This is one of the enduring questions of our age. Arne Duncan attended the University of Chicago Lab School and so do his children, as well as the children of Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel. When he was tapped to be CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, why didn’t he strive to make public schools as rich in curriculum and opportunities as the Lab School? Why didn’t he take what he knew and experienced and carry that knowledge to the U.S. Department of Education? That would have been not just “reform,” it would have been revolutionary.
I earlier posted this article on a Chicago blog about Arne’s decision to send his children to the Lab School. This is a decision that I do not criticize, by the way, as I think parents should choose any school they wish, as long as they are willing to pay the price for a non-public education. But I do wish that Arne had applied or at least tried to apply the Lab School principles to his “reform” agenda.
A reader who followed the comments pointed this one out to me:
STAN HOLLENBECK:
“Arne Duncan is a tool, and has been from the
beginning when he was appointed here.
“I don’t know if the Lab School has a legacy
program, but this is the same school from
which (Duncan) graduated. He was appointed
at the time I was still director of the City
Council’s Legislative Reference Bureau, and
I made it a point to meet him in the
hallway before his appointment hearing.
“As I shook his hand, I said I’m glad that,
since he was a Lab School graduate, we
finally got someone who has experienced
what good education should be, and there’s
no real reason that schools like the Lab
School can’t be models for real reform.
“He stared at me as though he’d been shot,
and never spoke another word to me again.”
Reform Schools Are For Peons …
It was a bullet of truth entering him, yet he simultaneously recalled having sold his soul.
Well, THAT guy’s not getting invited to the next “stakeholders meeting” that’s for sure.
No dissenters allowed!
It’s a race AND class question. He and the other wealthy DEformers think that a Progressive education is fine for their own kids, but is completely inappropriate for OTHER kids – from the poor and working classes, especially those who are brown or black. This is explicitly spelled out in the curricula and teaching philosophies of KIPP and other ‘successful’ charter schools of the ‘no-excuses’ variety.
Of course, and as we all know, these no-excuses charter schools kick out, or counsel out, or flunk out, or pressure out the kids who can’t tolerate those rough no-excuses conditions – conditions which Arne Duncan and all the other wealthy DEformers would never, never tolerate for their own children. (Except for the relatively few wealthy foulup kids who end up in military school after too many instances of theft, vandalism, playing hookey, and failed classes.)
At the Lab School and at Sidwell Friends, you already have to be very wealthy, and/or have stupendous school grades, to get in.
Along similar lines…http://empowermentnetwork.org/2015/07/28/and-it-is-not-about-equity-either/
gfbrandenburg: next think you’ll be telling me is that you don’t want to give kids with affluenza a “get out of jail free card” when they do something that gets most people put away for a long time…
But, on a more serious note, it’s part of the same mentality that gets a ferocious advocate of CCSS to, er… This blog, 3-23-2014, “Common Core for Commoners, Not My School!”
[start posting]
This is an unintentionally hilarious story about Common Core in Tennessee. Dr. Candace McQueen has been dean of Lipscomb College’s school of education and also the state’s’s chief cheerleader for Common Core. However, she was named headmistress of private Lipscomb Academy, and guess what? She will not have the school adopt the Common Core! Go figure.
[end posting]
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/23/common-core-for-commoners-not-my-school/
Double think. Double talk. Double standards.
Just like the rheephormsters calling for “civil dialogue” (and blaming their critics for not engaging in it) while they double down on the sneers, jeers and smears [ for just one example see this blog, 7-26-2015, “Los Angeles: The Charter Empire Strikes Back.”]
Folks that can’t walk their own talk. Been around for a very long time, as a very dead and very old and very Greek guy would attest:
“Hateful to me as are the gates of hell, Is he who, hiding one thing in his heart, Utters another.” [Homer]
😎
Michael Bennet also never attended public schools and had his children in private schools until he became Superintendent. His successor at DPS, Tom Boasberg, sends his kids to a private school in Boulder. He went to private schools as well.
Yeah, I sort of disagree with Diane. Just as people can choose to send their children to private schools people can also choose careers doing something other than leading public education.
I don’t think it’s a good sign that political leaders seem to be getting further and further removed from ordinary experiences. I think it DOES matter. Obviously it shouldn’t be a hard and fast rule barring consideration but would I prefer someone who shared what is a REALLY common experience in the US- attending public schools- over someone who did not? Yes, I would. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.
Very quotable – Duncan is indeed a tool.
If all schools were like the Chicago Lab School then it would lose its cachet and stop being a social and monetary class sorting station. Then why would any of these power-hungry, wealth-chasing, rent-seeking people send their children there?
Without the ever-widening social stratification in the USA they can’t assuage their overblown egos and feel special and better than others, the neoliberal tenet of “the smartest guys in the room” which is the equivalent of the longstanding conservative racism, religious bigotry, and economic apartheid.
