The link in this post will take you to a discussion that took place in Puerto Rico about the introduction of “no excuses” charter schools. The government has announced that it is closing and privatizing hundreds of public schools. The embedded post was translated from Spanish to English. Sarah Cohodes, a professor at Teachers College in New York, advocates for such charters because of their strict discipline, which she admires. Critics object to such charters because of the strict discipline.
You can read the report here.
My own view, for what it is worth, is that “no excuses” charters were created for poor children and children of color. They are designed to civilize children. They are the educational equivalent of neocolonialism.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Agree. No excuses charters seem to me to be based in racism and a presumption that without the harsh disciplinary techniques these children can’t be taught. Disgusting
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“The government has announced that it is closing and privatizing hundreds of public schools”
How sad for public school families, that they’re offered no improvements or benefits for their schools- they just get the grim “closing” notices.
I think people in Puerto Rico will find out that when charter-and-voucher mania grips lawmakers, public schools become the last priority. It’s happened in state after state in the US. They won’t hear another word about the public schools on that island, other than closure announcements.
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Really Chiara, you really should start to promote public schools and stop writing that the politicians are not talking about public schools!!!! They are and they will just look at the protestors and the strikes…..they will be talking about public schools so stop typing the same narrative that the politicians never talk about public schools….put out positive information not this constant same blog of “the. politicians do not even talk about public education or you will never hear them talk about public ed”. Start talking positive about our schools so these goons read it.
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Good grief, Sarah. Put on your thinking cap.
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Cohodes’ conclusions from a small sample of “no excuses” charters seem to be a case of correlation is not necessarily causation. Cohodes is looking at the gains of the few survivors of the “no excuses” schools. She is not accounting for the high rates of attrition in these schools and the cherry picking of those with the most perceived potential. How can she assert that it is the “no excuses” approach that is responsible for the “success?” There are too many variables to support the claim that the “no excuses” discipline is responsible. There is no way to prove that these same strivers could have done as well in a comprehensive public school.
Cohodes should also consider the fact that no large scale takeovers of large districts have been successful. New Orleans and the Tennessee Achievement School District have been flops despite claims to the contrary. Her claims are unsubstantiated by evidence.
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Exactly. Cohodes does the same thing all co-opted pro-charter researchers do and weights the “survivors” results much more strongly than those who spent various periods of time in charters or won the lottery and was discouraged from enrolling.
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When “researcher” could be rewritten as “cherry-picking propagandist:” the backbone of long years bent to a strategically spotlighted charter school “success.”
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No excuse charter schools for minorities and/or children that live in families that are poor is not a new concept. The United States did this to Native American children for decades and forced native American children into boarding schools that treated them worse than criminals in maximum security prisons.
These types of schools are no different than the re-education camps in China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. It is obvious at least to me that this is part of the Koch brothers agenda to reinvent the United States to what Charles, David and the 2,000 members of ALEC want. Let’s never forget that Betsy DeVos is one of those members of ALEC. She was appointed to the Department of Education to further the Koch brothers agenda.
But the DOE isn’t the only federal department that is being dismantled and subverted. They all are and if Trump is impeached and ends up in prison and Pence becomes president, the subversion of the United States by the Koch brothers and the members of ALEC will not stop. It will get worse.
The best outcome would be that both Trump and Pence are impeached and end up in prison after the midterms and that the Speaker of the House of Representatives becomes a Democrat that then becomes the President.
That President could be Nancy Pelosi unless the Democratic Party replaces her as the speaker with someone that is not as controversial.
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Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
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No.
That’s both an English and Spanish word and I’m using it in both languages here.
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No excuses schools, by design, are not meant to “civilize” the poor or minorities. A better word choice is control – indoctrinate them early so they become compliant early. It amazes me that what Jean Anyon wrote in 1980 about social class and the hidden curriculum is even more widespread now than it was back then. If you aren’t familiar with Anyon’s work, her research shows the lower you go on the socio-economic ladder, the more rote and controlling the curriculum becomes. (http://www.jeananyon.org/docs/anyon-1980.pdf).
And of course, Hermann Goering’s words are quite apropos in this day and age:
“Education is dangerous – every educated person is a potential enemy.”
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When Diane writes to “civilize”, I think she is actually thinking of precisely what you mention: control and indoctrination .
