Nancy Bailey, experienced teachers, knows what make high schools successful. She posts a to-do list here.
She also knows that Steve Jobs’ billionaire widow Laurene Powell Jobs is peddling snake oil. Her goal is to eliminate the American high school and replace it with online learning, despite the lack of evidence for it–and the plethora of evidence that says it is a dramatic flop.
She writes:
“It’s especially ironic that Powell-Jobs uses a school bus to hype her venture philanthropic program. You won’t need school buses for what she’s proposing. That is unless they take students to places other than brick-and-mortar schools–like museums.
“Her “remake the American high school” mantra is really about replacing high schools with technology—learning anytime, anyplace. Here are titles and phrases from the website that hint of that.
Going to School in a Museum: Does Learning Have to Happen in a School?
Imagine a Super School
America Needs a New Way of Learning
High School Will Never Be the Same Again
The Next Generation Must Learn to Adapt to a Changing World
When Your School is a Museum
“Laurene Powell Jobs and the quest to change high schools are not new. If you want to blame someone for difficulties in public schools, blame politicians and corporate CEOs who have irresponsibly been attempting this feat on their own for years.
“Remember Bill Gates and the small school initiative? They tried to break up Manuel High School in Denver using more than $2 million. It was a failure.
“The Gates Foundation also failed at the first Philadelphia School of the Future—an all-tech high school.
“Go back even further.
“In 1995, the RJR Nabisco Foundation launched Reinventing Education: Entrepreneurship in America’s Public School, by the Chairman and CEO of IBM Lou V. Gerstner, Jr.
“Gerstner talked of New Century Schools—“clearing away restrictions” at the same time pushing for the standards that would eventually hamstring teachers into a standardization box when it came to teaching….
“Schools highlighted on the XQ website advertised as innovative are all driven by technology. Teachers might be mentioned, but it’s not clear if their use of the word teacher means a qualified teacher with an actual degree in teaching.
“It isn’t clear whether students have access to a well-rounded curriculum. Some of their innovative schools seem to specialize in a narrow area.
“One question to ask, did Powell-Jobs attend a public high school herself? Do her children attend public schools?”
Please, Laurene, stop reinventing the schools. You know nothing about it, and you are surrounded by people who know even less.
Turn your considerable wealth and energies to helping solve the problem of poverty.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
AMEN! Throughout my career (1968-2017}, first an elementary school teacher and then as a teacher educator, I’ve watched as governors, presidents, and rich folks have worked in their ways to address the problems faced by American schooling. It took a while but I am now convinced that almost no on ranting about creating a more effective educational system has any idea of what is really needed to address the goal of raising student achievement. I’ve watched programs as diverse as the Gates Small Schools effort and as large as the federal No Child Left Behind Act. I’ve watched these efforts spend billions of dollars, raise the stress level on teachers, and so on. What I have yet to see is a plan that has at least a reasonable chance of improving student achievement. Perhaps one day folks will decide to let teachers begin to reform their schools and their teaching. Perhaps, then and only then, might we reasonably expect achievement to improve.
LikeLike
“. . . has any idea of what is really needed to address the goal of raising student achievement.”
An ignorant goal at that, this concept of “raising student achievement”. Please define exactly what “raising student achievement” is. I patiently await a response. ¡Gracias!
LikeLike
Some people think the poor deserve to be poor … CALVANISTIC.
LikeLike
Eliminating traditional high schools would save the wealthy taxes. Replacing traditional high schools with online learning would further enrich the wealthy.
LikeLike
Eliminating all public schools would save the wealthy billions in state and local taxes
LikeLike
I hope you can respond to an Op ed in today’s NYTimes by a Marc Sternberg blasting the plan to return “Bad” teachers back into the classrooms. He is a director for the Waltons educational programs in K-12 schools.
LikeLike
Can we just keep asking Laurene Powell Jobs why paid so much money to make sure her own children were taught by teachers in small class sizes instead of having them stay at home and learn from a computer?
LikeLike
^^…why SHE paid so much money…..
LikeLike
THIS is the question a good education reporter would ask Powell-Jobs!
