Robert Reich is concerned about over testing and the cost of higher education.
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Here are Reich’s ideas:
“Make public higher education completely free, as it was in many states in the 1950s and 1960s.
“Stop the wall-to-wall testing that is destroying the love of teaching and learning, limit classrooms to 20 children so teachers can give students the individual attention they need, expand federal funding for education, and raise the pay and improve conditions for the men and women who power our schools.
“Provide high-quality, universal pre-school and after-school care.
“Offer high school seniors the option of a year of technical education, followed by two years of free technical education at a community college.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Wow! Who got to him? Now let’s convert people like Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken, Bernie Sanders,… Hilary Clinton will have to do a lot more than start spouting the progressive line before I buy her spiel. She has a long neoliberal history that marries profit with public that has not advanced the public good. I’m sure we can identify a lot of people who can be convinced. I know it is easy to be appalled that people in power can be so ignorant, but I rely on others for information on a lot of subjects in which I do not want to become an expert.
According to Reich, education as an investment in human capital for the economy. He gives a brief nod to informed, engaged citizenship.
His rhetoric about reinventing education is tired, also claims that education is “not working,” as if everything is wrong. I am leery of anyone who says education is broken and can be fixed. That implies that someone or some group just needs to get out the right tool kit and replace/repair part A, align it with part B, and so on and on….or just reinvent the institution from scratch. Problem solved. NOT.
Reich also portrays teaching as a “talent,” a concept that has been cultivated by McKinsey & Co., in tandem with the Obama/Duncan rhetoric about “Great Teachers and Great Leaders.”
“Talent” and “high quality” have become incantations. Both of these expressions help to disconnect teaching from the idea that it is work and that it requires a command of more than subject matter knowledge—attention to non-verbal meanings, unfolding and unpredictable events that hone your expertise and increase the likelihood you will have good judgment, but not always perfect performance.
Although I think Robert Reich has a more nuanced grasp of economic issues and how these intersect with education, his comments, bullet points, and animated graphics in this presentation strike me as too easily dismissed as just another version of reformist thinking with pie-in-the-sky hope for big federal investments in education. His presentation strikes me as an open invitation for conservatives to say: “throwing more money at schools, teachers, education” won’t improve outcomes.
Absolutely!
I agree!
I agree about less testing. I’m wary of giving anything away for free. When something is free people tend to appreciate it less. We already have two generations who do not appreciate their educational privileges. I don’t think this will help. Entitlement is what ails my generation and younger. I admire a lot about Reich but I feel sometimes that he is still living in the 60’s . The handout mentality of that generation has led to the lack of ambition in my own. Please Reich just for once take a step out of your Berkeley Box. I grew up in the shadow of Berkeley and I can tell you several things that are wrong with that mentality. Several things…for instance ….I can list several friends of mine who got hooked on drugs because their free love parents allowed it in the house.
“When something is free people tend to appreciate it less.”
Yes, a child thinks that it’s getting cheap food, clothing, shelter because the love that serves as the impetus is priceless.
“We already have two generations who do not appreciate their educational privileges.”
Which two generations? The “Greatest Generation” many of whom took advantage of the post WW2 GI Bill to further their education? Or maybe the Gen Xers? BBs?
“Entitlement is what ails my generation* and younger.”
What entitlement? What do you consider your generation?
“The handout mentality of that generation has led to the lack of ambition in my own.”
What exactly is “the handout mentality”? Please explain.
“I can list several friends of mine who got hooked on drugs because their free love parents allowed it in the house.”
And I can list many friends who got hooked on drugs because of the strict religious mindset in which they were brought up. (Heaven forbid “free love”-perhaps that is most what you are afraid of Roxanne-“free love”. Can’t go appreciatin that lovin that’s free).
Your screed sounds like it has come straight from some Sunday morning xtian conservative right wing bully pulpit.
*https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q63XogYTIcc
@Duane Well said!
Tuition free does not mean free, especially for the people who inhabit the lowest rungs on the socioeconomic ladder. Room and board, books and fees still would add up to a substantial amount. You’re right that what we get for free we have a tendency to begin to view as an entitlement rather than an incredible gift. I was lucky enough to have parents who could send me to college. My own children all have outstanding loans for their education (as do we). They took their education more seriously than I did at least until I could concentrate on my interests.
I find it hard to relate to what you are saying about entitlement. To what exactly have the last two generations been entitled, as regards higher education, that previous generations were not? My own boomer generation, at least in NYS where I came from, was far more ‘entitled’ than my 20-something kids are. I was able as a middle-class kid to access an Ivy League BA thanks to Regents Scholarship– the opportunity there has dwindled to nearly-nothing today. Same goes for my husband, who was able to access a fine private engrg BS via scholarship funds which today have completely dried up.