There is no mystery as to why some humans seek to profit from the misery and suffering of others. It’s part of the dark side of the human condition that priests, poets, philosophers, and wisewomen have been documenting for ages.
I think it’s kind of interesting he’s confident he can afford it. Won’t he have to look for a job, or is that just a given after a stint in DC?
He’s been a good waterboy for the moneyed class. He will be taken care of by his masters. He achieved things no conservative could ever have gotten by with and gave it a false liberla democratic patina.
ALEC takes care of their own, as do the members of the rentier class. I imagine a few board positions here, a few speaking engagements there, a think tank or two and maybe a TV talking head gig.
He’s got it made in the shade.
His wife works there, so they receive at least a 50% discount on tuition, plus priority in the admissions process. The true cost of a Lab education is carried by the students whose parents aren’t employed by the University of Chicago or its hospital system, and by the University of Chicago itself.
It’s obvious. Doing the right thing would take the profit out of school RheeForm.
hmmm…. What do these elite private schools have that makes them so attractive to guys like this? Can I get some of whatever it is in my school?
Whatever “it” is, that’s something that public school leaders should fight for instead of wasting time and money on the current BS agenda.
I don’t know the $$ per student at the Lab School but my guess is its relatively high compared with public schools. That’s what “it” is, I bet.
I am continually dismayed by the policies made by Arne Duncan. But this actually leaves me feeling ill–there’s the feeling in it that the lab school type of education is only good for certain, entitled classes of people–say, like him!. As though the lab school type of education would be wasted on the masses who need to be tested and punished into submission.
This excellent piece from the University of Chicago student newspaper details the difficulties and politics of admissions at the Lab School — an enormous research university and hospital system has a lot of employees who want their children to go the Lab, and there just aren’t enough spaces to go around.
http://chicagomaroon.com/2009/06/02/how-do-you-get-into-the-lab-school/
These types of schools brutally sort, screen, stack, and cream–this particular school is primarily for the children of professors. It is breathtakingly expensive, and that is with a student population of far-above-average motivated learners. It just isn’t a realistic model for free universal public education on a large scale. It is a luxury product.
Tim, the Lab School is a good model to aspire to. You are making excuses for why students should be given a bare-bones schooling with no arts, meager curriculum options, no labs, no field trips.
Tim, this is your argument: “It’s not realistic to make it less exclusive, because it’s too exclusive.”
Strange.
The “reality” is that we could, if we wanted to, make more schools like the lab school.
You’re assuming it simply has to be that way, like we simply have to have hurricanes every year, rather than it being a conscious decision of the University of Chicago. You don’t think that an institution of the caliber (and financial power) of the U of C could create many more Lab schools if it wanted to? Or that a city, which can afford to pay for a private religious college’s basketball arena, couldn’t afford a few Lab-type schools?
In any case, progressive education doesn’t have to be that expensive. My daughters’ tuition is less than $10,000 each – very well in line with what Chicago spends per student. Cost is not the reason there are not more progressive schools. It’s an intentional decision to reserve the best education for the children of the elite. It’s not a natural phenomenon like rain.
Another angle is that public schools which offer excellent programs competitive with those private schools are being forced to abandon a top notch education in favor of one featuring common core.
A lose lose proposition for home owners who paid big bucks and moved to neighborhoods which promised a superior education for their kids.
Arne Duncan’s contempt for other people’s children is staggering.
If Duncan designed the Titanic, he would boast about its fitness for the masses. Behind the scenes, Duncan would make sure his own children took the first spots on the life boats.
The students make the school.
Ponderosa, family income makes the school too. Families can always pitch in to hire extra teachers or buy supplies, not to mention home advantages that money buys.
True, but think about this thought experiment: imagine that all of the elite, lavishly equipped private schools swap students with all of the bare-bones ghetto schools. I predict most of the maladies that afflict the ghetto schools will migrate to the private schools, while most of the virtues of the private schools will migrate to the ghetto schools. Wealthy parents will start clamoring to get their kids into the ghetto schools. Do you agree?
