Ed Berger tries to figure out why some parents give up on their district schools, whose teachers are fully certified, to attend partial schools, where ill-trained teachers come and go at a high rate.
“Specific information from teachers about the strengths and the needs of the educational programs are too often left out of the messages given to the community. When a bond issue fails, or enrollment drops, there is great concern that the community does not support its schools. Yes, in difficult economic times folks are reluctant to vote for new bonds. Voters need to know that student needs will be met by their vote. Districts need to counter the claims of partial schools and be very clear about what they offer.
“The reality is that the public will not support district schools that fail to communicate the education benefits they provide, and the needs teachers identify. Partial (alternative) schools succeed where the district schools do not explain the wealth of advantages they deliver for every child.
“Voters will support necessary services for children when they understand how this extra burden of taxation helps kids. Not kids five years from now, but kids in school now.”
And he writes:
“When a partial school can suck students away from a district school, something is very wrong. District schools have elected school boards, certified teachers and administrators, the ability to raise capital dollars through bonds for building and maintenance (and not have to use instructional dollars to create a school space), and comprehensive curricula. It is almost certain that teachers are not being listened to. It is an indicator that the immediate needs of children are only assumed to be known by those interfacing with the community.
“District schools must provide information necessary for parents to decide which school best provides all of the options their child must have. If parents take their children out of district schools it is certain that they do not know the differences between a district school and a partial school, or even what comprehensive curriculum, teacher certification, and teacher expertise and experience mean for students. District schools must keep this information before the public.
“Increasing class size, eliminating experienced and proven teachers and counselors, deleting services, closing libraries, killing art programs, using TFA and other cheap, unskilled class-sitters, and assuming that fear (high stakes testing and its inherent threats) motivates human beings, destroy public support for district schools.”
District schools belong to the community. Choice policies allow voucher schools and charter schools to sell their wares with promises. District schools must clearly explain to parents why it matters to have experienced, well-prepared teachers and a full curriculum, why it matters to have the arts and a band and a library with a trained librarian. Community support must be built and rebuilt, daily. Active parents must be relied upon to reach out to other parents. And the message must be clear: this is our school.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Any view might be that families see something available at an alternative or teacher led school that they don’t see in the neighborhood school. It might be a language, like Chinese, or …., it might be the Montessori approach, or or a focus on the arts, or Expeditionary Learning, or a thousand other things.
This same attack was used in the early 1970’s when many district educators decided to create options within districts. Then, as now, some families were very satisfied with the neighborhood school. Others were looking for something different.
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One aspect of district schools in large urban areas that rarely gets much play around here is just how chaotic and even dangerous that some of them are. The level of classroom/instructional disruption by a small handful of very out-of-control students cannot even be imagined unless witness first hand. Students that clearly have no interest in their education but see their school as some sort of personal playground where they are free to wreak havoc just for kicks. These behaviors, by a tiny percent of the student body, consume a tremendous amount of time and energy from the staff and can make learning an impossibility for the majority of well behaved students. As long as public schools are required to serve all students, the options for parents to move their kids into less disruptive environments will always remain attractive. This of course compounds the problem by skimming the students with the most concerned parents from their district schools.
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In some communities (and this is true in some NY state communities, districts have created schools that they assign disruptive students to. There’s often little choice for students. Some of the most courageous educators I know work in such schools.
Sometimes they accomplish a lot.
But let’s be clear – in many places district public schools have the power to push out students with whom they are not succeeding. And the schools do just that.
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Back this up with facts Joe. CHARTERS push kids out. Public schools have to educate all students. Are you stating that district schools create a school or schools just for troubled kids and put them all in there somehow? How Joe? How is that done?
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Donna, in New York state districts have created BOCES (Board of Cooperative Services. Many of them run alternative schools for kids that the districts don’t want. In Minnesota there are alternative schools. The Minnesota Secondary Principals asked the legislature for the power to assign kids to these schools. The legislature gave it to them.
You’ll find “alternative schools” in almost every state. What state are you in, Donna? I can give you info about what’s happening there.
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Joe
If it is so easy for urban schools to get rid of chronically disruptive students than why are so may still plagued with chaos and disruption. Your claim lacks any significant merit.
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Why are there some schools that are chaotic? Lots of reasons. For example:
Some students are very troubled, and the schools are not set up to meet their needs. Some teachers have not been trained to deal skillfully with some students. Some schools attempt to operate a lot like prisions and some students rebel. Some schools don’t use a very engaging approach, which leaves some students bored and disruptive. Some schools don’t have strong leadership. Some districts have not developed community schools where various groups share space with schools, and help educators work with families. There are many reasons, but those are a few.
What do you think are reasons that some schools remain disruptive?
Joe
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Excuse me, they just can’t push out students willy-nilly, they have to document the students behavior, they have to go through many in school remediations first. The child is referred to the child study team, a plan is developed to meet the needs of the disruptive student; this often takes months. If all these interventions fail, then the student may be placed in a special ed class that is in a district school and has much fewer kids in the class (maybe 10 or 11 kids in a special ed class with an aide or teacher’s assistant). Of course if a student commits a crime or a felony, then he or she will be ousted from the school.
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Rules & regulations vary widely from community to community, state to state. But I think the central point is that district schools do not serve all students. They have the ability to move students out that they don’t want.
These charts from Ed Week, reporting on US Dept of Ed data, show that more than 72,000 students were expelled in the 2009-10 school year. The data also shows the public schools with the largest number of suspensions and explulsions.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/qc/2013/ocrdata.html
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“These charts from Ed Week, reporting on US Dept of Ed data, show that more than 72,000 students were expelled in the 2009-10 school year. ”
That represents an expulsion rate of .001%. So yes, schools can expel students, but in aggregate they rarely do. I don’t think it’s far fetched to imagine that the portion of the student population who are significantly disruptive is greater than .001
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Yes, I agree that there are more than 72,000 students who are disruptive. Many more students are “encouraged” to leave their school. Alternative school educators with whom I’ve met all over the country have lots of stories about these youngsters.
