Michael Hynes, who is superintendent of schools of the Patchogue-Medford (NY) district, writes in Education Week that our nation may still be at risk. He believes the “reform” agenda of the New York Board of Regents is wrong and merely echoes the wrongheaded agenda of the U.S. Department of Education. How did we go so wrong, he wonders.
He writes:
As a school system seeks to progress one should often ask, “Is this best for kids?” I believe this question was never asked by the U.S. Department of Education or the New York State Education Department. They are paving a road as “we” drive on it. As this road is paved, we have little to no say as to the road conditions that we see ahead of us, how fast we are going and where our destination is.
I believe this is true at both the state and national level in relation to public education. Over the years I have seen many things come and go. It’s the perpetual pendulum of mandates, ideas, movements, etc. There are some things that are still around that I wish were gone, and some things are gone but I wish were still here. I won’t mention which things because it really is a matter of perspective. My perspective, my opinion. However; I believe it is a fact that public education is under assault and “we” are driving on a road that will lead to it crashing and crashing hard….As a superintendent it is imperative that I am accountable (for myself and others) as well as building up other people’s capacities to reach their potential. If an employee is not the right fit in my district, it is my job to find someone else who is. Every aspect of the Regents Reform Agenda has very little to do with child development and everything to do with the wrong drivers for improving schools.
My question is, how are they accountable?
Where did we go wrong, he wonders. He reviews the findings of the famous 1983 report “A Nation at Risk” and discovers to his surprise that it did not promote the road we are now on (though it may have focused too much on test scores as the ultimate gauge of “success”):
This document made recommendations to focus on curricula and learning from other advanced countries. What I found most interesting was that the report doesn’t mention anything about how schools should run and rarely makes any remarks about testing. I was surprised and found that extremely refreshing.
Furthermore, Dr. Hynes noted what was missing from “A Nation at Risk”:
When I read the recommendations, I found the following items absent:
*Test children into oblivion;
*Use tests from our children to grade and assess teachers and principals;
*Develop new standards that have very little input from the educators who will teach the new standards to our children;
*Do not trust teachers, principals, superintendents and school boards to make informed decisions about what is best for their children in relation to assessments, curricula and best practices at the local level;
*Ensure that state and federal government (Governor and President) has significant influence over teacher accountability systems and assessments. They should decide what is best for children in public education (even if their children don’t attend public school);
*Guarantee corporations will make billions of dollars in the age of compliance and testing
Is there an alternative to our present disastrous path? Dr. Hynes believes there is.
Some of us believe in trusting the local control of our school systems. I believe in the capacity building of our teachers individually and collectively. It’s about climate control within our schools and trying to work with the command and control mentality outside of them. State Education Departments should be working with school districts, not against them…. I believe the underpinnings of the New York Regents Reform Agenda have never been proven to work successfully AND longitudinally in any school district…. As Alfie Kohn stated, “The goal beyond testing is about building a thriving democracy. It is about helping each child reach his/her potential as a human being and learner.” Strip away the over-testing of students, tying student scores to teachers and principal evaluations, using the new poorly designed standards and the command and control mentality from our state and national education departments.
It seems the world of education is divided into two camps. Those who think we are on the wrong road, and those who say full speed ahead, regardless of the warning signs. Dr. Hynes is in the first camp. He is truly putting students first.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There have always been insane ideas flown up various flagpoles. There have always been entire suites of bad ideas thrown about as “new paradigms” or “sweeping policies.” This is not new. The awfulness of the reform/privatizing agenda is among these insane ideas. Nothing new there. The only thing different…the reasons that these ideas have gotten traction and have been made real….is because the natural counterweight to insane ideas: organizations, groups, people, parties, have failed in their chief role of saying no from the first moment. The moment common core was floated it was pretty clear to ALOT of people where it was going and that it was a foil for privatizing public schools. Rather than deeply informed resistance from the first heartbeats of the “reform” movement, we got people and groups wanting to “sit at the table” and even agree to some of the basic ideas. That is where things went wrong. There were people and groups who failed to see the consequences and envision how it would play out. Irrational optimism.
You can’t stop the formation of insane ideas. However you can stop those ideas from becoming actual policy. That is where the failure was. That’s where “we” went wrong. Lets not confuse that.
