s experience currently and I would like to remind people that in the Great Depression people had to move from state to state because there was no work. No matter how highly skilled they were or what their occupation (ambulance driver like my father, machinist like my uncles) there was no work so they left home and went to another state to get work all through New England as in the mid-west going west. Dormund would like to tell us that is the fault of the schools who didn’t train them appropriately? The worst depression in 80 years for this economy and our children and grandchildren and the politicians and the “economists with rigoritis” would like to tell us that the schools and academia are to be blamed? BS
Linking to google is a cop-out. This is just like the empty claim that there are thousands of jobs that can’t be filled because students from our schools here in the United states are incapable……
jeanhaverhill@aol.com
I think some people on this blog are simply ant-union or even business owners looking to disrupt the conversation.
http://www.google.com
What’s that????
I just wish Duncan would quit playing all these games with our children’s educations.
Ms. Marshall-
It appears that there is some difference in perspective of the relative responsibilities in
our society of: a ) the commercial business sector, and b ) the public education sector.
In respect to your First Amendment to the US Constitution rights of free speech and to your own opinion, you are welcome to whatever feelings that you choose to have.
That said, I suggest that you will find that the very best companies are drawn to those
areas in the world having a concentration of the most highly developed human capital resources.
As much of the US has lost a full decade with the US Department of Educations mandates on No Child Left Behind, which resulted in teachers not being allowed to do the job that they had been trained for so that they could preserve their jobs in a high stakes standardized testing fiasco having little, if any. value, do not expect many global world-class companies to uproot operations in countries with high levels of performance in schools to start research and development labs in US locales.
After a decade of NCLB, we are left with multitudes of young individuals who are only capable of working in a hierarchical organization in which they are told what to do, when to do it and how to do it. Examples of this include big box mall stores, in which a massive number of US college graduates find themselves employed.
You might find the 1998 white paper “The College Payoff Illusion” by the Director of Research of The Hudson Institute, Edwin S. Rubinstein to be of some value in comprehending our macro human capital resource development quandary. For your convenience that is linked at
http://web1.calbaptist.edu/dskubik/college.htm.
(Editor: Many businesses have been indoctrinated to think that Common Core will teach skills that business find wanting in high school and college graduates.
Businesses spend $3 Billion per year to re-train new hires in basic math, and English.
These business have been sold a bill of goods by the Common Core Cronies, but they have been persuaded to attack moms who really know the score about Common Core
http://education-curriculum-reform-government-schools.org/w/2014/03/business-bullies-band-of-mothers-fighting-common-core/
Why do you think “Businesses spend $3 Billion per year to re-train new hires in basic math, and English”? Let’s examine this issue a bit deeper than just scratching the stereotype created by the media and the fake education reformers.
The need for this training later in life has nothing to do with teachers or public education and everything to do with what was important to children and parents while the child was growing up.
80% of children who leave high school and do not go to college have no love of reading books—and they never read a book again in their lives. If you don’t read outside of the classroom, then the odds favor the fact that you also are poor in basic English. You were taught it but didn’t remember what you were taught because it wasn’t important to you.
Where does the love of reading come from? Endless studies prove that a love of reading starts very early in life years before a child reaches school age and if the love of reading isn’t there then, the odds of it showing up later in life are low to nothing.
The same applies to basic math. Children today don’t need to remember what they are taught in basic math skills because computers do it all for them. Their brains are no longer trained to mentally do the math in their heads because of automation. Computers make this skill seem unimportant until it is important years later and then they have to learn it again and this time they are motivated to remember because it is linked to a pay check.
A parent’s attitude explains why kids don’t have the thinking skills to compute basic math in their heads or longhand. Teachers need parents as partners and if parents aren’t pushing basic math at home, then the child will most probably forget what they were taught in class.
http://education.penelopetrunk.com/2012/08/16/5-reasons-why-you-dont-need-to-teach-math/
Here’s another one “Why Must I Learn Math?
“Now it (MATH) has rightfully become a staple in our educational systems even though it is not appreciated by many people until it is needed.” What this pull quote means, is that basic math and beyond is taught in the schools but because parents don’t make it important, it isn’t important to the children so they forget most if not everything teachers teach in class.
http://www.mathguide.com/issues/whymath.html
Then when reality sets in, who does almost everyone blame? The teacher, who tried so hard to get these ignorant, self-centered, undisciplined children to learn and remember what they were taught.