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“These behaviors, by a tiny percent of the student body, consume a tremendous amount of time and energy from the staff and can make learning an impossibility for the majority of well behaved students.”
It’s what parents here complain about most often, so it isn’t just urban schools, and it isn’t surprising because it’s just numbers: there are many more parents with the “majority” of well-behaved students. I don’t know how public schools deal with it effectively or fairly, I really don’t. I hear it constantly, and I have even heard it from my kids because it’s boring, right? It’s boring to sit there while the same person disrupts again and again. They would adopt this weary tone- “we ALL had to stop…” I think it feels unfair to them. It IS unfair, but I don’t know how to fix it.
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I’m not sure how to fix it. But I do know how to make it worse:
Make test scores the #1 priority, there-by sucking the excitement of learning interesting new facts, concepts, and ideas from the picture. Make school more boring than ever with close reading and developmentally impossible activities that will frustrate all but the top students. Construct and administer tests designed to trick, frustrate, tire out, and wear down all but the best students into failure and then label them as such. Assign kids to AIS programs that eliminate more interesting and beneficial electives. Tell kindergarteners that they cannot go out to play because the desperately need to be college and career ready. Force ELL and special needs students into test-and-punish environments that crush their spirit and reinforce their already poor self image which manifests in more disruptive behavior. Pressurize the teachers through threats and intimidation so that they work on constant edge. Tire out teachers with endless streams of purely time wasting requirements so that their patience levels for dealing with behaviors is razor thin. . . . I have to stop, I can feel an aneuryism coming.
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Great observations.
I would quibble over your assessment that it is just a tiny number of kids, though, especially at schools zoned for neighborhoods with the most highly concentrated extreme poverty.
Adding to the problem is pressure from a variety of student advocacy and civil rights groups who view traditional school and classroom disciplinary measures as being what starts the so-called “school to prison pipeline.” Many of these schools employ PBIS style measures that I guess are easier on the kids who wander in and out of class and throw stuff and swear at their teachers, but are lousy for kids who behave, and, most critically, kids who are on the fence.
There is also intense pressure from special ed groups to mainstream kids as quickly as possible, and I would argue that the pressure is greatest in the area of kids with behavioral issues. I feel terrible for these kids, but there has to be a better way to treat them, one that doesn’t involve seriously compromising the education of 20+ other children.
(It goes without saying that very, very few of the folks who work for these advocacy groups are sending their kids to schools where 7-year-olds are telling their teachers to perform an act of sodomy.)
I don’t have any easy answers. But perhaps these conditions are worth keeping in mind the next time you incredulously wonder why a parent would choose to send their kids to a charter school.
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Tim
I have taught in the type of urban school I described. I am actually surprised that more parents aren’t pulling their kids out of these dysfunctional schools for safety and comfort of charters. To me, that is no different than the affluent parent choosing to live in a top flight school district because of the educational opportunities; options that the poor don’t necessarily have. The amount of disruption in these schools simply overwhelms teachers and administrators. The critical mass of chronically disruptive student in any one class is 3 or more. No teacher, despite their classroom management skills, can overcome this within the confines of school policy. The same hold true for administrators, they have all they can do just to keep the lid on.
However I cant agree with the charter claims of being true public schools when they really do get to play by a different set of rules. I completely understand the choice issue from a parents perspective, but I also have to view the politics of it through the eyes of a concerned educator.
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“Many of these schools employ PBIS style measures. . . ”
I’ve always called it B-PISS.
As a faculty we voted to not implement that nonsense three years ago. Now, with a new super and principal we are forced into doing what is called SWPBS-School Wide or Student Wide Positive Behavior System.
At the last faculty meeting we broke off into small groups and had to discuss and come up with five “positive behaviors” for various parts of the school-hallways, parking lot, in the classroom etc. . . Guess which area I got assigned to??? Yep, the bathroom! I could have had a lot of fun with that one but the principal was in our group so I just sat there shook my head in complete disgust at such a waste of time.
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The thing is, district schools don’t always have comprehensive curricula any more. They’re so besieged by the testing requirements that they, like a lot of charter schools, focus almost exclusively on math and ELA. District schools have lost P.E., recess, arts, languages, history, civics, vocational programs, etc.
I support public education, but I am not willing to subject my kids to what public schools have been forced to become. I’m sending them to a school that is a lot less “partial” than the neighborhood schools they would otherwise attend because their school has P.E., recess, arts and project-based learning.
I realize that not all parents have the resources to send their kids to a school like my daughters’ school. And I realize that my choice is probably exactly what the rephormers are hoping for. But while I’ll continue to fight for public education, I won’t allow my kids to be subject to the abuse that public schools (especially in low income areas like we live in) are forced to subject kids to.
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My god, I can’t imagine subjecting my children to the horrors of a teaching staff that isn’t unionized and doesn’t have a tenure system. I assuming you are working hard to rectify this.
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I assume you’re talking about my daughters’ school? (Our local neighborhood school is unionized.) The thing is, the school is still very small and very tight knit. The administration is committed to teacher autonomy and voice. The parents are also fiercely supportive of the teachers. The teachers themselves don’t feel the need for a union at this point.
However, while I think it’s unlikely, should anything happen such that teachers lose trust in the administration and feel like they need job protections and/or a union, I would be the first to support their efforts in that respect. The Lab School is much bigger and bureaucratic and they are unionized – probably with very good reason.
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Dienne, is the school your children attend a private, parochial, or charter public school?
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The Lab School is an anomaly among non-public schools; it is unionized for no other reason than it is a division of a huge and fantastically wealthy unionized university.
