Kevin G. Basmadjian, Dean of the School of Education at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, wrote a powerful article in the Hartford Courant in collaboration with other deans from across the state.
Connecticut’s students are among the highest on the NAEP, yet its policymakers insist that its schools and teachers are unsuccessful. The politicians want more charter schools and Teach for America.
He writes:
“As a nation and a state, we have clearly failed to address the inequalities that disproportionally impact many urban school districts where kids are poor and segregated. Sadly, for the first time in 50 years, a majority of U.S. public school students now come from low-income families. But instead of addressing this crisis, we have demonized teachers for failing to solve problems our government cannot, or will not, solve. Poverty, homelessness and the dangerously high levels of emotional and psychological stress experienced by low-income students — these are the problems many of our nation’s public school teachers face every day.
“Our nation’s obsession with standardized test scores will not solve these problems, and they put our country at great risk intellectually as well as economically. As educational researcher Yong Zhao writes, countries with which we are often compared — such as Singapore, Japan and South Korea — are moving away from a focus on testing in their public schools. Why? Because they have learned from the history of the United States that a great education and nation is one that rewards creativity, originality, imagination and innovation….
“The most recent scapegoat for our nation’s shameful achievement gap is teacher preparation programs, for failing to produce a steady stream of what the U.S. Department of Education abstractly calls “great teachers” to work in our neediest public schools. By blaming teacher preparation programs, the department can yet again divert public attention from the most crucial barrier to achieving educational equality: poverty.
There is a need for more “great teachers” who will commit themselves to our state’s neediest public schools. But achieving this goal will take more than naive slogans or punitive measures levied against teacher preparation programs that do not successfully persuade graduates to teach in these schools. The U.S. Department of Education’s proposed regulations for teacher preparation — with its emphasis on standardized test scores — work against this goal because of the overly technical, anti-intellectual portrait of teaching they endorse. We in Connecticut need to make these jobs more attractive to prospective teachers through increased respect, support and autonomy rather than criticism, disdain and surveillance.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“There is a need for more “great teachers” who will commit themselves to our state’s neediest public schools.”
“. . . need for more ‘great teachers’. . . ”
Bullshit!
Edudeformer claptrap!!
What’s your new word, Duane? 🙂
I think that in time, President Obama’s presidency will be defined by his support for the Common Core agenda and the often fraudulent corporate Charter reform movement.
Not only that, but also increasing poverty in our children to a new high! His economic policies have put more families on public assistance than any administration in history, hence causing the problems of educating poor children!
Not only that, but also of putting more families below the poverty line than any administration in history! We have never before had to deal with 50% of students in poverty! We have more people hoping for change than ever before!
In addition to the vast increase in children living in poor famlies, during the Obama administration, big corporations have been making HUGE profits.
While more than half of America has suffered from a loss of earnings, Wall Street has done very well for itself.
Wages crash, profits spike, in Obama’s economy
“The data also shows that companies’ profits reached an after-tax, 85-year record level of $1.683 trillion in 2012. That’s 10 percent of the economy, even after companies paid $418.9 billion in taxes.
“That record profit level is one-tenth higher than the previous record which was set in 1929, the year of the Wall Street crash.
“In 2012, employees received $7,138 trillion wages and salaries, or 45 percent of the nation’s income. That’s down from 48.6 percent in 1929, 51.6 percent in 1953, 49 percent in 1965, and 44.8 percent in 2008, according to government data.”
http://dailycaller.com/2014/04/09/wages-crash-profits-spike-in-obamas-economy/
you mean “up” from 44.8 percent
Those were pull quotes.
Again:
“In 2012, employees received $7,138 trillion wages and salaries, or 45 percent of the nation’s income. That’s down from 48.6 percent in 1929, 51.6 percent in 1953, 49 percent in 1965, and 44.8 percent in 2008, according to government data.”
http://dailycaller.com/2014/04/09/wages-crash-profits-spike-in-obamas-economy/
Look at the years. The 44.8% was in 2008 and it isn’t that far from 45% in 2012. You would think that four years after the great recession, wages and salaries of employees would have improved instead of stayed about flat considering how much profit corporatist and Wall Street have been making. Of course, without labor unions, it makes sense that the wealthiest 1% would share less. Greed is somewhat universal—especially at the top where enough is never enough.
I think we can expect some small fluctuations on the way down.
Maybe this piece from the Economic Policy Institute will help:
“The last year has been a poor one for American workers’ wages. Comparing the first half of 2014 with the first half of 2013, real (inflation-adjusted) hourly wages fell for workers in nearly every decile—even for those with a bachelor’s or advanced degree.”
http://www.epi.org/publication/why-americas-workers-need-faster-wage-growth/
One thing to consider about these numbers is that, for the most part, “the wealthiest 1%” are also employees who get paid in wages. So the $20 million of compensation that a Goldman Sachs partner made in 2008 goes into the category of “wages earned by employees” rather than “profits.”