Then there is this other bit of history that happened in California starting in the middle of the 1980s and lasting for more than a decade. It was called the Whole Language approach to teaching English when elected school boards and their attack dogs in administration forced classroom English teachers to stop teaching spelling, grammar and mechanics because of the unproven theory—sort of like just about every other theory forced on teachers who work in public education by gurus or sharks selling or buying politicians—that kids would pick that up automatically just by reading for fun outside of school at last a half hour or more a day. The only problem with that fake theory is that6 80 parent of kids who leave high school and never go to college hate reading enough to never read a book again and they never read on their own outside of school and that applies for about half of college graduates these days who also don’t read books for fun.
Next time anyone criticizes teachers for what adults don’t know, remember, teachers taught basic math, an outline of history, English literature, grammar, mechanics and spelling but that doesn’t mean the kids bothered to do what it took to learn what they were taught and remember it later in life.
How many kids don’t do homework? The answer is simple—many, and homework is designed to get kids to remember what they were taught.
Humans do not have a cloud holding all of the skills they were taught so the person can reach into that cloud and grab what they learned twenty years earlier and never used and have then use it. Human memory is structured in such a way that every night when you go to bed, your brain keeps working as while you sleep sorting through the day’s memories and that automatic process edits, revises, deletes, and then saves what it wants to keep without your permission.
For instance, if an adolescent boy was drooling over a girls bare leg in the next row while the teacher was teaching, the odds are that that boy will be fantasizing about that girl under him in bed as he falls asleep and not what the teacher taught. The auto memory process that moves selected memories from short term memory to long term memory deletes whatever the teacher said and keeps the memory of the girls great legs and that’s why the boy wakes up with an erection in the morning instead of thoughts going over the lesson the teacher taught the day before.
Just because a young adult or old adult doesn’t know English grammar or a math skill later in life, that doesn’t mean they weren’t taught it.
To explain how education works, there is this formula:
teachers + parent + student = education
When the parent and student is not part of the equation, education does not take place and what was taught is not retained in long term memory.
Teachers can’t teach a child who is not motivated by parents to learn and who doesn’t do the homework designed to support what was taught in class so it might be moved to long term memory for later use.
Consider these facts:
The average parent in America meaningfully talks to their child or children less than five minutes a week. The average child in America spends about 10 hours outside of school on average a day involved in activities that have nothing to do with what’s taught tin school. They are watching TV, listening to music, texting, playing video games, talkign to friends on the phone, social networking on the internet, looking at porn sites, etc. They are not studying, reading, etc.
Then there’s sleep. Most American children are sleep deprived because they are cramming as much as possible into their lives during those ten hours outside of school where they are doing everything but reading or studying.
“The poll results indicate that on average, children get less sleep during a 24-hour period than recommended by sleep experts. For example:
Infants get 12.7 hours, when experts recommend that from 3-11 months they should get 14-15 hours.
Toddlers get 11.7 hours, when 12-14 hours are recommended for children aged 1-3 years.
Preschoolers get 10.4 hours, while it’s recommended that children 3-5 years of age should average 11-13 hours.
School-aged children (1st through 5th grades) get 9.5 hours, but experts recommend 10-11 hours.
http://www.sleepforkids.org/html/uskids.html
For instance, when our daughter was a child, she resented being forced to go to bed early every night so she had at least nine hours of sleep a day while her friends—she reminded us of this often to rub it in that she was suffering due to our rigid sleep rules—were often up until two or three in the morning seven days a week having “FUN” but not reading or studying.
And we were also the parents who were criticized by the parents of our daughter’s friends for being tiger tough with our daughter who was the only one out of her high school graduating class who was accepted to Stanford and graduated from Stanford this year with a contract for a job that pays way better than the average, annual household income in America.
We also, as parents, controlled the TV (at most two to three hours a week while the average child in America watches three hours a day), never bought her video games, didn’t buy her a mobile phone until she was in 10th grade, etc.
At home, the only entertainment our daughter was allowed was reading books and she read a lot of them.