I have no issue with any parent who decides their neighborhood school isn’t the right fit and opts for a private school (or parochial/religious, selective/exam/magnet, or charter). I do have an issue with people who send their kids to private school, insist on zoned neighborhood schools for everyone who can’t afford or can’t get into a private, and then justify that stance by saying they want a private-school-quality education for all.
Private schools have selective admissions–the most exclusive ones screen 4-year-olds for IQ and are even pickier about the kids they let in for middle and high school (room is made for these new kids in part by counseling out laggards). No ELLs or kids with disabilities need apply!
The teachers are at-will employees who can’t achieve tenure, they generally receive significantly less in total compensation (and they pay for a greater share of their healthcare), and they don’t have work rules that prohibit principals from asking them to cover an occasional lunch period or recess if it isn’t their chosen “professional activity.” No giant bureaucracy, no maze of administrators, no hordes of advocacy and interest groups ready to pounce on every misstep.
Wishing a private-school education for every kid in a zoned school is akin to wishing they could all each get a million dollars and a pony. It’s at best purposely vague and willfully obtuse.
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Studies have shown that children benefit from owning a pony. Every child deserves a pony. But the Billionaire Boys Club won’t pay its fair share.
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I would agree with the “besieged by requirements” characterization. The first school I taught in, a middle school, offered these courses: art, music, home ec, sewing, cooking, woodworking, sheet metal, machine shop, French, Spanish, gym and health, science, history, math, English and a daily outside recess during lunch period. This was a regular public school, in a lower-middle class area of Boston, during the first years of school desegregation. We had a bilingual (Spanish) program as well as a cluster of LAB kids. Everybody cycled through all these so-called “extras” over the course of their 3 years. I had attended the same school seven years earlier and the only thing dropped from the curriculum in that time was Latin.
We had something for every kid. If math was a tough slog for a kid, he could look forward to pounding nails in woodshop. Why should this not be the norm?
My kids went through school just ahead of all this nonsense, and grandkids are not on the horizon yet. I am a proud union member with 36 years of teaching behind me, but if it came to putting children I love in the settings public school kids have to endure, I would certainly look for alternatives as you are doing.
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A fairly large number of the posters here, including our host Dr. Ravitch, choose to send children to private schools rather than traditional public schools. Perhaps they could explain why they choose those partial schools for thier own children.
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Why don’t you cut the sh%$ TE. There is no need to attack the host of this blog; her reasons are none of anyone’s business. Especially yours. And what exactly do have at stake here from your ivory tower perch Kansas? You are becoming quite the pain in the ass with your circular logic and endless stream of instigating questions. You have worn out your welcome with this crap. If this were my blog you would have been banned a long time ago. Good thing for you that Diane is a much more patient and kindly person than me.My apologies to anyone I offended with this richly deserved, ad homenum attack.
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NY Teacher,
I am not attacking anyone. If people are interested in why some parents chose not to send their children to public schools, the best way to find out is to ask the parents who chose not to send their children to public schools. How else would you suggest we find out?
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I agree with NY Teacher’s assessment of TE. Right on and exactamundo!
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I HAVE asked a few times, TE. In most cases in my area, the reason to pull children to a charter school generally comes down to one of two reasons: 1. To get away from the increasingly regimented public schools. I really don’t blame people there–but it’s the fault of the very “reformers” that you adore, TE, that public schools are now all standardized testing, all the time. The second reason? The parents don’t want their children associating with “those children:” the poor and the minority students. Occasionally, parents pull kids because their kid is a pain in the neck and they think that moving schools will somehow give their child a fresh start or more structure or whatever. Those are the kids we public schools get back after the count day–often credit deficient–because the charter schools are far worse at dealing with problematic behaviors than public schools are.
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Threatened,
Getting away from the decisions that local and state politicians have made does seem to be a common reason that parents leave traditional public schools. I know that FLERP! has said in the past that if his daughter was not accepted into a magnet program and had to attend the local traditional public school, his family would leave NYC and buy their way into a suburban school system. Clearly he has put some thought into this, and perhaps we can expand the discussion to include those that choose a magnet school or choose to leave a district rather than enroll in the traditional neighborhood schools of that district.
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It’s not the local and state politicians’ decisions that are the problem as much as it is the federal ones. I don’t think we would be suffering through this much testing if it weren’t for the mandates brought on by No Child Left Behind, Race to the Top, and NCLB waivers. The state and district decisions are essentially forced on them by the feds.
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If “the host’s” reasons are none of anyone’s business, how is it any of Ed Berger’ business “why some parents give up on their district schools”? Talk about cutting the sh!te.
I gave up on my zoned school. Why? Who cares, apparently it’s nobody’s business in the first place.
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I have extended family who are teachers and live in Milwaukee and when they chose to send their children to a religious school, they said it was primarily for the sense of Jewish community because, while practicing Jews, they were not particularly religious.
Those parents had gone to public schools themselves in another city and grew up in communities that, while not exclusive, had sizeable Jewish populations. They said they regretted their own children would not otherwise get to experience that, and they couldn’t move because of the husband’s job. The mom, who is certified, became a teacher at their children’s religious school, and after vouchers were permitted, they really lucked out. Unfortunately, the public schools in Milwaukee have not fared as well. This is one of the primary reasons why I am so opposed to vouchers. http://getthefactsonvouchers.org/a-brief-history-of-milwaukees-voucher-program/
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CT – You are I agree about opposition to public funds going to private or parochial k-12 schools.
People of different religions vary. We’re Jewish but sent our children to urban public schools. There are Jewish day schools in the Twin Cities but we have no interest in sending them to those schools. The Jewish day schools are struggling here (and in many communities) because many Jewish parents don’t send their children to them.
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Dr. Ravitch sent her kids to private K-12 schools?
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Your have a valid point. If people here can talk about Bill Gates and Company influencing the public school system when their own kids don’t attend one, the same can be said about any supporter or employee of public education who is exercising their right to choose an alternative setting.