But I think one could make a pretty good case that that has often been the real (underlying) meaning of “civilizing”. It was certainly the meaning in the case of “civilizing” of “Heathens” (in Europe and the New World)” by the Catholic Church and in the case of “civilizing” of Native Americans by the US government.
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We are on the same page with Diane…just have become a tad bit more sensitive to naming, framing and reframing after reading Lakoff…
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OF COURSE they DO. In addition to all the other tragedy in their lives, let’s toss one more inequity onto their already full (but, in reality, probably empty) plates.
I’m surprised that Arne Duncan & Paul Vallas haven’t already been marauding in P.R.
Oh, wait, Vallas is too busy with his Chicago mayoral campaign, & Duncan is too busy writing phony editorials (“Drop the Political Ads & Save Illinois”–Chicago Sun-Times, Thursday, 4/19/18) & making $$$ (I’m quite sure) as a managing partner of Laurene Jobs’ Emerson Collective.
It will be interesting to see what political office Arne will be running for in the future,
Just when we think we’ve heard enough disgusting education news, there’s always more, & on a daily basis.
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They are the educational equivalent of neocolonialism.
Yes.
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All of these comments are hyperbolic and out-of-touch. You people do not realize how insanely OUT of control many kids are. Efforts to restore orderliness are not “neocolonialism” or racism. They are efforts to create the conditions for learning. Apparently few of you care about this.
If you are not an active duty teacher and you’re opining about school discipline, please consider the possibility that you do not know what you’re talking about.
I don’t love no excuses schools, but at least they’re doing something to curb the atrocious situation that obtains at many schools. A hyper-strict order is better for kids than anarchy. My fellow liberals have only fake solutions for this appalling anarchy.
Who here even acknowledges the existence of atrocious conditions? Very few. There’s a conspiracy of denial. You gaslight those who claim there’s a problem.
I am one of the few voices on this blog that attempts to inject a dose of reality on this question. Most of my colleagues agree with me but are thoroughly cowed into silence by the ever-present threat of being labeled a racist –merely for suggesting that more discipline is needed. Most of the black students in our district are well-behaved, but the few that aren’t have a cadre of NAACP activists at their back to deflect all blame from the student to the teacher. Do not interpret the dearth of voices opposing liberal orthodoxy on discipline to mean that teachers accept the orthodoxy. They are cowed. Privately they’ll tell you the orthodoxy is insanity. It is insanity for a meek white music teacher who gets run over by his minority students day after day to be forced to take a week of racial sensitivity training. It is insanity for a school to be pilloried for suspending kids who day after day destroy the education of their peers. It is insanity to believe that the disparate rates of suspensions across America is rooted in teacher racism (and racism-induced hallucinations. Are police hallucinating the crimes that land more minorities in jail? Are they hallucinating the crimes that land more men in jail than women?) Students who misbehave –irrespective of race –need more discipline than they are currently getting. Discipline works. No society in the world functions without punishment. Schools are mini-societies.
I am lucky to have good classes this year. Many of my colleagues are not so lucky. They are beat up day after day, but they don’t speak up. All of us teachers need to start standing up for abused colleagues. I feel the need to speak for them, because our profession and our society is letting them down.
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Okay, I’ll take the bait. You do realize you’re teaching in a middle school, don’t you?
I spent seven years teaching seventh and eighth graders. At first I had control problems at that level–there was no way I wasn’t going to, considering my youth and inexperience, lack of classroom management training, lack of confidence, lack of consistency in running the classroom, strongly academic orientation (not understanding the social aspects of the job), and the difficulties some of my students faced at home.
I even remember appealing to some of the people in the office to come down harder on the kids that were giving me a hard time. It took a few years to learn how to deal with kids that age, and then to decide I’d be better off teaching high school. I eventually got good at running a classroom but on occasion a student was able to get my goat. The ones that even tried had problems that weren’t going to be solved by punishment.
The bottom line is that administrators need to give more positive support to both teachers experiencing discipline problems and students who are doing the disrupting. And teachers need to keep working to improve their practice. Sometimes students do need be removed from class for a time, but not without a comprehensive plan for correcting their bad behavior.