My kids have no ‘entitlement’ expectations– they are actually quite cynical about opportunities. Many of their peers took advantage of easy-money student loans & are hobbled with horrendous debt in a bear job market. They were happy enough to go to the state colleges we could afford (having had our savings for kids’ college be devastated by the recent financial collapse– yet not willing to put our kids in debt)– & are struggling to patch together a living wageas are all their college-grad friends.
I suspect that the lack of ambition you observe among your peers has most to do with a lack of job opportunity in our economy, which has nothing to do with how their educations were financed. As to the lack of ambition fomented by drugs in the home in the Berkeley area, that is a plague that has beset the culture for 50 yrs. I have peers (& I am 65 y.o.) who were severely affected by that. Some powered on above it, some succumbed.
Maybe “entitlement” gets a bad rap. Maybe, since the government is, at least in theory, us, it should actually work for us. Maybe, instead of providing opportunity after opportunity to the richest people in the country (who could already afford those opportunities anyway), maybe we *should* be expecting the government to be providing some of those opportunities for the rest of us. We the People need to be *more* “entitled”, not less. After all, if it’s our government, it’s our money. Time to start claiming it instead of docilely ceding it to the rich as if they’ve somehow “earned” it simply by being rich.
Reich has stated that he has known Hillary since his days at Dartmouth. He believes she is the right person to lead America. I am not convinced.
“Over-testing” is often code for “get rid of all those district, school and teacher mandated tests and focus on the important ones – the BS Tests (Big Standardized Tests, to shamelessly steal from Peter Greene). As if all those district, school and teacher mandated tests have nothing to do with the BS Tests. I also need to hear him say that he’s opposed to any form of school closing, teacher evaluation or student promotion/graduation being tied to BS Test scores.
I’m also skeptical of universal pre-k. The way this is being structured by the neo-libs is a corporate dream and a parent/teacher nightmare. Common Core for infants! I’m far more interested in hearing about affordable, developmentally appropriate childcare for working parents.
He’s closer than many others, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt for now, but I’ve learned not to easily trust those who appear to be on our side and say a few of the right things.
free public education can be translated into all online and all parttime instructors. there is a crisis in the disappearance of fulltime jobs for scholars in many disciplines. fear this would only empower administrators to get rid of more of these jobs, all “to make it free” for students.
All of Reich’s comments sound effective for K-12 , but research and experience suggests that the “rate determining step” to maximize student achievement is giving students the CHOICE of being promoted by proficiency. Secondly,is providing teachers with the “tools, programs models and expertise” on how to advance the K-12 student by proficiency. A very effective and inexpensive program called RISC, applied, according to the authors in over 1800 schools throughout the USA., does this simple idea of promoting students by proficiency, independent of age and attendance to improve K-12 achievement.
The R & D and experience documents that when K-12 students are promoted into a class by proficiency, class size of even 40 students, the students continue to become proficient at the end of class with little or no change in student and class learning. Some of the reasons for the proficient student’s success include: that the students have the appropriate pre-requisite skills to learn the presented material, so that students can help each other learn effectively; the teacher requires less time for extensive review, so that their is more direct. “time on task” for effective instruction; and most importantly the students WANT and can learn the presented material.
However, in most educationally disadvantaged K-12 classes, very few students enter the class with the appropriate pre-requisite skills to learn the material being taught. The result is a large difference in background levels among students and the teacher does not have the “tools, programs or expertise” to diagnose each student’s readiness skills to learn the presented material. Even with small classes and without diagnostic-prescriptive information, the teacher has little chance of being an effective teacher. If all the students were placed into classes by by the appropriate pre-requisite skills, even in an educationally disadvantaged schools, the students would at least have a “choice” to learn the material, which is not impossible if the background skills are not appropriate and varied.
Dr Reich, as a university professor, who has never taught in K-12 most likely has little personal understanding of the problems connected with teaching in K-12 level , especially the educationally disadvantaged students. At the college level, the expectation, responsibility, and learning is placed on the student. College students who do not have the skills or desire to learn the material either receive a low grade, fail, or drop out.
The academic failing student at the K-12 level, on the other hand, is generally just passed onto the next level making the student even less able to learn the next level of material. For example, the federal NAEP, our nation’s report card, state and class room tests documents that by eight grade the mean non-proficient student has skills of the average fourth grade student. Class room research documents that this mean four year difference between the proficient and non-proficient student is approximately 40 % in ten pre-requisite skill areas and the composite.( Documentation is available from this researcher)
Obviously, R & D and experience suggests that placing, teaching, and promoting students by proficiency among the K-12 grades may be the single most important factor in educating K-12 students, especially in English and the STEM disciplines.