I’ve known many teachers, administrators, and a few superintendents who sent their kids to private school. I do not need to ask them why.
I am also going to add, TE, that I don’t appreciate the way people attacked you on this. The anti-bullying bullies need to follow their own progressive tenets about free and open debate.
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When TE asks a “gotcha” question about a personal decision that Diane made over 40 years ago in a very different era and under circumstances that no one should be privy to, and without the benefit of those 40 years of experience, the question is not about “free and open” debate.
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NY Teacher,
My question was in no way a “gotcha” question. In the original post Ed Berger is speculating about why parents choose not to send their children to public schools. Other posters here are speculating about why parents choose not to send their children to public schools. Rather than speculate, why not ask the folks here who did not send their children to public schools why they made that decision?
We have already seen some answers. Cosmic has relatives who wished to have their children feel a part of a community. Dienne objects to the decisions made by the local and state authorities about education in the public schools. The one person I know well who sent a child to private school rather than public schools did so at the child’s request, because the child felt ostracized in the public school because of his academic achievements.
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Teaching Economist,
When my husband and I made a decision to send our children to private school in 1965 and 1970, we did not expect the state to pay their tuition. I respect the right of parents to choose a religious school or an independent school so long as they pay for it. Public money should go to public schools. Supporting public schools is a civic obligation. I pay taxes to support public education, not privatized education.
I have asked you in the past not to bring my children, now 48 and 52, into your comments. Next time, you are permanently barred from this blog.
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Dr. Ravitch,
I certainly apologize if you took offense at my question, but I was not asking about anyone’s children. I was asking about the decisions adults make to abandon district public schools.
In your post Ed Berger speculates that parents abandon district public schools out of ignorance and argues that the solution to this ignorance is better communication from the district. My question was meant to find out if Ed Berger is correct, that parents abandon district public schools for “partial” schools because they are unaware of the relative merits of the two systems. While I suspect that most people who send their children to charter schools have long ago been driven off the blog, many who post here have abandoned district public schools for private schools. They seemed like a good group to ask.
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TE,
I repeat my warning. I don’t ask questions about your children or personal life. I expect you to treat me as I treat you.
I will repeat, since you ignore what you choose to ignore: everyone has a responsibility to support public education, even if they send their own child to a nonpublic school like a charter school, a religious school, or an independent school. Eviscerating the public sector harms all of us.
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Dr. Ravitch,
Again I did not ask any questions about any children, but a question to see if Ed Berger is correct that parents give up on district public schools because they are ignorant of the benefits of the schools.
If we are not going to ask the people who chose not to send their children to district public schools why they made that decision, how on earth will we ever know if Ed Berger is correct in his hypothesis?
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I want to add something to this thread—especially for TE’s eyes.
Since the U.S. is often compared to countries like Japan and South Korea, it should be noted that parents in those countries send their children mostly to public schools but if the parent thinks the child needs tutoring after school, they pay for it out of their own pocket and there is a booming private sector industry in those countries and in the U.S. for Asian parents. Take a walk through one of the China towns in San Francisco, and you will eventually discover a few store-front schools for K to 12 children that tutor after public school hours. Asian parents, in Asia and in the United States, spend more for this sort of enhanced education outside of the K to 12 classroom and this might explain why the HS graduation rate of Asians is the highest in the nation and why so many Asian children go to college and end up with the lowest unemployment rate in the country.
How do I know this? My wife is Chinese. Her sister is Chinese and I have been exposed to their family and friends and they have their own grapevine that shares knowledge of the best after school tutors and cram schools in the SF bay area, which almost all of them have taken advantage of for their children’s educations.
And what’s interesting is that we don’t often hear Asian American parents complain that this out of pocket expense should be paid for by all the other tax payers.
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Lloyd,
I am unsure why you wanted me to see this post. It seems tangential to the issues at hand. I think we are discussing why parents leave district schools. Ed Berger has an opinion about why this happens and I had hoped that the folks here who have made the decision to leave district public schools could tell the rest of us why they left and if Ed Berger was correct.
I do not know what this has to do with privately provided after school tutoring sessions.
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Let me attempt to explain: Taxes or fees raised for a basic public education were never intended to fund private sector schools of any type and that includes corporate run Charters that might offer children classes a parent or parents felt their child had a right to take that were not available in the often underfunded public schools that might have overcrowded classrooms.
What I’m saying is that if a parent wants courses for their children in subjects that are not available in the public schools in their area, those parents should pay out of pocket for tutors just like parents do in Asia and Asian-American parents do in the United States. It works for them so it will work for everyone else too.
In addition, if parents can’t afford to pay for those extra, private sector supplied courses in specific subjects, too bad. The public schools are what they are based on funding, democratic legislation and legal rulings in courts.
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Lloyd,
My posts here have absolutely nothing to do with who pays for anything. My question was, I thought, a simple one: why do some parents turn away from district schools?
Some might turn to charter schools, they might turn to private schools, some might home school. What they all have in commen is that they reject district public schools in favor of what Ed Berger calls partial schools.
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TE,
Some might be racists. Some might be elitists. Parents are people and they come in all types. They are not perfect just because they are parents.
From the studies I’ve read, too many parents are abusive to their children and even more do not support education as they should.
For instance, A study conducted in 1986 found that 63% of women who had suffered sexual abuse by a family member also reported a rape or attempted rape after the age of 14. Recent studies in 2000, 2002, and 2005 have all concluded similar results.
Studies by David Finkelhor, Director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center, show that:
1 in 5 girls and 1 in 20 boys is a victim of child sexual abuse;
Self-report studies show that 20% of adult females and 5-10% of adult males recall a childhood sexual assault or sexual abuse incident;
During a one-year period in the U.S., 16% of youth ages 14 to 17 had been sexually victimized;
Over the course of their lifetime, 28% of U.S. youth ages 14 to 17 had been sexually victimized;
Children are most vulnerable to CSA between the ages of 7 and 13.