Nobody’s in favor of anarchy. I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to walk into your school tomorrow and do a good job of teaching. I just don’t have the energy or patience. But I believe there are types of support for both teachers and kids that can restore order without resorting to “hyper-strict” measures.
As long as you’re making racial distinctions, I think you should read this New York Times article about an important study that shows how tough it is for black boys to make their way in our society:
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Here’s a professor who’s doing groundbreaking research that might account for some of your claims about minorities:
https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2014/09/17/stanford-professor-wins-genius-grant
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Wayward black boys (a minority of black boys), just like wayward white boys, need more discipline, not less. Too many are being allowed to self-destruct and squander their education by permissive behavior policies. It’s the anti-discipline crowd that’s really holding these kids back, not us pro-discipline teachers.
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Wayward? You would’ve felt right at home in the 19th Century. Kids who act out–in and out of school, especially poor kids–are more likely to be suffering from toxic stress resulting from various forms of trauma, a shortage of positive role models, limited opportunities to join in wholesome activists, negative peer influences, mental illness, personal bias and institutional racism, or some other affliction (even lead poisoning). Often it’s a combination of factors.
Harsh discipline policies have been put in place to stem that acting out–without addressing those and other root causes. Zero-tolerance policies don’t actually solve the discipline problem, but they do tend to come down harder on particular groups of students.
In the case of no-excuses schools, policies like the various silence requirements amount to punishment in advance. Kids who are prone to acting out aren’t likely to last in those schools, which results in famously high attrition rates. Common-sense classroom management and administrative support don’t actually require kids to be silent through most of the day. Nor do they require frequent and severe punishment. They do require adequate funding, cooperation among educators, and a positive sense of purpose.
You’re in the habit of looking at difficult issues from an either-or perspective. Just as I believe there are few if any anti-knowledge teachers, I doubt if there are many anti-discipline, pro-anarchy teachers, either. There’s actually a broad continuum of attitudes and teaching styles. And there’s more than one approach to dealing with problem students and difficult classes. I don’t think your pat assessment of the problems and simplistic solutions should be taken seriously.
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Truth: many –not all — humans require a unpleasant negative consequence to do what society requires of them. If this is true of adults. it’s more true, not less true, of teens. Public schools have hardly any unpleasant negative consequences at their disposal. The few that they’ve had are being taken away. The result is rampant disorder. You are in denial if you think otherwise. Talk to actual teachers in private and the truth will come out. Liberals promote the hippie fiction that viable alternatives exist. This utopian thinking is damaging our kids much more than strict discipline. Let’s stop the teacher abuse and child neglect by establishing firm boundaries for kids’ behavior.
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Wow, ponderosa, those are some serious accusations. And no I’m not teaching currently, but I haven’t been retired that long to have forgotten that “how insanely OUT of control many kids are.” Are there some students who are “out of control”? Yes, and there always has been a few who are.
“Efforts to restore orderliness are not “neocolonialism” or racism.”
Thoroughly agree. But these “no excuses” charters that are attempting to infect Puerto Rican school certainly are not what is best for the children. As one who understands the culture of the Spanish speaking world, which for the most part is quite conservative and respectful of teachers and the teaching and learning processes that go on in schools, I can’t understand why some believe “no excuses schools” are the way to go in Puerto Rico.
“They are efforts to create the conditions for learning. Apparently few of you care about this.”
What’s it like to condescend out of the cirrostratus clouds down to reality on earth? “Few of you care about this.” Horse manure!
“If you are not an active duty teacher and you’re opining about school discipline, please consider the possibility that you do not know what you’re talking about.”
Okay, considered! I know what I am talking about. And my conclusions come nowhere near to your conclusions about students and discipline.
And finally,
“Discipline works.”
Depends on what you mean by “discipline”. Please explain.
As it is why not tell that to the military which hasn’t been disciplined enough to follow simple laws regarding accounting and completing the mandated yearly audit.
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Duane, do you think the military would function well without the threat of punishment to soldiers who don’t follow orders? Do you think a school can function well if students can flout teachers’ orders with impunity? Do you have a problem with teachers giving –not barking –orders?
My 4 year old nephew does not like nursery school. When my brother asked him why not, he said, “The teachers are always trying to boss me around.” My brother responded, “That’s what teachers are supposed to do!”