The label my wife and I have been tagged with by the U.S. media and other ignorant Americans for being this kind of parent is “Tiger Parent”, and I’m proud of wearing that tag because it helped raise a daughter who will now be able to earn a liveable income for the next forty or fifty years of her life with good health care, a month long paid vacation a year and she will probably retire in comfort long after her mother and father are gone.
Our daughters public school teachers taught her English and basic math (and much more than basic) and she remembered what she was taught and I’m sure we can’t say that for the average American child.
And yes, I’m angry and belligerent and that anger is directed at the fake education reformers and the fools who believe their lies. I wear the “belligerent” tag with pride.
Lloyd Lofthouse. My nephew won awards in math including scoring #1 in a tri-state math contest including Nevada where he attended school in Las Vegas. He went on to attend MIT and majored in math yet he actually wondered why math was useful???? I had to remind him that virtually everything depends on math whether it’s eye glasses, buildings, bridges etc. Now that he is much older he understands it. I remember when I was taught math, I also had no idea why I had to learn it. Now at 70 I get it. I don’t recall a teacher giving us in class a real life example how important math is. That said, if a student comes to school hungry, angry, possibly abused at home or just neglected, said student will most likely not succeed. Blaming teachers is not the answer which is not to say that there isn’t room for improvement. By the way, both parents were well educated, one a PhD in geology from Columbia University and the other a Masters from Bard.
As a teacher for thirty years, I used math daily in mentally computing grades and other results from student work. I didn’t rely on a calculator and computer to do that work for me. In fact, most of the time, I figured out the answer before a student on a calculator could do it.
Why did I do this? To quickly make judgement calls on what I was teaching in class to see if what I was doing was working or not, and those numbers I crunched between my ears let me know if I was on the right track or not.
Using this method, I could shift gears halfway through a lesson if what I was doing was getting the desired results from the students who were cooperating and working, which was usually about thirty to fifty percent of the students.
At the same time, it was up to me to manage the other students who were not cooperating so the learnign environment of my classroom worked for throe students who were there to learn.
I always felt like I was running a six-ring circus and education was taking place in only one of those rings. If I didn’t manage the other five circus acts, then education would stop taking place and chaos would rule.
It was a never ending struggle.
I wasn’t in any way being critical of you or teachers since I am a retired teacher (social studies NYC) myself and fully understand what teachers are asked to accomplish in extremely difficult circumstances. One partial solution in my opinion is that teachers should teach no more than 3 classes per day that would allow them more time to think about what is going on with their students and allowing teachers to spend more time to develop lesson plans. Again I think that most of the factors affecting a student’s success occur outside the classroom.
Three classes would be great, but I don’t think that’s going to happen in the U.S. without a bloody revolution that gets rid of every billionaire oligarch behind the war on public education and the elected representatives they own. If even one oligarch escapes to anywhere on the planet, he would have to be hunted down and eliminated.
I’m convinced this is the only way we will ever change education for the better.
I taught six classes with no planning period for the first few years I was a teacher and then we managed to fight for a planning period reducing our work load to five classes with an average of 34 students. The same average we had with six classes.
District administration argued that we could arrive a few minutes before our first class, leave a few minutes after our last class and never take work home—-they argued we didn’t need the luxury of one prep period and only five classes teaching 170 students when we could easily teach 204 without a prep period.
In reality, I worked 60 to 100 hours a week and we were only in class with students about five hours a day even after we fought for and won that prep period. I kept a detailed daily journal in 1994-95 and used that journal to write my memoir, “Crazy is Normal, a classroom expose”.
http://www.amazon.com/Crazy-Normal-classroom-Lloyd-Lofthouse-ebook/dp/B00L00EM8A
That admin-think in the district where I taught never changed in thirty years. The few at the top were always fools and dictators forcing their foolishness on teachers. Whenever we had a friendly, supportive mid-level administrator, they wouldn’t last long—a few years at best before they either were fired or quit and went in search of a school district run by rational people.
There would be only one year out of the thirty that I was a teacher that I had class loads of 25 to 1—thanks to a grant that ended after one year. During that one year, the number of students fairing dropped dramatically in addition to another dramatic increase of A’s and B’s, but admin never changed their thinking—never. And the next year we were back to class load averages of 34.