Then there are other kinds of child abuse:
Maltreatment can take many forms, and some children can suffer from more than one type. Since 1999, the majority of children confirmed to be victims of child maltreatment experienced neglect. The following are the percentages of children who experienced maltreatment in 2005 (USDHHS, 2007):
Neglect 62.8%
Physical abuse 16.6%
Sexual abuse 9.3%
Emotional/psychological abuse 7.1%
Medical neglect 2.0%
Other 14.3%
The ‘Other’ category listed above includes abandonment, threats to harm the child, congenital drug addiction and other situations that are not counted as specific categories in NCANDS. The percentages here add up to more than 100 percent because some children were victims of more than one type of maltreatment.
I’m sure that a few parents, out of fear, turn to these corporate Charter schools, because they foolishly think they will offer more safety from some nut case with an assault weapon. In fact, I’m sure many turn to Charters because they falsely think that the Charter will somehow make up for the fact that they aren’t doing their part in the education equation.
There’s a lot of truth to the fact that it takes a community to raise and educate a child and when parents opt out of their job as parent and expect the schools and teachers to do it for them, failure waits. To these types, and there are too many of them, they have fooled themselves to think that the Charters are the magic pill that will fix everything and make up for their lack of proper parenting.
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Lloyd,
Some indeed may be racists, some may be elitests. That is not what Ed Berger stated is the reason that parents turned against district public school. Do I undrerstend you to be disagreeing with Ed Berger?
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I don’t know what this Ed Berger’s theory is. Do you know what a theory is?
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Lloyd,
You have been commenting on a post about Ed Berger. Scroll up to see the entry.
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I read so much on a daily basis that I often forget what it was by the next day, but that is how the brain works when we sleep. It sorts through short term memory and then moves what’s considered important to long term memory without conferring with us before it dumps what was considered unimportant.
On that note, you have never answered my questions about the books I have recommended that you read to educate yourself more thoroughly about the education issues of our time.
Have you started reading them yet?
In case you forgot while sleeping, here’s a reminder.
The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession
By Dana Goldstein
http://www.danagoldstein.com/
“Ms. Goldstein’s book is meticulously fair and disarmingly balanced, serving up historical commentary instead of a searing philippic … The book skips nimbly from history to on-the-ground reporting to policy prescription, never falling on its face. If I were still teaching, I’d leave my tattered copy by the sputtering Xerox machine. I’d also recommend it to the average citizen who wants to know why Robert can’t read, and Allison can’t add.” —New York Times
Reign of Error
By Diane Ravitch
https://dianeravitch.net/
Diane Silvers Ravitch is a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. Previously, she was a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education under President G. W. Bush. She was appointed to public office by Presidents H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
A Chronicle of Echoes:
Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education
By Mercedes K. Schneider
http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/
Schneider says, “Corporate reform” is not reform at all. Instead, it is the systematic destruction of the foundational American institution of public education. The primary motivation behind this destruction is greed. Public education in America is worth almost a trillion dollars a year. Whereas American public education is a democratic institution, its destruction is being choreographed by a few wealthy, well-positioned individuals and organizations. This book investigates and exposes the handful of people and institutions that are often working together to become the driving force behind destroying the community public school.
50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America’s Public Schools:
The Real Crisis in Education
By David C. Berliner, Gene V Glass, Associates
http://nepc.colorado.edu/author/berliner-david-c
David C. Berliner is an educational psychologist and bestselling author. He was professor and Dean of the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education. Gene V Glass is a senior researcher at the National Education Policy Center and a research professor in the School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder.
—————————————–
Anyway, I read the post again and I agree with what he says here: “Specific information from teachers about the strengths and the needs of the educational programs are too often left out of the messages given to the community.”
But, what are public schools to do when they have limited funds to pay for advertising and PR programs to educate the public that billionaires have no problems funding because of their great wealth and the fact that they have no restrictions that might exist due to transparency and the law that exist in each state for the public schools?
For instance, when I was teaching, we were required to send home a course description letter and request that the parents read the letter and then sign it so teachers would know the parents had received and read it. The public school district where I taught had very little or NO funding that allowed them to buy ads. But they did host information sessions throughout the school year that were designed to educate parents on what the school offered. The problems was that most of the parents never attended those forums.
How much did Eva Moskowitz’s Hedge Fund Wall Street supporters spend in their PR blitz to demonize the new mayor of New York when he was going to say NO to a few of her many requests to expand her Charter school chain?
In case your didn’t read the post here on Diane’s blog that had the answer or you forgot it while you were sleeping, I remember reading that the PR campaign was funded with $5 million. I guess this was one fact that was transferred from short term to long term memory—at least for me.
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Lloyd,
Alas I still work full time, and have limited time to read. The regular onslaught of the NYT and the Economist keep me busy, though I am currently reading Empires and Barbaians with The Good Lord Bird on-deck and Red Plenty in-the-hole. I will perhaps get to your list in time.
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TE, if you spent less time on this blog, you would have more time to read some of the books that Lloyd generously recommended.
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Dr. Ravitch,
Thank you for the concern, but posting here takes up relativly little time. My posts are a good deal shorter than most. When some research is required it is typically just a couple of searches and perhaps some calculations.
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TE,
Yes, it is obvious that it takes very little time for you to post one of your endless questions that often reveals your ignorance and bias of the subject of corporate-driven, fake public school reform.
It is obvious to me that anyone who falls into your trap will end up spending hours answering your questions but getting little to nothing in return from you but more questions.
I have to admit that I was surprised that after many suggestions from me that you read those books, you finally found time to answer—briefly—this one time. I was even more surprised that you didn’t ask another one of your endless questions.