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Schools and the military have totally different functions in society. Along with the fact that the military is made up of adults (although at 17, many may not have crossed over into adulthood) who have volunteered to undergo the sort of treatment that the military does to its personnel whereas K-12 education is made up of children, yes all levels are still children (as much as I would have hated to hear that when I was in high school-LOL). So your military example just doesn’t cut it when discussing K-12 discipline issues.
I have never said anything whatsoever about “students flouting teachers’ orders with impunity” and if that is occurring then the teacher must look at themselves first, and the administrators (true adminimals if they are allowing that to happen) must do their part. And, obviously if that is occurring the school “is not functioning well”. And who should hold the majority of the responsibility for that? The administrators, plain and simple.
When there is a crisis situation, such as a fight, I had no problem “barking orders”. I certainly wasn’t going into an emotion-filled situation where two students are beating on each other with anything less than what I had to do. But that was twice in 21 years. If I ever raised my voice in class it freaked out the students because they never heard me yell. Didn’t need to. Why? Many reasons, many of them having to do with school culture.
And I didn’t, generally, “give orders” in my classes. I respectfully asked students to do whatever and generally I didn’t have any problems. Why? The respect that I gave to the students was given back to me. Yes, that simple. I was not their “commanding officer”. I was a fellow human being trying to help them learn something new and hopefully exciting.
As far as “That’s what teachers are supposed to do”, I can’t agree with that thought at all. I would have discussed with my son, the various aspects of trying to get things done in a classroom with many 4 year olds. I probably would have brought up an example of how cooperation in the family works the same as cooperation in the classroom. Yes, 4 year olds can understand that sort of thing.
Hey, you asked, ponderosa! 🙂 As my youngest son tells people “Don’t get my dad started on education, he’ll never stop.”
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Teachers are definitely an authority figure, but I was taught by my master teacher to always talk softly and her advice served me well.
Not to bark like a Marine drill instructor. Instead, she taught me that when they go loud and disruptive, you go quiet and stare them down as you wait for them to bring themselves under control. Even in my journalism class, I talked softly if one of my student editors or reports got angry about something. That happened once and another editor made this comment. “You know, the louder she gets, the softer your voice gets. She gets red-faced and angry and you calm down more and more and more.” The She was one of the page editors and she wasn’t mad at me. She was angry at one of her reporters for missing a deadline and she was venting to me. That journalism class was the best class I taught — incredible students.
Talk softly, my master teacher said (to earn my teaching credential I went through an entire school year full time urban residency in my master teacher’s 5th grade classroom in a grade school with a 100-percent child poverty rate — a school that worked with children that lived in a community saturated with multigenerational street gangs and even the Hells Angels) and let the students nearest you that hear you spread the world of what you expect and what’s going to happen to the last student talking/disrupting. Works great. Few want to be that last student.
I’ve been through Marine boot camp so have many of my veteran friends. One vet is convinced that it was in boot camp before he went into combat that his PTSD got started due to the daily abuse drill instructors dish out as they bark at us.
Barking anger/orders just begets more rebellious anger from the target of that anger.
“Poverty Disturbs Children’s Brain Development and Academic Performance”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/poverty-disturbs-children-s-brain-development-and-academic-performance/
All the military boot camp style barking in the world isn’t going to reverse the damage to children caused by poverty. In fact, it will make that damage worse.
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While whitewater rafting, is it offensive for the boat captain to yell commands at the rowers and expect them to comply immediately? If not, why is it offensive if a teacher asks students to be quiet and expect them to comply immediately? Isn’t the mission –education –as important as navigating a rapids?
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I tell the person in the front of the canoe what side of the canoe to paddle on and how strong. Have no problem with that as I don’t like to dump in freezing cold waters in 35-40 degree weather (that’s when I do most of my floating as there are very few others on the rivers and there are no bugs). So no it’s not offensive. But whitewater rafting/canoeing are not the classroom so the example, wait for it. . . holds no water. Sorry, couldn’t resist!
I never said that it was offensive for a teacher to ask for quiet and expect the students to do so. So I don’t know why you bring that up.