Well said Dr. Hynes! I was fortunate to be a principal in Miami-Dade under the School Based Management/Shared Decision Making pilot. We were given the freedom to put in place strategies which turned our school around resulting in my selection as Principal of the Year. Our success was so impactful that Harvard reported on our school and Corwin invited me to write a book which has been published as ” I’m in the Principal’s Seat, Now What?” Bottom line..give our schools the freedom they need to create their exemplary schools.
We went wrong when public education became monetized. That move put a target on the back of all the children and public teachers in America. The corporate powers care nothing for our children or the future of our country. They have no vision of excellence, no solutions to complex issues. Their main goal is to make a profit and expand their ever expanding markets.
Our leaders are complicit in aiding the hijacking of American education. Rather than protecting our children, they receive campaign funding for selling out the future of our children. Many of these leaders are happy to off load their responsibilities to state employees so they can shrink the size of government and the budget. They too are selling out the futures of our youth. That is why they make contracts with outside agencies to test ad nauseum and produce canned curricula without any understanding or concern about the bigger picture and consequences.
We are doing more than building a road as we go. We are selling out democracy and democratic principles. We are blowing up an entire highway system that, overall, has served this country well, in the name of greed.
The intention of “A Nation At Risk” was not to provide a blueprint for so-called education reform – that was to be fleshed out over the coming years, as the drive to privatize took shape – but rather to create a (phony) crisis atmosphere that would provide justification for the hostile takeover of the public schools. It was intended as a pretext for shock therapy, and for excluding teachers and their unions from meaningful policy input.
“Where we went wrong”
Where we went wrong was giving
The benefit of the doubt
To folks who make a living
By counting others out
“We” went wrong long before I was old enough to do anything about it. The beginning of the end (or maybe the end of the end) was when people swallowed the whole “supply sided” economics BS and elected St. Ronald Reagan. I was ten at the time.
Youngster!-Babe in the woods!!
(a sharp one at that!!)
Goo-goo.
Hi Dienne:
That is the failure of democracy without logical mind in cultivating or supporting emotional open mindedness without a solid educational examination in voting all representatives into positions which they can harm society.
That was when you were 10 years old. After almost 5 decades (1980 – 2015), nothing is different. Most importantly, in education sector, from DOE to AFT, would you admit that Arne, Randi and Lily are as charming as Mr. R. Reagan, without logical mind? In political sector, have you seen any leader in both D and C who are better than Mr. Reagan?
I am confused as much as you are about what kind of hellish heaven we are living in and guided by leaders without conscience, caring, and appreciation for the founder and believer in democracy! Back2basic
I wonder if public school superintendents would get a fair hearing if they stopped trying to influence state and federal politicians and policy people and instead took their case to the people who actually use and fund their public schools.
It would be a lot of work-they’d have to break it out- but they have this huge advantage in that they know and can show how each federal or state policy experiment or mandate plays out at the school level. It wouldn’t even have to be critical of any particular politician’s approach- just present the facts- this is what this mandate/idea cost and this is how YOUR school benefited or was harmed as a result. Obviously it’s somewhat subjective- they have opinions- but that could be dealt with by allowing plenty of opportunity for questions or pushback from the public.
I just think that if the state and federal actors are completely ignoring dissenting practitioners, it makes a lot of sense to go UNDER them, rather than try to be heard OVER them. Maybe use the local advantage? It’s the one powerful tool they have that the state and national folks don’t have.
Here is an answer to your question. It is hard to by-pass the fact that policies are attached to funding streams–federal, state, and local. This report shows that state and local cuts have not recovered from the actions of the fools who tanked the economy. The Race to the Top part of an effort to bail-out the economy added more of the draconian requirements and forced states to compete for funds. That is still going on at the federal level.
http://www.cbpp.org/cms/?fa=view&id=4011
I understand that, but I’m not saying they should defy the mandates. I’m saying they should reveal the local cost.
It doesn’t mean anything to people outside education when they make broad policy statements, and they’re in a position to be very,very specific.
“This is what the Third Grade Reading Guarantee cost your schools this year, and here’s my opinion on its value”
“This is how much time and money we spent on teacher evaluations and here’s my opinion on their value”
“Here’s what I would have preferred to do with funding, given local needs”
I would appreciate that information. It’s part of what I expect them to do. They’re the expert on a particular school system.