You are very quick to ask questions—many that have little or nothing to do with the subject under discussion and almost always a diversion away from the point—-but very slow, if at all, to answer questions asked of you.
By now, I strongly suspect you work for the fake education reformers in some way or, if that is wrong, I think that you are an ignorant fool. Please take note that I didn’t say you are an ignorant fool. Why do you think I would think such a thing about you?
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Lloyd,
It is my hope that folks think about my posts whether they respond or not.
Once again let me assure you that your suspicions are incorrect. My household income comes entirely from employment at a public university. I am curious about the problems you find in my arguments. It would certainly be helpful to me if you could zero in on them.
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TE,
Please explain to me how endless questions offer arguments. The endless questions sends those foolish enough to keep answering them on a wild-goose chase that often just ends up in more questions from TE, who seems great at ignoring anything anyone says in response to any of TE’s questions, as TE changes topics with the next question.
The job you have in a pubic college—-is it an endowed chair where you are tenured and have benefits, or are you an adjunct professor with no job security and probably no retirement or medical plan?
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Lloyd,
You seem to have missed my arguments. Ask about one of my positions and I will tell you why I hold that position.
I am a non-tenure track faculty member, usually those folks are classified as adjuncts here.
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What are your positions? All I remember are the questions.
Thank you for answering the question about your college teaching position. Do you think public school teachers should lose their due-process rights because you don’t have the same job protection?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but in your position, you can be cut for any reason at any time. Am I right?
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Lloyd,
You are correct that I, like Dr. Ravitch, am an at will employee.
Which position that I have taken on here are you interested in my defending? I have taken many positions on this blog over the last couple of years. I have argued that traditional zoned schools are inherently prone to uniformity and central control, I have argued that if schools were run in the best interest of students high schools would begin later in the day than is the current practice, and I argued that direct foreign investment has increased the well being of the countries that are the host of the investment among other topics.. What are you interested in discussing?
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All parents should have, as one of their choices, a public school that has the resources and support to meet the needs of all their students.
No excuses for not providing that choice.
Now that I’ve cleared that up…
😎
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When students don’t want those resources, when they don’t want to be in school (perhaps from middle school through high school), when they singularly or collectively cause anarchy, when the Department of Justice steps in and says that they cannot be punished–how do such resources solve these problems? I am sure you can clear that up, and I’m not being facetious.
Thank you.
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xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I think TE’s question is fair and on-point. The posted article seems naive to me, in its assumption that a major problem is, taxpayers are turning down bond issues because the district has failed to show the connection between increased funds and maintaining quality ed. In fact, in most places the deep tax-slashing is done at the state level without consulting the locals. In places where the locals can actually afford to replace state cash support with RE tax increase &/or bonds, the taxpayer discussion in fact deals directly with maintaining class size & varied offerings.
Obviously any taxpayer has a big stake in the fate of public schools regardless of where he sends his kid. But why not collect info here as to why pro-public-schoolers choose alternatives for their own children?
The reason we did not was because, primarily due to having kids later in life, we were able to afford a community whose public schools offered almost everything one might wish from a private school, with public-school bonuses: strong offerings for those who learn differently, plus neighborhood schools/ strong sense of community. Taxes are excruciating, but still came to less annually than private tuition for one child (& we had 3).
My pro-p.s. interest is in finding better ways to make such ed quality available to all. It was already a great discussion in the 80’s with lots to be done– ideologues & oligarchs have since been wrecking & replacing with sleaze, coroporate-grab, jimcrack nonsense– even more to be done.
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I think people “choose” because they are left without choice.
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“Partial Schools” – the terminal terminology gets worse and worse.
Easier said than done on the reach-out portion of this post.
Maybe NPE could really wrestle with this. A media campaign with a clear/unambiguous message?
“They Make Promises They Don’t Keep!” , “Just Say NO! So Vouchers & Charters Don’t Grow”,
“Shut ‘Em Down In Our Town! Boycott Community Charter Schools” or “Follow The Golden Rule And Support Your Neighborhood School!”
Postcards, Bumper Stickers and Flyers are easier to distribute within a busy neighborhood or send home in backpacks.
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In my own family, with 2 kids in the local public schools, we are trying to stay committed to these schools. But it is getting very difficult as these schools seem to eagerly embrace the destructive ed-reform policies. They are often given pre-tests on material that hasn’t been taught yet. They come home feeling stupid because they sometimes fail these tests. Aren’t these tests designed so that failure is assured? Then the teacher can show “growth” on the post-test, after the material is taught. One of my kids actually gets 100s or close to it on the pre-tests. I then ask the teacher why he must stay in that course since he just “proved” that he knows the material already. They don’t respond. Most of the teachers seem to think this is all just fine. Seems a waste of time and $.
Then comes all of the denied opportunities for high quality coursework because all students must sit through lower-level standardized test-prep courses. Add in the music, wood/metal shop, home ec that have been eliminated and these schools are rapidly weakening. We live in a fairly rural area and the options are few if one is not wealthy. We feel trapped, and this is in Massachusetts.
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The pre testing for local exams here in NY has become a complete JOKE. Students are using the a. b, c, d, e bubbles to make dot patterns. The system has no validity and now violates the sacred oath of “do no harm”
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Ed reform is joyless and grim as applied in an ordinary public school, and I think that’s what will eventually tank it.
I’m sure wealthier public schools will continue to offer all kinds of wonderful things, but my experience over 15 years now is there’s no joy in it for schools in the middle, and that’s unsustainable. That’s where most schools are. They just added an absolute boatload of standardized testing that will be required in Ohio high schools. They’re not getting the message on testing or anything else. I think the only thing that will get their attention is if they start losing elections on this.
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Mathman,
I have to agree with you child that gets 100% on the pretest. It may be that the classes he/she are in are inappropriate.