“Isn’t the mission. . . ” They both have their own importance in our lives. If I could have figured out how to justify to the adminimals how a float trip could be justified in teaching Spanish, I would have. As it is I did take a class out to the outdoor classroom that was on a lake in a conservation area that butted up to the school. Many of the students had never fished, one of whom was the only person who caught a fish. Didn’t tell the adminimals that I was doing so, just informed the secretary that I was using the outdoor classroom. I took quite a few classes outdoors when the weather broke in spring, but we still followed my original lesson plans.
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“If you are not an active duty teacher and you’re opining about school discipline, please consider the possibility that you do not know what you’re talking about.”
Good advice.
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“If you are not an active duty teacher and you’re opining about school discipline, please consider the possibility that you do not know what you’re talking about.”
Does that mean someone that taught for thirty years in the same district (working 60 to 100 hours a week), in schools with a child poverty rate of 70 percent or higher and with multigenerational street gangs doesn’t know what they are talking about when it comes to school discipline? So, teaching and working with these types of students for about 432,000 hours doesn’t count once a teacher retires?
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I’ll make an exception for you, Lloyd.
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Thank you, BUT, what about the hundreds of other teachers that worked in those same school for decades too? I know one teacher who stayed in the classroom for 42-years (I honestly don’t know how he did it). I knew him. He was an innovative English teacher. He loved his job and he enjoyed working with his students — even the troublemakers. I never heard a disparaging word from him about any of his students, never.
And how many urban public school districts are similar to the one where I taught with thousands and maybe hundreds of thousands of teachers that stayed and learned how to work in that challenging educational environment — never giving up and giving their all?
Out of more than 3 million public school teachers, I was only one of them.
For instance, “Half of new teachers quit profession in 5 years? Not true, new study says”
U.S. Department of Education
“A recent federal study found that a much smaller percentage of beginning teachers leave the field in their first five years on the job than the widely quoted figure of 50 percent. It’s 17 percent, according to the new research. …
“Guidance – 92 percent of teachers assigned a mentor their first year returned the next year, and 86 percent were on the job by the fifth year. Only 84 percent of teachers without mentors returned in the second year, declining to 71 percent in the fifth year.”
https://edsource.org/2015/half-of-new-teachers-quit-profession-in-5-years-not-true-new-study-says/83054
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Lloyd, you probably have a better memory than I do, but it only takes 8 hours of sleep for me to forget quite how challenging the job is.
The staff at my school is veteran and very hard working. They are not burnt-out, bitter or cynical; rather I would characterize them as abused and damaged by a daily barrage of casual rudeness. The most veteran teachers firmly believe that there has been a marked decline in civility over the past 25 years.
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You might forget after 8 hours of sleep, but I never forget the battles I fought against all the distractions that disrupt the education environment I worked in for thirty years … just like I have never forgotten what I went through in Vietnam. In fact, it is when I sleep that the demons visit from both battlefields. I haven’t had an awake nightmare or flashback for decades. Thye demons arrive when I’m attempting to sleep. In fact, if I could, I’d stop sleeping so they couldn’t visit.
And teaching was harder and a larger challenge than the US Marines and combat in Vietnam. In Vietnam, we were not in combat every day, but in the classroom in schools with high rates of child poverty, we are in combat every day struggling to overcome to damage caused by that poverty.
How does ‘toxic stress’ of poverty hurt the developing brain
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Lloyd, thanks for that video. I hope other people take the time to watch it all the way through.
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“If you are not an active duty teacher and you’re opining about school discipline, please consider the possibility that you do not know what you’re talking about.”
FLERP!,
I don’t think you need to be a teacher to know that anyone who claims that as many as 20% of the Kindergarten and first grade students act out violently – in a school that only admits students with motivated and dedicated parents and guardians – is not telling the truth. And if that school happens to have virtually no white students and nearly all of the non-white students who attend are low-income, I don’t think you need to be a teacher to call out the racism implicit in that.
Maybe you believe no one but a teacher would notice the racism implicit when a white charter CEO insists that as many as 20% of the 5 year olds in a school with virtually no white students are violent by nature and doing violent things because of their nature.
I suggest anyone who isn’t a racist would feel quite strongly that they are able to comment on that. Only a racist would say “well, who am I to question whether that is true because as far as I know, those non-white 5 year olds are extremely violent and since I’m not a teacher it is as likely as not that 5 year old children — if they are not white — could very well be as violent as those charter CEOs say that they are.”