Question: Is the above eighth grade example “fair, honest, kind, effective for the student, parent, teacher, school, community, and the tax-paying public”?
ekangas@juno.com
Proficiency at what? Defined how? Determined by whom? What about the kid who’s reading at an 8th grade level but struggling with second grade math? What about the kid who isn’t much interested in reading or math, but who can spend hours trying to experiment to figure something out or who can take things apart and put them back together perfectly? What about the academically gifted kid with immature social skills? And would proficiency be based on (standardized) tests? What about smart kids who are just lousy test takers?
Are you suggesting that placing up to 40 K-5 students with 1 teacher and letting them help each other might be a good way to teach 5-11 year olds who are reading the same level book? Then reshuffling them all again into math groups, and again for social studies, science, pe, music, and art? I’m curious how this arrangement would develop their social skills and peer relationships – which at the K-2 level is arguably more important than academics. Is turning K-5 into middle school the goal?
It’s not going to work in the middle grades either. Teenaged angst and drama and other things will derail any learning. It does to an extent now, but wait until this “proficiency” model shows up.
My example stated in terms of class size was that of an eighth grade teacher, who had 37 students in one English class and 43 students in the other English class. The most important point of the class size issue was that possibly all the students entering these large classes were proficient on entrance into the class without a loss of student learning at exit. However, in most K-12 schools, the students are ALL promoted by attendance with only some of the students being promoted by proficiency. When this occurs, there is a large difference in background levels, and then smaller classes are more desirable, but still not very effective unless the teacher has effective tools such as diagnostic- prescriptive tests and materials to address these students divergent background levels.
At the middle school and above level disciplines classes are separate, so that the separation by a difference in achievement levels is not a problem. At the elementary levels the situation may seem more difficult to address, but research clearly documents that for MOST students, the academic skills closely relate to each other, so that a student weak in English, GENERALLY will be weak in math, science, and other disciplines.
In California, three state 1998 laws forbid “social promotion”, as does the federal NCLB law..I just do not understand, as a retired teacher, who taught many years at the K-12, community college and even some university levels, why it just seems more logical, fair, honest, kind, effective and LEGAL to promote the K-12 student by attendance separately from proficiency, as the current K-12 RISC model has done effectively for years.
Another important point, is that promoting students by proficiency separately from attendance, the responsibility of learning shifts to the student, where it belongs, because you can not force a student to learn. Currently, many K-12 students know that they will be promoted to the next level regardless if the student does any work or not. In addition, this model would reduce K-12 costs as there would be only one program in each discipline in the school and no need for remedial nor advanced classes.
Why not check out for your self the RISC model and other, mastery learning programs available for K -12, such as the Kumon math- English program and the free Internet Khan academy.
Several final comments:, There must be a change in thinking, before a change in behavior and practices will occur. Trust but verify. And Einstein’s definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Why not check out models with proven effectiveness?
ekangas@juno.com
It would be helpful if you would spell out what RISC means. All I get on google is ‘Reduced instruction Set Computer’.
I don’t believe in ‘mastery’ of every discipline at every level as a viable path to h.s. graduation. Maybe I would agree if we set ‘C’/passing as the ‘mastery ‘ level.
I find this preposterous: “research clearly documents that for MOST students, the academic skills closely relate to each other, so that a student weak in English, GENERALLY will be weak in math, science, and other disciplines.” Today as ever, some excel in STEM, some in Engl/arts; the rarer student is well-rounded. We needn’t wait until everyone masters every discipline to award a h.s. diploma!
BUT: I like the idea embedded in what you say. It harks back to the Open Classroom ideas of John Holt and others. We can see how well it works at the PreK level by observing Montessori schools. I myself am a product of a 1-room primary (1st-3rd grades), & my 4th-6th-gr school had two grades per classroom. The fact that I ‘skipped a grade’ is purely a result of that 1-room schoolhouse where folks advanced according to what they could do. There is a great deal to be said for the idea that students are motivated by knowing they can proceed to the next step when they’re ready– & there’s great comfort in knowing one can keep at it until one is truly ready to proceed to the next level.
We must of course recognize that this is an old idea which is still just a twinkle in the eye of US public education.
In the 50’s and 60’s federal money wasn’t controlling education policy. That began with Carter in the 70’s. Why not just roll back the cost of tuition so that student loan debt doesn’t become such a burden. Reich was what, Sec. of Labor under Clinton #1? How’d that work out?