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I live right by my neighborhood high school, which is large and occupies an entire city block, and I try to keep up with what’s going on there. However, there have been so many changes there that, without a child in the school, it’s been very difficult to keep up to speed.
It wasn’t until I went there to turn in some band sticks, which I found nearby, that I discovered that not only are there now three different schools co-located in that building, but they wanted me to go to a different door, way down around the block, to where one of the schools is located, because only that ONE school has band! Argh!!
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I agree most decisively with Donna. I am an educator without choice because I live in a low income community in Chicago. The public school to which my granddaughter would have to have gone because of boundaries, is dangerous, low performing (and I don’t just mean test scores), turned around ( a euphemism for take over by a for profit organization), curriculum and teacher- quality challenged. Uncertainty about the next semester abounds: the school may be closed with not much notice; good teachers don’t know if they will have a job from semester o semester; good teachers are forced to DEAT and so are not allowed to implement all the pedagogical knowledge they received from a good teacher preparation program. I had no choice but to send her to a partial school, taught by partial teachers, but not expensive (I do not use free, because beside fees, etc. she is missing a comprehensive curriculum). I have to try to supplement her education with home schooling and a language software program. So while many of us support public education, we don’t have enough ” boots on the ground” to stop the tyranny of the erosion of public education and neighborhood schools.
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What is DEAT?
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Back in the 1990s, I suggested to the assistant principal of a high school with almost 3,000 students—70% were on free or reduced meals and too many belonged to violent street gangs—that we should promote to the community what our HS offered to assist the children to work for an education that would benefit them in the future.
He stared at me as if I were crazy, and then said, “That’s not our job.” Then he spun on his heal and walked quickly away from me. He had to hurry back to the office because the sheriffs were waiting for paper-work clearance to cart one of our boys, who had violated his parole and was in handcuffs, to jail.
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“Why do some parents choose…?”
In a word, METRICS. In the end, any metric can be manipulated, to preserve a franchise
(stay the course) or create another one (change the course).
Is the effectiveness of marketing, or propaganda proportional to a level of thinking, or consciousness?
If “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance” (Madison), and “Knowledge” is consciousness, is consciousness defined by the conventional metrics of:
Test scores, World-Wide Rankings, Grading, and Sorting, or should
Knowledge/Education/Consciousness be defined by it’s ability to COUNTERACT
marketing and propaganda?
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How does this writer expect districts to “advertise their quality” when many district “leaders” believe the tired “reformer” tropes: schools are failing, teachers are terrible, students are stupid and lazy, ad nauseum?
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Having a teaching degree do not in any way mean that you can teach. So called partial-schools have a high turnover for one reason….they don’t make the cut and rather than reward that with tenure they are dismissed which brings us back to the first comment. 🙂
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Bravo NoBrick,
It is worth to repeat:
“Is the effectiveness of marketing, or propaganda proportional to a level of thinking, or consciousness?
If “Knowledge will forever govern ignorance” (Madison), and “Knowledge” is consciousness,
is consciousness defined by the conventional metrics of:
Test scores, World-Wide Rankings, Grading, and Sorting?
or should Knowledge/Education/Consciousness be defined by it’s ability to
COUNTERACT marketing and propaganda?
To TE, and Spanish & French Freelancer,
TE’s question is ONLY valid IF it is presented according to his viewpoint, his own experience without NOSY to anyone-else’s business, THEN TE would ask for other bloggers in this forum for more ideas to pros or cons to his viewpoints and experiences, so that TE can learn from.
If TE is truly an ad junk professor, TE will hardly achieve tenured position with the way in which he poses questions in this forum. Yes, he likes to beat around the bush to show his explicit foolishness. Even if you are young and inexperienced, please learn how to respect and behave in an educated and civilized manner.
For instance, in my own experience, I use half of private tuition fee to pay for my child”s all extra-curriculum like sports and music; other half of tuition left over, I use to save for my child’s higher education later and donate a bit to public and school library. Most of all, I find that my child really enjoys interacting with all of his multicultural friends in his class from his class play at Christmas time and in year-end celebration. Now, I really would like to learn and understand why would some parents prefer to send their children to private school? If someone in this forum has their children in private school, please share with me the pros and cons that private schools offers as compared to public school in my experience.
That is what TE should behave!
Again, being an ad junk professor in economic field, TE definitely has money minded to analyze pros and cons about quality in both private and public education. So, be shame to admit that you do not respect Dr. Ravitch and Dr. Ed Berger through your question. Therefore, you should be banned from this forum due to your uncivilized manner. Back2basic
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m4potw,
How would you learn why “some parents give up on their local district schools” without asking the parents who gave up on their local district schools why they made that choice? A Ouija board?
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TE:
Being professor (= educated + civilized), please DO NOT beat around the bush.
I am Canadian, but were an immigrant from a communist country. I DO NOT need to learn why “all immigrants give up on their countries” and to know their reasons in making their choices, because their causes and their choices are completely personal and irrelevant to my own circumstances, such as health, wealth, intellect, belief and traditional/cultural background.
As you confirm that you do not have time to read, I just give you a very brief picture of your “A Ouija board”.
In short, would you please advise me the pros and cons in working as ad junk prof in your particular university? Which state are you in? Who is the current Chancellor of your university? Should I looking for a job in your university if there is an opening?
Or, I just let you know that I am ad junk prof, major in Sociology, and I am interested in working in Kansas State. By the way, have you known whether there is an opening in your university?
Could you distinguish which way my question is civilized or nosy? A Ouija board? Back2basic.
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M4potw,
I am sorry to,say that I have found your post confusing and rather off point. How exactly do,you suggest that we find out why “some parents give up on their local school districts” if we are not allowed to ask those parents? Guessing is certainly a possibility.
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TE:
Thank you for finding confusion within your question and answer that are “rather off point” according to you.
Wouldn’t you find that it is so confusing to be “A Ouija board” when you accept to be ad junk prof?