I find it racist for anyone to insist that the question of whether a white charter CEO who claims that so many (non-white) Kindergarten children act out violently because of their violent nature is something only a teacher has a right to question.
In my opinion, anyone who doesn’t question that is a racist. Although it is clear from your frequent attacks on me that not only do you not question these racist claims as I do, but that you prefer to attack and criticize me and continue to claim that only a “teacher” would know for sure whether such a racist claim — that so many non-white kindergarten students act out violently only because of their violent natures because what their school does to them is irrelevant — could possibly be true.
I find it odd that you only choose to attack the critics of such racist innuendoes in which non-white kindergarten children are presumed to be more violent by nature.
I find it odd that you have never once offered one word of criticism or even skepticism when a charter CEO makes those claims. But you certainly offer lots of words of criticism for the people who do question those obvious racist lies.
I can only assume you don’t think it is either racist or dishonest to make that claim that absurdly high numbers of non-white 5 year olds act out so violently in their Kindergarten classrooms that they need suspending.
And that speaks for itself.
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“Maybe you believe no one but a teacher would notice the racism implicit when a white charter CEO insists that as many as 20% of the 5-year-olds in a school with virtually no white students are violent by nature and doing violent things because of their nature.”
Definitely not/never 20 percent.
The high school where I taught for the last 16 years of the 30 I was a teacher had an eight percent caucasian student population, and we had a teacher that kept records of the repeat offenders in our majority-minority student population. He was the teacher/administrator that ran the BIC center on campus where students would be sent for a class timeout or period suspension. When the bell rang for each period, his BIC classroom emptied as the students left to their next class.
Mr. D’s annual report from BIC pointed out that 5 percent of the students were repeat offenders who often were sent to BIC daily from one or more classes. That 5-percent was mostly the same 5-percent and it didn’t change much during the year. The students on this list ended up spending a lot of time with their grade level counselors too in an attempt to remediate the behavior that disrupted the learning environment of classrooms.
At that time, that one high school where I taught had a student population of about 3,000. That means that about 150 students were identified as the repeat offenders. And even among that 5-percent, the vast majority were not violent or even threatening. They didn’t disrupt classes with violence but with a motor mouth that refused to stop disrupting. Many of them were also class clowns that acted out to gain attention … for whatever reason. Maybe they just drank too many sugary drinks for breakfast and lunch and had a lousy diet.
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I should have added that the 5-percent earned 90-percent of the referrals to Mr. D’s BIC.
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Lloyd,
Thank you for that information.
One thing that I find most reprehensible about Eva Moskowitz and her high-suspending no excuses charter school network is that she can get away with suspending 18% of the students in one of her schools where the oldest students are in first or second grade and people like FLERP! attack anyone who points out that it is an absolute lie that all those students were acting out violently in school.
According to FLERP!’s reasoning, since the white charter CEO says that those children are acting out violently, we should give the CEO the benefit of the doubt because no one is able to “prove” otherwise. And since we aren’t teachers in the school ourselves, how dare we question this.
To me, that is racist. To me, claiming we have no “proof” that this ridiculously high number of very young (and almost never white) students deserve their suspensions because they are constantly acting out violently in their Kindergarten and first grade classes is truly absurd. To me, anyone who believes there is even a possibility that this is not an outright lie and instead defends it as “maybe it is true so who are we to question it” is racist.
It is not true. Period. If you have 18% of the 5 year olds supposedly acting out this violently in a Kindergarten class, then the problem is not the 5 year old students. It is the SCHOOL.
And those who insist that it could be the students are racists.
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I wouldn’t trust Eva Moskowitz to flush a toilet after she used it and I’d never let her near any of my children. In fact, If she drove by my house everyday on the way to work, I’d seek a restraining order to force her to take another route.
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Oddly enough, FLERP! tends to give Eva Moskowitz the benefit of the doubt. At most, FLERP! might agree that something Moskowitz was was a bit intemperate. But never dishonest.
FLERP! will never admit that Eva Moskowitz lies. I mean, to FLERP!, the jury is still out as to whether Eva Moskowitz is lying when she claims that suspending 15% or 18% or 23% of the very youngest elementary school students is because all those students act out violently. Since FLERP! believes that until someone can prove otherwise there is a very real possibility that so many violent (non-white) children win Success Academy lotteries, having someone like me call that out as a lie means that I am wrong. FLERP! often criticizes me when I call out how dishonest something Moskowitz says is.