Makes sense. That means the other 99% make even less.
They’re certainly not getting more. Then again, the compensation for the “one-percenters” (loosely speaking) on Wall Street has plummeted since 2008 as bonuses have collapsed and never really recovered. So technically, the compensation of the 99% may well have increased relative to the 1% since 2008. But of course, most people would prefer 70% of a 2008-era Wall Street bonus than 100% of their own income.
Yes, actual raw numbers compared to percentages is much more dramatic but the percentage might look bad until you see what they were being paid before and after the decrease.
For instance, if a CEO’s pay is $20 million one year and it drops to $16 million due to decreased bonus the next year—-compared to a family of 4 surviving on less than $20k a year while working more than one job at poverty wages, and being criticized as deadbeats for collecting food stamps so they don’t starve.
No one denies that we face huge problems as a nation. But does anyone really think that we can pin all of the blame, and all of our hopes on “fixing” these problems on the public schools?
And if we truly did believe that the schools could fix these problems, created by the inequity of resources in our country and internationally, would we do so by systematically depriving those schools of the necessary resources they need to adequately feed, shelter and teach our children?
Would we fix these problems by attacking and demoralizing the very persons we claim to be depending on to save us, our teachers?
Would we fix these problems by eliminating all licensing requirements and welcoming unqualified persons into our schools’ classrooms to teach and care for our children?
Clearly, this is not about children, schools or learning.
Its about money.
The corporate education movement makes the funding issues worse by siphoning off money and the most promising students from public schools. Public schools then must education the neediest, most expensive students with fewer resources. It makes no sense!
It is unclear to me where this cauldron of excellent teachers will mysteriously appear from – that we will become so excellent at teacher education (and our current teachers apparently can’t relearn) – that people will line up to take teaching jobs and raise all of these children out of poverty through their grit that they can’t exercise because of bad teaching.
All of this talk about excellent teachers is simply too abstract. What is an excellent teacher that meets the “reformer” criteria. And why is it that new college grads are the best people to be teaching these children…but experienced teachers can’t be trusted to do their job one bit.
Doesn’t it say something that when administrators had the option to flunk a lot of teachers, they CHOSE not to. That every single time teachers are evaluated with a human element, teachers are good.
It’s only when you introduce BS mathematical gimmicks that are “objective” can you tweak it enough to then find cause to fire people. We are a profession that deals in HUMAN BEINGS.
Why can’t we be evaluated BY human beings!!
More importantly, why is it so urgent that New York’s teaching corps. become the subject of a wild experiment cooked up by a politician with an ax to grind that will permanently influence a generation of students.
Our education commissioner declared how students would come out after the new tests, and he had the power to make that outcome come to pass. Everyone KNEW the tests in the first administration would go down – they always do.
NOW we are in “real crisis” mode because “only” 30% of students are CCR (which we have a lot of research to prove that…right?), and we MUST radically overhaul our system or else all is lost!
Never let a good manufactured crisis go to waste. If teachers were “lying” to students that were getting good grades for a decade on progressively easier regents, are the teachers being held accountable for where we are when they simply taught what they were told, and did exactly what they were supposed to, to bring up test scores.
The more I look at this, the more suspect the Board of Regents becomes in manufacturing the success or failure of our school system and the “data” that feeds the machine in whichever way politics and money demands.
This is simply not education. It is hurting students. It is going to hurt a generation of adults too who devoted their lives to helping children with a demoralizing strained school atmosphere.
Yes. Nearly all of America has drank the “schools are failing” and “fire all the bad teachers” Kool aide. It’s amazing. Even the liberals in our own close family rant about teachers and how terrible they are – this with their own kids trying to teach in this teacher bashing country. America hates its teachers. Sad really, as teachers can be so important to a society.
Gets at some of the issues, but by and large, too many faculty in higher education have been active in forwarding destructive federal and state policies for K-12 education or they were silent and indifferent to the mean rhetoric pushed by federal and state officials…until oops, the same basic policies and mean rhetoric were dumped on teacher ed programs.
Ms. Chapman,
The assault on public education (K-Graduate/Professional) began decades ago, and is only one part of a sweeping project aimed at privatizing traditional government services/functions. Neoliberal elites and theorists vehemently believe that the government should operate according to market/business principles. In their view, public employees and institutions are inherently unproductive in the absence of market discipline. Thus, the President should emulate the ‘efficiency-maximizing’ CEOs running Forbes 500 corporations, and Congress should avoid deficit spending at all costs. After all, a successful business rarely accrues huge debts or regularly invests in their employees (‘human capital’). Competition will, instead, ensure that workers focus on improving themselves.