LikeLike
Oh, but that would mean asking journalists to do their jobs properly. Apparently teachers are the only profession you are allowed to do THAT to.
LikeLike
Quote: “Turn your considerable wealth and energies to helping solve the problem of poverty.”
…………
It takes a special person to use his/her resources to work to help those who are poor. Sister Theresa devoted her life to it and she didn’t have billions.
I”d guess that the ultra-wealthy believe they have all the answers while the truth is they too often can’t see past their limited vision. Too many don’t care but just want to see their names become important. (Trump, anyone?)
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a large group of billionaires actually work at eliminating poverty or at least using their money to help those in grave need? I wish those who had cared about those who don’t.
It has saddened me to see so much poverty in the world. How can anyone be a dictator who takes away from his own people that are in the streets starving?
How can anyone in this country that has everything possible think that those in poverty are lazy and greedy? Is this a short-coming of human nature? Think of Jesus’s words about how hard it is for a wealthy person to enter heaven.
LikeLike
“Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a large group of billionaires actually work at eliminating poverty”
They’d rather die than do something like that.
LikeLike
You got that right, Duane. They want to keep the club exclusive, small, and venal (I might give Buffett a break on that).
LikeLike
I think I would rather have them pay their taxes and give unrestricted gifts to organizations that have some idea how to reduce poverty. No more using their wealth as a weapon to drive their own agenda. No more using people as lab rats for their experiments.
LikeLike
Philanthropy used to work that way. Either the foundation made unrestricted gifts to worthy organizations or responded to and evaluated requests.
Now the big philanthropies choose their agenda and make money available to those who carry out their agenda. If they can’t find a group, they create a new one.
LikeLike
Quite correct, Diane. Hard to call it philanthropy when one directs every cent being spent.
LikeLike
If billionaires genuinely wanted to do something of real impact on improving public education, as well as eliminating racism, they should form a real estate group, fund it with $20 billion for starters, and then use it to buy homes for non-white families in all-white neighborhoods and suburbs. Back in 1972 when it ordered busing to end de facto segregation in the schools, the U.S. Supreme Court recognized that non-integrated neighborhoods are at the root of racial inequality and racial distrust — because the races really don’t know each other as a result of living in segregated neighborhoods and suburbs. Integration of neighborhoods and suburbs would initially result in anger and some conflict, but in the long run it’s the only path to genuine integration and understanding.
LikeLike
I love this idea, though I don’t think this will do a lot close the achievement gap. A knowledge-based curriculum, as opposed to the skills-based curriculum we have now, would be more helpful.
LikeLike
The downside to this idea is the implicitly biased assumption on the part of many of all political persuasions that it is the culture of the groups affected by poverty that causes their poverty, and that their culture must change to the “suburban” one in order for them to succeed. There are many hidden minefields to be avoided in crafting such a policy, ending poverty while supporting cultural identity and history is no cakewalk.
LikeLike
See Swann v. Mecklenburg (1971)
https://www.oyez.org/cases/1970/281
Forced busing has led to more segregation. not less. When forced busing arrived in Louisville KY in 1973, people started moving out of Jefferson county, and relocating to Bullitt and Oldham counties, and the result was a smaller number of white children in Jefferson!
LikeLike
Please, Laurene, stop reinventing the schools. You know nothing about it, and you are surrounded by people who know even less.
Turn your considerable wealth and energies to helping solve the problem of poverty.
Excellent recommendation. But will ABD, NBC. Fox, and all of the superstars come out and pitch this?
NOT likely.
LikeLike
The whole public-private “partnership” concept is designed to be a tax haven and/or an income producer for the already wealthy, and it assumes that wealthy people must know how to solve problems in areas for which they have no training or expertise. That assumption is all smoke and mirrors as billionaires continue to fail and spread their half-baked bias on other people’s children. It also has no regard for the well being of the many young people that get used as guinea pigs and billionaires’ play things. How arrogant with sprinkles of racism as many of the subjects of experimentation are poor minorities.
LikeLike
Why would they want the well being of other’s children? They want less competition going forward for their own children. I don’t know where this will end but I have a bad feeing in my gut.