FLERP! insists that there is no evidence at all that Moskowitz lies. None. If Moskowitz says Betsy DeVos is a great choice for Sec. of Education because she cares so much about all students, one must not call that a lie. If Moskowitz says that 18% of the Kindergarten and first graders are acting out violently in a school that has virtually no white students, one must not call that a lie. Because FLERP! believes that there is a very real possibility that Moskowitz is just recognizing the violent tendencies of certain types of Kindergarten children who so often win her lotteries.
So, according to FLERP!, anyone who dares to call Moskowitz a liar must be attacked and belittled. FLERP! reserves all his or her criticism for those who criticize Moskowitz because he has none for Moskowitz herself. At most FLERP! might admit Moskowitz’ communication skills are poor or she needs to be nicer. But her absolute honesty when she talks about the kids in her schools and justifies her high suspension rates must never be challenged.
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May be relevant:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2018/04/18/ten-problems-teachers-did-not-have-to-deal-with-a-decade-ago/?utm_term=.c66e145e15bd&wpisrc=nl_answer&wpmm=1
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I couldn’t read that article because it’s behind a paywall. Here’s one teacher expert who has some ideas about how kids are different these days. This guy talks sense–I first heard him on the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast a few months ago (Episode 80–When Students Won’t Stop Talking). He doesn’t tolerate misbehavior, but he does have an approach to classroom discipline that doesn’t involve vilifying kids.
Also… Teachers tend to be sleep deprived. Good principals are in short supply. Not all schools have the social workers, school psychologists, and guidance counselors that can really make a difference for both kids and teachers. And many classrooms are overcrowded. All these factors can get in the way of preventing and solving behavior problems.
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icompleat: this guy is hawking wares. The guy in the WaPo article is CA Teacher of the Year and he’s not selling anything.
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ponderosa:
You can’t dismiss this guy’s twenty-seven years of teaching experience just because he has a website. That’s yet another of your logical fallacies, Just because he doesn’t subscribe to your biases doesn’t mean his practices aren’t valid. You have to evaluate them according to their theoretical soundness, research basis, and efficacy. If he was a charlatan like the folks at Relay “Graduate School” of Education, that would be another story. Ditto for the woman behind the Cult of Pedagogy Podcast. These people are sharing what they’ve learned through study and experience. You can disagree with them, but to reject their ideas out of hand because they might be paid for disseminating them is wrong. You might want to find out what those ideas are before you dismiss them. There’s plenty of wisdom in Duane’s and Lloyd’s replies to your rant. If you don’t want to take my recommendations, maybe you could see fit to listen to them.
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I’m no longer active duty, Ponderosa, but I certainly hear that you’re frustrated and angry with a school atmosphere that feels dangerously out of control.
I taught middle school for 14 years before I got “promoted” to high school. The reason I sought a high school was that my own kids were young and there was no way I could muster enough energy for teaching 11-14 year olds. So much of middle school students’ lives is pure emotional reaction to their daily crisis and it is draining when the teacher is hung out to dry without supports and backup.
When I began teaching, my middle school was orderly, well run and the faculty could expect that kids would be held appropriately responsible for bad behavior. There were norms that were clear and well understood, the principal and assistant principals were good backstops for teachers. Kids challenged adults, because of course, but the grownups were definitely in charge. A few years later, that was no longer the case. We had the same kinds of kids; indeed two-thirds of the students were the same kids as before, but there was a disasterous cultural shift.
Our new principal did not listen to faculty suggestions, sent kids back to the classroom without consequences, did not defend teachers from parents who insisted that the teachers, not the students, were at fault. The atmosphere grew so impossible that during his second year, the Faculty Senate proposed that to regain control of the school teachers would rotate classrooms while students remained much of the day in the same room. The goal was to cut down on movement in the corridors where conflicts and fights started. We weren’t asking for a permanent change, just a few weeks so we could reset expectations, calm the tensions, identify the kids who were at the source of the conflicts and get back to teaching. The principal refused – because he was the boss.
He was eventually fired. In the interim, teachers voted with their feet and took positions at other schools, which was possible due to union protections. I suppose that now a principal might use punitive observations and evaluations as a stick to beat teachers with. The biggest losers, of course, were the kids, who never got back the orderly middle school experience they deserved.