Chiara Good starter list on these particulars. Really import idea to propagate
A wonderful piece. As a former Principal of a NYCDOE Middle School I am deeply saddened at the state of our education system. When did educators become the enemy? Would we ask non-doctors to rate a doctor? absolutely not. The testing is out of control and not only overwhelming to the staff but the students as well. It is wasting precious instructional time that can be used on authentic learning tasks. My teachers worked day in and day to help our students in any way they could. These are competent, professionals who have show proven success in academics for our students. We did not need a state test or Measure of Student Learning test to tell us this. Teachers conference assessments and pre-post tests were comparable to any other tests and did not waste precious instructional time.
Unfortunately, some educators in powerful positions have gone astray. I am not sure if it is because of the power they wield or it was part of their character always. However, enough is enough, children must come first, they have been put last for way to long.
L. Evanko, I just couldn’t have said it any better. Your response was superior. I spent my entire day today practice testing for the PARCC. I am sitting at my desk right now pondering how in the world I will have my kids ready for a February test when all I do is practice for the PARCC! I have already spent several hours practice testing for the PARCC! We are practicing the rest of this week for the PARCC! We are still practicing next week for the PARCC! I WANT TO TEACH MY STUDENTS! The PARCC makes it impossible for me to teach! I did not mind giving the OAA (Ohio Achievement Assessment) the first week of May, but it did not steal all of my time like this. With the Ohio Achievement Assessment, I still had plenty of time to teach. It is beyond awful, and it is much worse than I ever expected.
I have a February test coming up, and I have had no time to work with my kids. It takes time to learn and time to teach. My students and I are miserable. There is nothing I can do to help the suffering of my kids. On top of all of these wasted hours practicing for the PARCC, the PARCC practice testing and actual testing is DEVELOPMENTALLY INAPPROPRIATE for the kids. Do you think that an 11-12 year old should be able to compare and contrast 3 texts at the same time? I never did that until college!
The only purpose of this PARCC testing is to severely lower student scores, so the state can develop mandated policies that will require local boards of education to “let go” of their teachers with low evaluations. It is not going to be very hard to get a bad evaluation. I now have no teaching time coupled with developmentally inappropriate objectives. It is a recipe for disaster. As I’ve said many times, this is abuse of children and teachers. We became teachers, not testers. This is a very sad time in U.S. public education.
I agree with you. The comparing and contrasting of multiple texts is difficult for adults to do. I am not saying that we cannot introduce this to the children; we do introduce it, but to be tested on this is pushing the envelope. I often wonder how the teachers unions and administrators union allowed all of this to happen?
People will say, why do you have to prep kids for the test? If you don’t, just navigating the format will confuse and over whelm them. For instance: we have to practice bubbling in with some of our special education students as well as teaching how to cross check their work so that they don’t put an answer in the wrong bubble. One complaint that many of my students had last year is that they did not have enough time to finish the ELA test and they had to leave like 14 questions blank. Thats huge!
So what are we testing, Speed or Reading. Why is Close Reading so important in the Common Core and yet the students cannot do a Close Read on the ELA? This makes no sense at all, except to those who designed it this way.
Where did they go wrong? The instant NCLB law required that “failing” standardized test scores (AYP goals) would be used to punish schools. Where did we go really, really wrong? When Arne Duncan’s NCLB waivers required that “failing” test scores would be used to threaten and punish teachers.
The cornerstone of a sound and effective public school system cannot successfully be built on fear, intimidation, coercion, and threats. End of story.
And a gentle reminder to every edu-faker who is correctly convinced that the public schools are broken/failing: YOU BROKE THEM! Like a bull in a China shop, you came barging into our schools, brandishing misguided policies requiring that test scores should be used to threaten and punish.
Yes, YOU BROKE IT, and now YOU OWN the FAILURE.
And your only solution after 13 years of these broken and failed policies is to write harder tests and make bigger threats.
You said it beautifully, NY teacher. Yes, in French, my teacher said “un point final” after finishing each daily dictée in class with notation of pen down and no editing afterwards.
However, being as educators, and Higher education professional TRAINER/ PRODUCER/MASTER (= veteran teacher trains minted teacher), TOGETHER in MORAL CONCEPT and in OBLIGATION, all of you should not let barbarous business class to DICTATE the DEMOCRACY outcome in “un point final.” which will ruin many upcoming American young generations. Back2basic