Peter Greene has written about the harsh, punitive test-and-punish regime called “reform” for several years. Teacher evaluation by test scores of students. Charter schools promising to close achievement gaps. Vouchers. Turnarounds. Closing schools. Common Core, which was supposed to make everyone college-and-career-ready and provide equity and close gaps.
He says this about the NAEP release today.
It failed.
”Ed reform has failed.
“Everything else is just details and noise.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Peter Greene’s analysis reads like the Gettysburg Address, short, to the point, and true.
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Well put.
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I can’t wait to see how the reformsters try to spin failure into a new “miracle.”
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Yes, we all await the great Reform Spin.
They never admit failure.
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They already started last May with a conference sponsored by the Show Me Institute that Jay P. Greene moderated that was called “Failure to Fixes”. For a brief summary see: http://showmeinstitute.org/sites/default/files/Newsletter%20June%202017_web_0.pdf
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If you assume (wrongly) that the goal of reform was to improve educational outcomes for ALL of America’s children, then yes, reform is an abject and costly failure replete with waste fraud and abuse. If you understand that reform was actually about ideological and cultural warfare, about neoliberal and libertarian fantasies obfuscated in part by a liberal helping of the hallucinations of Silicon Valley big data gurus, the reform has been a hard won success in an ongoing war against the educational and political systems or the USA and the world. GERM is a disease and this brief hint of remission is, sadly, a false hope for now. The medicine of facts and the truth as administered by the long overdue rebellion of teachers of all political persuasions is our last, best hope for a cure.
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Sigh. I truly hate having to edit against the influence of auto-incorrect. Sorry for the distracting typos.
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(My thoughts too, but at times too critical.)
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Yes. Those who keep struggling against test-reform dictates under the theory that those in charge should “see” how poorly their invasions have performed where poorest and generally non-white students are concerned, miss the fact that: if the actual goal has been to blame, deconstruct and disenfranchise the profession of teaching as a means to ultimately push computers into our classrooms, we certainly cannot say that the reforms have failed.
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I think you are falling into a trap. This reaction is misguided and forfeiting an opportunity. In St. Louis last night, I spoke briefly at the ethical society(first time I had ever been there)….they had a good turnout for their effort to support a 28th amendment to limit the amount of money spent on elections…pretty open discussion. I criticized them for not having a word about public education in the goals of their effort. I mentioned Gene McCarthy, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, and my 1968 graduation with an education degree…more than a few chuckles when I mentioned my being drafted in 1969 with my feet being rated healthy enough to be sent to vietnam. I mentioned my decades as a teacher, and told the crowd that I did not care about Bill Gate’s test results—-the students have been impressive in their ability to inspire, along with help from their parents, their teachers, and the board members who make the effort to be elected. They have the capacity to bring a level of excitement and enthusiasm and inspiration to their efforts to restore democracy to a place where people matter. (I felt good about the reaction I got, delving into an unexpected area).
Peter Greene is way off base trying to use this year’s test results to discredit refortm—there are other arguments more important to make about what they are doing—the debate needs to be whether these tests should be as important as Arne Duncan and Bill Gates tried to make them……they will be able to finesse these results in to calls for even more of what corporate foundations are interested in. I like Peter Greene. This is way way way off the mark. In my state, I have warned claire mccaskill that she is not going to be re-elected if she tries to hide from what is happening in so many states…….a casual feeling that we should give shallow attention to public education …….we have more important stuff to consider.
Like what?
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I am what you might call a conservative libertarian. I’ve read all the responses here, and frankly, I think it is a fact that the educational system has failed. You all speak as if I should know the unstated facts you must have in mind. That I should ignore the constant claims of the educational establishment (to include the unions) that more money is always needed.
We spend, today, about three times what we spent when the DoEd was created nearly forty years ago. This is in REAL dollars. But on tests which should compare results from then to results from now, we find minimal improvement, but this is in the aggregate. Among whites and some Asians there has been some significant improvement, though I would still argue it’s not enough to justify the massive spending increases.
But if the 75% of the people who make up those who’ve slightly, but significantly, benefitted, have only barely moved the performance needle in total, it means that the rests of the students, black Americans, Hispanics, and some Asians, are getting the rawest of deals by the system. Their performance is actually worse. And by a large margin.
What to do?
Well, I can’t say it’s causative for sure, but in the nearly 40 years since the federal department took root we’ve seen the number of administrators skyrocket, the number of forms, the number of educational requirements, the number of support staff, and so on, skyrocket too. Maybe the problem is that we have allowed federal influence and manipulation? So I say end the DoEd. But I also can’t ignore the wreckage caused by progressivism to the rest of our culture as reasons for substandard performance. Fatherlessness, the decline of religion (I’m not a believer, personally), social welfare, high taxation and regulation making the cost of employment skyrocket, among other problems, have all taken their toll.
At rock bottom it seems to me there is an over-arching theme to all of these things which degrades our educational institutions. Accountability, or rather lack of it. Whatever we do, and I hope it’s not more federal intervention, must be focused on accountability. That doesn’t mean standardized tests, of which I don’t particularly support. It means that you let the people who do the funding, the people who do the teaching, the people who do the parenting, and so on, all be held accountable for the system they affect.
What I do know is that more money, just like all sorts of catchy-themed reforms, has failed too. Maybe the solution is to be found in the homes surrounding the neighborhood school, and where schools still fail those students should be given an escape pod in the form of a voucher.
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Rich,
Half the kids enrolled in US schools are below the poverty line, for the first time in history.
If money doesn’t matter, why do the 1% spend $50,000 a year or more for their kids’ tuition? Trump did it at the Hill School. Gates did it at the Lakeside School. Why?
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