There are schools that are out of control, and within them there are classes that are refuges of calm where a grownup is in charge. Most kids crave that kind of structure and benefit from it. I’ve been in more than one school where I’ve survived by ignoring what I can’t fix, closing my door and teaching. It’s damn hard work.
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Thanks for this lucid account of your middle school experiences, Christine. And the WaPo link –very interesting.
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ponderosa:
Here’s a podcast run by an education consultant who taught in a middle school for eight years. Episode 93 is Eight Things I Know for Sure About Middle School Kids. It’s a more positive picture than the one you paint.
I’m not on board with everything she focuses on (I didn’t like the guy she interviewed in Episode 83: What Is an Innovation Class?), but many of these episodes are well worth a listen. Highly recommended… Episode 92: Frickin’ Packets and Episode 84: How to Stop Killing the Love of Reading w/ Pernille Ripp. If you listen on Apple Podcasts, you can use the controls to skip the commercial announcements.
https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/pod/
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Why does Puerto Rico “need” charters?
Hedge funder billionaire Seth Klarman of The Baupost Group donated nearly $3 million in illegal contributions to the effort to remove the charter cap in Massachusetts (Question 2).
Seth Klarman owns $92 million of Puerto Rico’s “debt”.
And since Klarman doesn’t like Donald Trump, he’s decided to fund Democrats instead of Republicans. The party affiliation doesn’t matter anymore, so long as the politicians can be bought, it’s all good.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2018/04/14/era-donald-trump-new-england-biggest-gop-donor-funding-democrats/QzyFs3i3Yq3o6Ae7QIkhVP/story.html
Professor Maurice Cunningham from UMass Boston has been throughly investigating the dark money trail through Boston and Massachusetts politics. The Boston Globe, the city’s nominal paper of record, could give a rat’s ass, perhaps because the Globe’s owner, John Henry, is Klarman’s business partner. John Henry owns the Red Sox and Klarman is part owner of the Red Sox parent company.
Give Cunningham a read:
http://blogs.wgbh.org/masspoliticsprofs/2017/10/4/your-dark-money-reader-special-edition-seth-klarman/
http://blogs.wgbh.org/masspoliticsprofs/2018/4/17/globe-and-seth-klarman/
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I lived and taught in Puerto Rico for a couple of years, bracketed by many years teaching in bilingual programs in Boston comprised of many Puerto Rican kids (before the Unz initiative outlawed bilingual ed).
What makes Cohoes’ proposal even more disturbing is the total lack of respect and knowledge about Puerto Rican culture and the social mores around schools.
First, schooling in Puerto Rico is both more formal and more familial than in the mainland US. Teachers are held in great regard as educated members of the community and receive deferential treatment. When you are invited to a home or a community event, you are treated as an honored guest. Often, you are introduced and referred to as “La Maestra” (or the more familiar La Missy), using the title instead of your name. Parents instruct their children from the youngest age that the teacher is your other mother (or father), at school.
Secondly, this nonsense about going about in silence would be an assault on a core trait.
“The NEPC review details that in an elementary school in New Orleans, where 93% of the students were AfricanAmerican, silence was required in the school bus, in morning and evening assemblies, when leaving and entering the buildings, in the last 10 minutes of lunch and, if they did not comply, they would have to keep silent throughout the lunch of the next day.”
Puerto Ricans are not quiet people. There is a constant tumult of conversation, music, whistling and singing that is intergal to life on the island. Imposing silence in this style would not be tolerated; parents wouldn’t understand what it was for. But none of this should be understood to mean that kids aren’t respectful in a classroom. Respect for formal education, which so many older folks lack, is widespread.
Julia Keleher, whom Gov Rosselló appointed Secretary of Education is an import from Philadelphia, who has been working as head of her own education consulting firm in Puerto Rico for the last 10 years. It is a position she has retained in addition to her post as head of public education, yielding her a salary of $250,000, more than even the governor who appointed her.
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Nothing like true experience to enable one to adequately describe the differences between Latin American education culture (I’m generalizing here but it holds trud) and American education culture.
Thanks for telling it like it is, Christine!
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here is the work sheet with my data added
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