Why should all teachers obey the law that is bribed and written by business tycoons? Why should you accept to be ad junk prof without using your own knowledge and your democratic right to demand your tenure track?
Have you ever tried to find out why “some ad junk profs give up on their right to be a respectful educator = intellectual property protection”? What is the solution? Union?
if I were an excellent educator in my expertise field like economy, I would be a mover or a shaker, I would not be “A Ouija board” or obey any ridiculous regulation, such as being ad junk prof without benefit or to surrender my intellectual property to university for MOOCs courses.
Since you are very busy, and so am I in this Thanksgiving week end in Canada, please remember that all needy/necessary and desire/wanting questions will always relate to the seeker’s health, wealth, intelligence, cultural/religious background.
You cannot even follow people’s advice even if they told you step by step in case they are above and beyond your capability. For instance, there are many Zen masters, but none can achieve enlightenment as Buddha does even that there are so many documents about how Prince in India, Siddhartha Gautama, who would one day become known as Buddha (“enlightened one” or “the awakened”), lived in Nepal during the 6th to 4th century B.C.
Most importantly, please distinguish the difference between respectful and obnoxious question, so that you will receive golden advice or rejection/isolation. You are prof without decency in questioning other person’ specific private choice. Back2basic
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m4potw,
Again it is unclear what your post has to do with the issue at hand.
If one is not allowed to ask those that have, in the words of Dr. Ravitch’s post, give up on their district schools, we will never learn why those parents gave up on their district schools. I think this is an important thing to know. Do you think it important?
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TE,
If it is so important for TE to know the reason why parents pulled their children out of public schools and sent them to private-sector, for-profit, opaque Corporate Charter schools with millions of dollars to advertise these corporate schools as if they were a bottle of perfume or Coke, I suggest that TE start calling these parents and asking them—-one by one?
I for one, don’t care for what these parents think their reasons are, because the evidence is overwhelming that most of these corporate Charters are equal to or worse than the public schools, riddled with fraud, cherry picking students, and getting rid of students who are too much of a challenge to teach.
With these facts, it doesn’t take much thinking to conclude that many of these parents are allowing themselves to be fools.
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Lloyd,
That you don’t care why parents give up on their local district is very informative.
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TE,
You left out the rest of what I said and cherry picked what you wanted to respond to. Shame on you.
I don’t care what these parents think because they have been fooled by propaganda. Whatever their own reasons were, those reasons were flawed due to the fact that they have been bamboozled by a host of P. T. Barnums.
Do you know who P. T. Barnum was? He was an American showman and businessman remembered for promoting celebrated hoaxes and founding the Barnum & Bailey Circus.
P. T. Barnum said of himself, “I am a showman by profession…and all the gilding shall make nothing else of me”, and his personal aims were “to put money in his own coffers”.
These Corporate Charters schools are nothing but a hoax and a circus.
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Lloyd,
You think the parents who post on this blog that gave up on district public schools were fooled? That seems unlikely to me.
In any case, I think that part of your comment was perhaps one of the most revealing and important comments I have seen on the blog.
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TE,
You either take all of what I say or none of it. You can’t pick part of what I say and then make it mean what you want it to mean while ignoring the rest.
It seems to me that you think just like the profit driven, corporate supported fake PubEd reformers who pick and choose what they want to use to support their false claims and ignore everything else.
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Lloyd,
I read it all, but you say so much about so many things that I certainly can’t comment on them all. I take you at your word that you think that you don’t care why parents say they have given up on their local district public schools because they have been fooled, even those parents who post here.
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I suspect that you may have been fooled too. After all, you use the excuse that you have to work so you don’t have time to read the books that would educate you and remove you from the list of people who have been fooled, just like those parents you seem to be obsessed about.
There is an old saying that says, where there is a will, there is a way. Your own comments reveal that you have no desire—-no will—to learn the facts behind the truth.
As a reminder, here that list of books, for starters, because new fact-based books are appearing on a regular basis:
The Teacher Wars: A History of America’s Most Embattled Profession
By Dana Goldstein
http://www.danagoldstein.com/
“Ms. Goldstein’s book is meticulously fair and disarmingly balanced, serving up historical commentary instead of a searing philippic … The book skips nimbly from history to on-the-ground reporting to policy prescription, never falling on its face. If I were still teaching, I’d leave my tattered copy by the sputtering Xerox machine. I’d also recommend it to the average citizen who wants to know why Robert can’t read, and Allison can’t add.” —New York Times
Reign of Error
By Diane Ravitch
https://dianeravitch.net/
Diane Silvers Ravitch is a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development. Previously, she was a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education under President G. W. Bush. She was appointed to public office by Presidents H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
A Chronicle of Echoes:
Who’s Who in the Implosion of American Public Education
By Mercedes K. Schneider
http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/
Schneider says, “Corporate reform” is not reform at all. Instead, it is the systematic destruction of the foundational American institution of public education. The primary motivation behind this destruction is greed. Public education in America is worth almost a trillion dollars a year. Whereas American public education is a democratic institution, its destruction is being choreographed by a few wealthy, well-positioned individuals and organizations. This book investigates and exposes the handful of people and institutions that are often working together to become the driving force behind destroying the community public school.
50 Myths and Lies That Threaten America’s Public Schools:
The Real Crisis in Education
By David C. Berliner, Gene V Glass, Associates
http://nepc.colorado.edu/author/berliner-david-c
David C. Berliner is an educational psychologist and bestselling author. He was professor and Dean of the Mary Lou Fulton Institute and Graduate School of Education. Gene V Glass is a senior researcher at the National Education Policy Center and a research professor in the School of Education at the University of Colorado Boulder.
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Lloyd,
What was I fooled about? I sent all of my children to be educated at district public school. Full disclosure, my middle child took purses from other institutions as well and my youngest attended a junior high school that he was not assigned to attend.
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