LikeLike
If I had read your comment before I wrote mine, I would have kept my mouth shut and just endorsed yours. Well said.
LikeLike
It’s becoming more and more clear to me that the traditional classroom is superior to anything these pipe dreaming techies can come up with. A case in point is the Tech Museum in San Jose. Lots of fancy, ingenious, expensive interactive exhibits –a progressive ed-loving techie’s idea of educational utopia. It’s probably the sort of thing Powell-Jobs vaguely dreams of. No seats in rows. No lecture. Kids free to choose where to go and what to learn about. But, from what I’ve seen, all but the most hard-core nerdy students breeze through the place, unable to engage with the exhibits. Too much reading of placards. Too little context. Too little mature human presence. A human teacher is the interactive exhibit par excellence –nothing these educational utopianists create comes close.
LikeLike
Why do you lump progressive ed in with ed tech? Those are very different things. In fact, some progressive schools (Waldorf, for instance), ban tech altogether (also, the richest of the rich Silicon Valley tech moguls almost invariably send their kids to schools that severely limit or ban tech), while most limit tech and think carefully about its use, and none would use it for so-called “personalized learning” (sic) which amounts to students doing identical “learning modules” just at their own pace. In fact, it’s the “traditional” schools that are the ones eating up ed tech these days. Public school districts by the thousands are spending fortunes on Ipads, Chromebooks, laptops, etc. and the software to run them.
You do so love to bash progressive education, but it is so clear that you have no idea what it is. I’m sure you don’t appreciate no-nothing dilettantes bashing your work without knowing anything about it; please don’t bash progressive education without knowing anything about it. I don’t know where you live, but every progressive school I know of is happy to offer tours, discuss their philosophy and the research behind it, and allow people to observe their classrooms. Please schedule a visit sometime.
LikeLike
Maybe … maybe …. maybe, if Ponderosa (et al.) knew the history of the Progressive Movement instead of what he/she has learned from the far-right’s demonizing and stereotyping of liberals and progressives, he/she might think differently.
LikeLike
I just saw a story on the news about the accidents of two of Navy’s surface ships in Asia. A retired Navy officer said in order to expedite getting ships on duty quickly, they replaced hours of classroom instruction with handing trainees a CD and sending them off to their ships with their laptops. It does not seem to be working, and it is a fatal, expensive mistake. Maybe sailors need real instruction, not simulations?
LikeLike
Hey retired teacher, I was going to the same place! The budget cutting that severely reduced actual training in actual classrooms followed by time on simulators and all of the other things that actually made a person ready for the job at hand were lost, resulting in unskilled personnel at the helm. The hard won experience of those officers who served before and who would have taught the new guys was not passed down the line. Death and destruction resulted. I’m curious as to who thought all this was a good idea and got the Navy to adopt it.
LikeLike
Progressive education, to me, means loose structure, letting kids have a big part in determining the direction of their learning, an emphasis on projects and hands-on learning as opposed to direct instruction, and valuing process over content. Of course most progressive educators would deplore doing canned lessons on computers all day. That doesn’t mean that there can’t be overlap between the progressive ed and techie camps. In Silicon Valley, home to tech savants who are also erstwhile hippies, the two predilections merge. The Tech Museum seems like it was designed by hippie techies.
Dienne, please note how I do not insult or demean you, or use a snarky tone when responding to you. I would appreciate reciprocation.
Lloyd, it seems to me that progressive education and progressive politics are distinct things. I view myself as a progressive politically, but I am not a fan of progressive education. In fact I agree with leftist Antonio Gramsci that, by failing to efficiently transmit empowering knowledge, progressive-style education often interferes with attaining progressive political ends.
LikeLike
Please define what you allege is progressive style education so I understand what you are thinking.