From the mission statement of the “report card”:
“We believe in America’s greatness, and that civics instruction must lean heavily on America’s Judeo Christian Heritage of individual liberty.”
That statement is a prime example of the religious rights attempt to make this country into a “judeo christian” caliphate.
To MWS at 8:46 AM–I am well aware of Dennis Van Roekel, having been (& still am) an NEA member for nearly 40 years, & he (like many of the others) has not affected much positive change in spite of his years in education. As to Linda’s response, no explanation needed. We all know that the union leadership–BOTH NEA & AFT–has been very much part (if not most) of the problem–just NOW making a statement against over-testing, after more than two decades of “reform?” That’s not leadership as seen by the majority of the rank-&-file, MWS.
Look to Karen Lewis, CORE & the CTU for that, but NOT the national (or state, for that matter–at least in Illinois) leadership, either NEA or AFT.
copying this quote from Diane’s March 8th blog
“examines books like Paul Tough’s How Children Succeed with their thesis that schools can help overcome poverty with programs to strengthen character. “My worry is that we will embrace these essentially individual and technocratic fixes—mental conditioning for the poor—and abandon broader social policy aimed at poverty itself.”
In general, you will not see unions being able to gather the critical mass to win an election to unionize unless there is egregious, inept, or corrupt management in place at
their employer.
Alex Hailey’s “Wheels” gives superlative insight as to why the Detroit Big Three are at Death’s Door currently.
It is really troublesome to see the term “pay for performance” used in an educational setting.
Those who have responded to the CALLING to go into a field like teaching ( the same with ministry, counseling, veterinary medicine, the Peace Corps, or Teach For America are simply not money motivated.
It is absolutely essential that they are paid whatever is appropriate for the times and the environment to be a fair and just compensation, or they will leave, but those who are there because they have responded to the calling to teach are not going to add one iota of outcome just because a carrot is dangled before them. They will, in fact, be insulted.
It is fine to offer, in the spirit of Demings’ guidance, bonuses to each and every member ( groundskeepers to superintendents ) of the organization upon achievement of an overarching goal, bonuses or recognition of some sort, but any who propose monetary rewards for individual teachers simply have no clue on the human capital development process.
Rafe Esquith, whom I am proud to call a friend, has been recognized by The Washington Post as “America’s Best Classroom Teacher” is among the very lowest paid teachers at Hobart Elementary School of the Los Angeles Unified School District ( LAUSD ).
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/16/AR2007011600502.html
Rafe explains the root cause of his meager salary is the result of the management thinking of the LAUSD ties salary bumps to attendance at various teacher training sessions. If Rafe does not think that the training sessions will help his students’ success,
he passes on the training sessions to have more time to spend with his students.
Rafe Esquith knows exactly what his students unique needs are to transform from almost forgotten waifs in the most desolate poverty areas in America into highly functioning and superbly interpersonal winners able to achieve success in the most challenging US colleges.
I submit that when the entrenched public education establishment in the US accepts the proven success of Rafe Esquith’s Hobart Shakespeareans quarter century track record and emulates his best practices protocols, the US will far exceed the educational achievements of other countries, instead of dragging up the rear in global rankings of student outcomes.
There are a lot of employers who now must export jobs or import talent who would be most happy to see that trend occur.
I don’t know the teacher you claim The Washington Post calls the Best Classroom Teacher. From what I can tell it was the headline by Jay Mathews. Also to imply TFA teachers do it for love of teaching is disingenuous. They do it to pad their resume with a two year commitment. Most leave after two years. TFA has and continues to be a disaster for education.
“Those who have responded to the CALLING to go into a field like teaching ( the same with ministry, counseling, veterinary medicine, the Peace Corps, or Teach For America are simply not money motivated.”
Horse manure.
Ministry = trafficking in delusional mythological beliefs to secure big tax free bucks. End tax free status for religious organizations now!
Veterinarians make big bucks.
Peace Corps = CIA advanced training which leads to all kinds of access to illegal monies.
TFA = the vast majority are rich white kids padding resumes and getting student loans paid off.
Counselors, not sure to whom you are referring with that term.
If I never hear the term “game-changer” again, it will be too soon.
Now I REALLY want this corporatist hack out. For crimes against the English language.