Philip Mirowski, an economic historian and philosopher of science, has traced the intellectual roots of the neoliberal movement and carefully documented its role in transforming society over the last 35 years. We are all aware of the pernicious effects of the K-12 ed. reform movement, but the commercialization of science and higher education has been a ‘wild success’ in comparison:
“…the current government is no longer interested in footing the bill for your higher education as a preparation for your citizenship in the modern democratic state; rather, it wants you to pony up for all that ‘human capital’ you accumulate, supposedly to your own benefit. And then there are the landmark Court decisions, ranging from Diamond v. Chakrabarty to Madey v. Duke and Laboratory Corporation v. Metabolite Labs. There have been just too many irreversible changes on many fronts in corporations, government and the modern university to simply reverse the Neoliberal drive to commodify knowledge. There is no going home again…
In ScienceMart and in a previous book of mine The Road from Mont Pèlerin, I present the history of the neoliberal ideas behind the commodification of knowledge. The First Commandment of the Neoliberal Credo is that The Market is the unique superior information processor known to mankind, smarter than any individual human being, or any other social institution. Consequently the commercialization of knowledge is deemed by neoliberals identical with the march of civilization. One corollary of this belief is that we mere mortals can never know the truth of this First Commandment; we can only rely upon our faith in the market to invest it with Truth. I know this may sound circular, and perhaps absurd; but I would suggest that you read what the neoliberals have actually written…
A second corollary is that academic science, insofar it is sheltered from market forces, is not regarded by neoliberals as the highest achievement of mankind. Rather, state-supported science, like state supported universities, are the last vestige of socialism in the capitalist sphere, and need to be pared back to insignificance. Recent fiscal crises are used as the public excuse to carry out the long sought dissolution of the universities into disaggregated for-profit units. Academics who don’t comprehend the politics of the situation have become cannon fodder for the Neoliberal Revolution.”
Click to access mirowski-mullins-lecture.pdf
Unfortunately, academics were asleep at the wheel and have generally eschewed organizing themselves (via unions or other associations) into a strong opposition bloc. As a result, it’s unclear whether this worrying trend toward privatization can be reversed or even slowed.
“The Market is the unique superior information processor known to mankind, smarter than any individual human being, or any other social institution.”
The Market or is that THE MARKET is nothing more than a description of human interactions as expounded by various economists over the last couple of centuries at most. THE MARKET has no material existence, cannot influence human affairs in any fashion other than in the fantasy world of economics where it supposedly has quite magical powers. THE MARKET, in other words, is a chimera, a duende, a non-existent concept the exists only in the minds of some people.
I only read this quickly, but they seem a lot more concerned about educator preparation programs than they do about teachers.
The term “achievement gap” is an ideologically freighted one, intended to exclude from debate all the other “gaps” faced by poor and working class students: the “school funding gap,” the “justice gap,” the “equal treatment under the law gap,” the “decent and affordable housing gap,” the “medical and dental care gap” and so on.
By even using that (should be) discredited term, we validate the premises and propaganda of the so-called reformers.
Exacto, and echoes my comment about “great teachers”.
I had an immediate impulse to type something intelligent in response to your comment, but I realize I have nothing to type other than: I agree.
That response seems the opposite of one of our institutions that prepares teachers in South Dakota. The Interim-Dean thinks teachers simply don’t care about salary and really only work for 9 months during the year and from 8:00 to 3:00.
http://leftinsd.blogspot.com/2015/02/why-usd-interim-dean-of-education.html
The Working Family Party cites recent success in electing a supporter of public schools to the Ct. State Legislature, defeating the Democratic school privatizer.
This is a very powerful statement, but so was the letter signed by over 2,000 education researchers, experts, and professors asking the President and Congress to stop the excessive standardized high stakes testing. It is baffling to me that the people who are elected do not consider the facts and research about issues before they formulate a platform. How can anyone endorse blaming teachers or teacher programs, high stakes standardized testing, merit pay, or any of the other ridiculous ideas that politicians produce without looking like they are completely ignorant or disconnected from reality?
To whom it may concern:
Time is money: creative time produces money, and money buys time to do research in business world. But, in educational field, there is a catch 22, because it takes a lot of time to produce a fine, creative human being, but it only takes a crumb of money to destroy WHOLE national foundation of Teaching Profession.
Who gets the blame? Is it because ignorant and cowardice higher education global leaders? Is it because greedy and obsessive controlling global business corporate? Is it because inhuman and modern slavery economy in today global Leaders? Sigh. Back2basic