In other words, you cannot turn the ghetto schools into Lab Schools (except in outward appearance)…unless you weed out the majority of ghetto kids (which is what KIPP and Success do: they only keep the creme de la ghetto. For that matter, it’s what Harvard and Yale do. The teaching there may well suck –yet their desirability and the GRE scores of their graduates will be astronomical regardless simply because of the high-caliber of the brains they let in). While I heartily desire to soak the rich to pay for more deluxe facilities for poor kids, and I agree with you that it will have SOME impact, I am pessimistic that this will work wonders with these kids’ educational outcomes. The root of the problem is not bare bones facilities and faculties, as conventional liberal opinion would have it; rather it’s the cultural and intellectual software in ghetto kids’ brains. They lack some invisible stuff that professionals’ kids have. How can we give them that stuff? It seems to me a ghetto elementary school curriculum that replicates the home learning of professionals’ kids has the best chance of turning these kids into better students (along with government policy that raises wages and benefits for ordinary workers –which would stabilize families and permit better parenting). Lab School-caliber facilities will do a little to equalize the minds of poor and rich kids; Lab School progressive pedagogy, to the extent that it assumes built-in background knowledge that ghetto kids have not yet acquired, will harm ghetto kids by assigning activities that, at best, inefficiently and haphazardly transmit the essential mental foundations that rich kids acquire at home through parents’ constant didactic instruction and rich verbal streaming. It seems to me talk about facilities and funding, while important, misses the heart of the matter. We need clearer and deeper thinking about the invisible cognitive underpinnings of academic success.
Harvard, Yale, and Princeton as well as the other Ivies only accept students who are on third base. Not on purpose. It just works out that way because a lot of things that happen before senior year.
Good comment, good question.
Ponderosa – there’s a tipping point. If there is a mixture of students from various backgrounds in a positive learning environment and there are clear expectations of behavior, most “ghetto” kids will conform to the norm. Just because they are born into poverty doesn’t mean they have no ability, it simply means they need the right opportunity.
However, in the current situation, with schools almost 100% minority and 100% poverty, in a anti-learning culture including poor attendance and numerous students acting out in class to prevent an instructor from teaching (with refusal to complete homework and even class work), where school is a place to socialize (during class so that the teacher can’t be heard above the crowd) and there is a lack of administrative or parental support to punish insubordinate behaviors, then it is almost impossible to promote learnIng and, In this case, a change in schools and/or teachers will not make a difference.
Ponderosa:
“We need clearer and deeper thinking about the invisible cognitive underpinnings of academic success.”
Stephen Krashen has pointed out that the lack of access to books and book ownership among poor families makes a difference in a child’s readiness to read. Adequate funding and facilities (for books, libraries, and librarians, for example) for schools serving poor kids would actually make a big difference.
As for your “ghetto kid” stereotyping, here’s a well-sourced article on stereotypes of poor families vis a vis poor families and education:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/10/28/five-stereotypes-about-poor-families-and-education/
It seems that the poverty stricken areas are the ones whose public libraries either reduce hours or close and whose school libraries have part time (and sometimes no) certified librarians, while the more affluent neighborhoods refuse to let any of their services be curtailed.
Excellent references. Those of us who have worked in inner city environments where poverty is prevalent know that the issues facing education are complex and varied. Instead of tossing out the current systems in place, it would make more sense to analyze the specifics of each school which will vary with the population.
Unfortunately, the solutions often involve costs that the districts or states refuse to spend. The current system of “throwing the baby out with the bath water” by replacing the staff or switching out schools from public to charter is not addressing the true issues.
It has also been revealed that even when additional funds are provided, a disproportionate amount goes for administrative costs instead of programming that directly impacts the students. To me, that is the real tragedy – when individuals benefit at the expense of our most vulnerable children.
He had been shot. With a very direct, and to the point observation that perfectly encapsulated how “non-reform” the policies he smugly promotes are-using as evidence his own education experiences+the ones he intentionally chooses for his own children.
Once again, every two weeks is Arne Duncan bashing day in this blog. Is Diane Ravitch getting anywhere using this blog for character assassination of Arne Duncan?
What is going to happen to this blog after his term in office is over in less than 2 years?
If Bush kept Donald Rumsfeld around instead of finally replacing him in 06 would you say the same thing? Duncan has earned whatever bashing he gets here and then some!
Too bad. He deserves whatever blame and bashing he deserves. You don’t have to be associated with this blog to address his problems. He’s totally out of touch, and needs to go.
Raj–
Please defend him. We are all ears.
You have the floor.
Proceed, sir…
I think the blog will get along fine when Duncan leaves. The horrible people and ideas are not going anywhere soon. And there will still be plenty of good ideas to discuss.
Again, he deserves to be bashed.
There’s a great video that illustrates the same themes here: one kind of education for the privileged; a different one for “other people’s kids”. It’s from a three-year-old post:
https://dianeravitch.net/2012/06/03/for-shame-penny-pritzker/
DIANE RAVITCH. One of the most powerful videos I have yet seen is making its rounds of the Internet.
I urge you to watch it:
Matt Farmer, a parent of children in the Chicago public schools, addresses a rally of the Chicago Teachers Union, where he “cross-examines” Penny Pritzker, the billionaire member of the Chicago Board of Education.