LikeLike
Lloyd –this makes clear that “progressive” when applied to education has had nothing to do with liberal/leftie values. It’s rooted in Hegel’s harebrained (in my view) metaphysics. He thought humanity was inexorably progressing toward some vague spiritually evolved state, and Dewey thought his new pedagogy –projects and such –would aid this Hegelian process:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/e-d-hirsch-jr/why-was-it-called-progressive-education_b_2866999.html
The Communist Antonio Gramsci decried this type of education as guaranteeing the subordination of the lower classes. Fascists embraced it. I agree with Gramsci. All kids need the knowledge that the upper classes have if they hope to hold their fair share of power and wealth.
LikeLike
Makes sense.
LikeLike
Most children won’t like online education because most children socialize face-to-face when in school, at least in public schools they do or did.
That’s why Grace VanderWaal who became a viral super star while she was on America’s Got Talent and even bigger when she won AGT in 2016, decided to return to a real school recently where she’ll be in a classroom with other flesh-and-blood children her age. Once Grace was famous, she became home taught mostly online and she hated it. She said as much in one interview.
Public schools offer many before and after school activities through sports, drama, chorus, clubs, band, etc. where children meet new friends and are part of a social group of like minded peers.
Online education does away with these rewarding experiences where children learn to socialize and make real friends instead of just virtual friends.
Grace joined the marching band in 6th grade and in her famous song, “I Don’t Know My Name,” she says she made lifelong friends there. I wonder how much that marching band motivated her to learn more about music and teach herself how to play the ukelele and then study music theory (on her own) about the time she started to write her own songs and lyrics at age 11 and 12.
If all children stayed home and learned online, would Grace’s life had turned out differently?
LikeLike
Today on NPR I heard a report on early analyses of the recent naval accidents. Several retired admirals explained that several decades ago the navy switched from training new officers in the classroom with experienced trainers to a system of handing new officer recruits a set of CDs – their own ‘individualized’ or ‘personalized’ learning program. After a decade or so it became clear that these officers had not received adequate training prior to their shipboard assignments. They lacked many of the fundamentals of navigation and maneuvers etc. According to those senior naval commanders the ‘individualized’ learning was eventually scrapped yet the navy is still struggling to overcome the knowledge deficit within its ranks many years later. While the tragedy of the loss of life in these recent accidents is huge…I cannot begin to assess the implications of an untried and tested ‘personalized’ learning for public school children. They need real classroom teaching.
LikeLike
Wow.
LikeLike
One of the things eliminated was time on simulators, aka the ability to make mistakes and not wreck a multi billion dollar warship. Simulators let you replay and learn from your mistakes, and how do they do that so well? Experienced senior personnel were involved in analysis and critiquing of all aspects and results of simulator training as well as being the teachers beforehand in the classroom. The Navy eliminated teachers and teaching in favor of mere content knowledge. Sound familiar folks?
LikeLike
They lost the tribal knowledge. Will the tribal knowledge of a myriad of details of education be lost?
LikeLike
Manual High School alumni include.. National Public Radio correspondent Scott Horsley,
And Corky Gonzales, “I am Joaquin”.
LikeLike
Just finished watching—what a giant piece of superficial crap—hell, they may have done trad ed a favor by so poorly producing this thing! But there was Randi Weingarten paying homage to the Jobs dollars….
LikeLike
We have teachers in every zip code with knowledge, experience and expertise about the way kids learn and what they need to succeed. They are ignored.
Instead we have distant politicians deciding how kids will be taught. But the politicians are just passing along ideas from their donors. The donors are not just rich, they are mega-rich, the most wealthy families in the world – the Walton, Kochs, Gates, Jobs, Zuckerbergs. Then you have multibillionaires like the Broads, DeVoses, Steyers, Doerrs, Loebs, Paulsons, Singers, Bloombergs and many more all engaging in the same bribery that is somehow legal nowadays, to effect “change” in public schools.
Laurene Powell Jobs and the Waltons were directly meeting with the Hillary campaign to discuss what they wanted to happen in US education. They also met with Jeb Bush. The Waltons not only don’t have any expertise in education, they didn’t even create their obscene wealth, they inherited it.
Jobs may have supported her husband in creating the late stage Apple or Pixar empires, but has no track record in overhauling school systems. One of her requests to Hillary was making every teacher negotiate salary individually. Why does our system rely so much on outside money?
LikeLike