I cannot see one of his bullet points with which I disagree. Of course he speaks from the viewpoint of an economist, he is one! His oversimplifications should raise caution flags, but calling for an end to over testing, limiting class size, increasing federal funding for wrap around services and early childhood education, supporting the role of technical education, identifying higher education as a public good that should be free, and increasing the salaries of teachers and staff are ideas that are hard to argue with. Implementation is the sticking point, an area which he does not claim expertize and wisely does not attempt to discuss with sound bites. I suspect that he would suggest educators should have a central role in those decisions and are far better qualified than he is to develop such plans. When it comes to the economics, he is one of those people I would like to be in the mix.
cx: an area in which
I know I should not idolize, but Reich, Warren, and Sanders are a dream team. . . . . relative to all others.
I agree on the Sanders and Reich and need to understand more about Warren.
Reich has a very short memory.
He even says so himself.
“I don’t recall what I said in Tampa in 2007. I’m lucky if I remember what I said yesterday.” — “Robert Reich: For ‘fast track’ before he was against it?”
Where will he stand tomorrow?
I don’t take much credence in what most economists say, especially when they weigh in on things outside their own area of expertise — whatever that may be (damned if I can figure it out — or if most of them can, for that matter)
I am a regular reader of Robert Reich’s blog as he is totally for campaign finance reform, divesting megabillioniares and Wall Street from their stranglehold on our political system and does offer ways to solve problems and yes… from an economists point of view … but not from a “business man out for profit” view. I have never seen him address education until this most recent blog article. I do believe his blog is worth a read for anyone not familiar with it. He addresses many other major issues that are eroding the foundations of democracy. Do scroll through his many articles. http://robertreich.org/. My major concern with Reich is his tie to the Clintons. But Reich is his own entity and does not seem to “kow tow” to others. I wonder if he will have the ear of Hillary Clinton because of his connection to both Clintons. In terms of political candidates… these days I am so weary of politics and will be until we have campaign finance reform but am much more hopeful in the message that Bernie Sanders is sending. I can still say that Reich does not give Hillary Clinton blind support. Give his article on Clinton a read..
http://robertreich.org/post/116045764740
I think Reich needs to hear a lot from k-12 educators and policy experts like Ravitch!
I posted an earlier comment and it must have gotten lost as it did not appear so apologies if a like reply appears. But I encourage readers of this blog to scroll through and read Reich’s blog too. http://robertreich.org/ I am a regular reader. This is the first time I have seen him address education. But he addresses so many of the issues that are eroding democracy like big business and Wall Street takeover of politics and offers solutions. He addresses the issues as an economist and not as a “businessman out for profit”. His ties with the Clintons are of concern, but he demonstrates time and time again that he is HIS OWN MAN. http://robertreich.org/post/116045764740 I support Sanders’ on so many issues and am thankful he is out there. Sanders gives me hope that checks and balances can be restored in our government. I am totally fed up with politics right now and cannot feel I participate in anything to do with government until campaign finance laws are changed. Now if Reich will start to listen to the voices of public school educators and education historians like Ravitch and really start to learn and understand the situation from those on the front lines…. this will be significant.
All I want to know is whose idea it was to take phonics out of schools and sell it for 300 bucks on tv….because once that happened, everything attached to reading and learning by reading, went down hill from there. So of course kids are struggling,what they need to absorb cannot be decoded fast enough for comprehension. Once the pattern is set, love of learning, reading on own to increase knowledge, just does not materialize out of thin air. Foundation has to be in place, kids under whole language system just were not given that basic structure to build upon. As a parent, the taxes we pay, and then have to send kids to private schools on top of that in order to indeed provide foundation learning, its killing the middle class how out of control the wastefulness and poor quality of what that tax base is receiving in return.
Some of the above comments I find very confusing.
For me, what is he saying that is counterproductive for education, at least what I am reading here?
People above are not concerned with over testing and the cost of higher education.
Are you serious?
I find most of what he writes seems to me to be very perspicacious and in this on education also.
Convert Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders? I seriously doubt if they need much converting.
A few years ago when I visited Portugal, one of the poorest nations in Europe, THEY provided free higher education. On a more recent visit they had raised tuition rates: $100 per semester, maybe even for the year, do not remember that particular for sure but if one of Europe”s poorest nations can do it and we can’t?
Remember too that one of the best investments this country EVER made was giving WWII veterans tuition, books etc for FREE.
Etc, etc, etc.
Again, I do not understand the writing of some above.