Farmer is a trial lawyer. He describes how he bristled when he heard an interview on the radio in which Pritzker described what Chicago students need: enough skills in reading, mathematics, and science to be productive members of the workforce. Why no mention of the arts, of music, of physical education, he wondered.
So he cross-examined Pritzker in absentia. Her own children attend the University of Chicago Lab School. Mayor Rahm Emanuel sends his children there too. Arne Duncan is a graduate.
Farmer points out that the Lab School has a rich curriculum, not preparation for the workforce. Children there get the arts and physical education there every day. The Lab School has a beautiful library, and Pritzker is raising money to make it even grander and more beautiful. He asks the absent Pritzker, “Do you know that 160 public schools in Chicago don’t have a library?”
The Lab School has seven teachers of the arts. In a high school that Pritzker voted to close, there was not a single arts teacher.
Matt Farmer goes on to quote the director of the Lab School, who opposes standardized testing and insists upon a rich curriculum. The statement by the Lab School’s director about the importance of the union bring the assembled teachers to their feet, roaring and applauding.
I hope Penny Pritzker and Rahm Emanuel watch this video. People who have the good fortune to send their children to elite private schools should do whatever they can to spread the same advantages to other people’s children. When they are members of the board of education and the mayor, they have a special responsibility to do what is right for the children in their care. If they inflict policies on other people’s children that are unacceptable for their own children, they should be ashamed.
Please understand that the above tongue-in-cheek comment—it would be ludicrous if it were anything else!—is just a way of helping us follow doctor’s orders.
“A day without laughter is a day wasted.” [“Dr.” Charlie Chaplin]
Honestly, Arne Duncan does all the heavy lifting and work of “character assassination” on himself. All we’re doing is reporting the damage he does to himself.
For example, our words cannot match in the slightest the yawning chasm between his actions when he ensures for HIS OWN CHILDREN the opposite of what he tries with all his might to mandate for OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN.
It’s the kind of self-wounding hypocrisy that invites, nay demands, commentary. And if that commentary is humorous…
François de la Rochefoucauld put it well:
“Ridicule dishonors a man more than dishonor does.”
And what would the old dead French guy say about self-ridicule?
So c’mon, folks, Tester-in-Chief, Jester-in-Chief…
Give him discredit where discredit is due.
And thanks again to the commenter for making sure this day—another one coming up in two weeks?—was not wasted.
😎
I would give anything to be able to discuss education without having to discuss the ridiculous policies of the deformers, Raj. And I expect that pretty much everyone else agrees. HOWEVER, until that utopian day occurs, we MUST discuss what is happening to public education. Arne Duncan, who is SUPPOSED to support public education, is the mouthpiece of destroying public education. His comments and policies need to be discussed.
“What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all its children. Any other ideal for our schools is narrow and unlovely; acted upon, it destroys our democracy.” That’s from, of course, John Dewey, who founded the Lab Schools. We should be asking how to get other people’s children what we want for our own: small classes, a rich curriculum, a nurturing community; experienced and committed teachers, fair and age-appropriate discipline practices, thoughtful and purposeful assessments. I think the lesson that Duncan and Obama have taken from their own experiences in private schools is the wrong one: rather than believing in progressive education for all, they believe that the only way schools can be successful is to be exclusive. In Duncan’s mind, creating more charter schools *is* giving (some) children what he wants for his own: schools that are smaller, are in some manner exclusive (with applications and waiting lists, like private schools have), and serve a narrow demographic group. Ironic, because for Dewey, the great value of going school was to meet and interact with people unlike yourself — and thereby gain an understanding of how to function in a pluralistic democracy.
My kids also attend a ‘lab’ school. We ‘experiment’ with faculty and a decimated staff who are resource starved every year, forced to conduct classes with less chairs and desks than students, teach using not-so-smart boards. At our school we ‘test’ our bladders due to broken toilets. We ‘evaluate’ a nurses office with no nurse, a library with no librarian, and a district ordered ‘standardized’ computer system that cost tens of millions to implement that is headed to it’s 2nd year of causing complete chaos.
What district and school??
LAUSD
Thanks,
school?
It costs $30,000-40,000/year per student to provide a U of C Lab School education. (This is the total cost, which is covered at Lab by multiple revenue sources, not just tuition.) Public schools with budgets of less than $10,000/year per student can be wonderful in lots of ways, but they cannot provide the same level of attention to the individual student (e.g., 8:1 student-teacher ratio, multiple college counselors, etc.).
I realize this has been said many times before:
The children of members of Congress should be required to attend public schools. So should the children of Dept. of Education employees.
It’s the best way to show us that they’re proud of their accomplishments. Although, in reality, it’s the only way to get them to see what they’re not accomplishing.
Are there any members whose children now attend, or who did attend, public schools?