Larry Cuban, Teacher, superintendent, historian, questions the claim of Reeformers—in this case, Laurene Powell Jobs’ XQ Project—that High Schools Are obsolescent and have not changed in a century.
This is a claim shared by Betsy DeVos, Bill Gates, The Chan-Zuckerberg Initiative, and Jobs. It is foundational to the Reformers’ belief that major disruption is necessary and that they know what change is needed. Both assumptions should be questioned.
Cuban asks, first, is the claim true (probably not, since the high school has been transformed from an elite institution to a mass institution), and next, whether the changes proposed are the right ones. Good questions. A third, which he does not ask, if whether the agents of change have good ideas and what qualifies them to redesign the American high school other than their extreme wealth.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
BINGO … GOOD QUESTION: “A third, which he does not ask, if whether the agents of change have good ideas and what qualifies them to redesign the American high school other than their extreme wealth.”
Answer: They ARE NOT QUALIFIED. If they really cared, they would STUDY the VAST body of knowledge required to be a PUBLIC SCHOOL Teacher and “Student Teach” under a licensed, experienced classroom teacher.
These yahoos just MAKE STUFF UP and the object is their bank accounts, and some of their accounts are probably off shore.
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Minor correction, Yvonne, to your last thought “. . . and MOST of their accounts are DEFINITELY offshore.”
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The biggest question is what’s so great about change? Why is change the default assumption? For well over 100 years we’ve been making cars with the brake on the left and the accelerator on the right. Why don’t we “innovate” and change that up a bit? The obvious answer, of course, is that there is no benefit to doing so and enormous potential harms. Maybe the things about high school that haven’t changed haven’t changed for a reason – because there’s no good reason to do so and/or enormous potential harms in doing so.
Cars have certainly changed a lot over the past century and should continue to do so, but only if that change is an improvement. No automakers would let Gates, DeVos et al decide what changes to make to their cars. Why should they get to decide what changes to make to education?
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Nailed it.
This whole ‘disruptive change’ meme gets picked up by the scions of IT industry, who bank billions by building in obsolescence & inducing kleenex-style consumption.
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The tech titans and billionaires view public schools as disposables, also children. Like Kleenex.
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XQ put out marketing materials touting “competency based learning” in Maine:
Click to access ShowWhatYouKnow.pdf
Maine dumped competency based learning because it was a disaster.
They don’t even keep up with these places they “reform”- they have no earthly idea what is happening in Maine, or anywhere else.
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Maybe the marketing department didn’t talk to the sales department.
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Generally, those that are extremely critical of the structure of our high schools are often those that stand to gain the most from blowing up our schools. Powell Jobs, Gates, and Zuckerberg all stand to make enormous amounts of money from transforming instruction into a reductionist tech fest. There is no evidence that supports the value of what they are selling, and there is increasing evidence that shows the limitations and harmful impact of virtual instruction. These same people have very limited experience with current public high schools. Their opinions are often based on individual bias and false perceptions.
High schools have been evolving to meet the needs of students. So-called reform has actually interfered with schools’ responsiveness to the needs of students because test driven instruction has resulted in narrowing curricula. Many comprehensive schools offer a variety of options to serve the needs of different types of students. In fact, most public schools are far more responsive to students’ individual differences than most one size fits all charters. Most of our high schools are providing students with a good foundation that will serve students well in the real world. We should not be mislead by tech oligarchs trying to turn our young people into cash cows for the tech industry.
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Correction: misled
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I think they are people who don’t value public schools and they arrogantly assume no one else values them, either. They’re willing to risk losing public schools because to them it’s not a risk- our schools aren’t worth anything anyway. That’s why they’re so reckless and fad-driven and why they’re so consistently baffled when communities reject “disruption” – they do not understand the attachment ordinary people have, because they are billionaires so they essentially live in a different country than you and I do.
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Maybe I am too cynical. I suspect the industrial ‘philanthropists’ are entirely driven by bottom line: short-term, selling product; long-term, eliminating national “overhead” [like taxes for public ed et al public goods] so as to compete globally. I attribute to them neither knowledge of nor concern for US ed, private or public. Our laws make it possible for them to freely avail themselves of the global labor pool, so any purported interest in, e.g., developing US STEM expertise doesn’t pass the smell test.
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The whole discussion is silly. Look at these school models they’re pushing!
Ed reformers believe they invented “apprenticeships” – my god I think that model is a thousand years old.
It’s just nonsense. It’s the kind of blather you hear at business seminars, and they think it’s incredibly profound and new.
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Schools have been offering vocational options to students for decades. These critical techies are out of touch with what is happening in schools. If anything, perhaps we should revise or improve vocational options, but public schools evolve with needs over time.
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“Reggie Fils-Aime, Nintendo of America’s president and chief operating officer, told CNN Business the move aims to give back to the community and get the next generation of workers excited about new technology.
“Nintendo thinks in terms of the long-term,” he said.”The importance of STEM and STEAM for us is core to having great employees in the future.”
Core to them is having lots and lots of kids buying their products.
I just can’t get over this odd deference to these companies. Ed reformers really believe that Nintendo is based on philanthropy? That they’re jamming product into public schools because they’re incredibly generous people?
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I remember when fast food vendors were trying to push their way into school cafeterias. It was the parents in my district that objected because the food was nutritionally inferior. For profit companies will move in unless they face active resistance. Their goal is to sell more units, not help students. The marketing is a ploy to get their foot in the door.
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Actually by starving public schools (in many areas), at least Gates, is shooting himself in the foot. Because instead of spending money, we don’t have, on Microsoft based hardware and software….public schools are turning to chromebooks and google based products. Because they are MUCH cheaper or FREE! So, necessity is the mother of invention and they lose.
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an interesting look at the reality of modern-day tech wars: schooling/education not nearly as important as ever-changing tech — even a decade ago things were changed up every year (annually forced new software for student grades, etc), to the point that nothing was predictable or stable where tech was concerned…save the endless time lost to learning new tricks
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Oh, they aren’t “FREE”. There are many associated costs with using those products.
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“Jeb Bush, Jr.
Charter schools are stepping up to meet the needs of students pursuing vocational education as an alternative to attending college.”
Public schools have been quietly providing vocational education for decades, completely ignored and neglected by the Best and Brightest, yet a charter school does it and it’s innovative and amazing.
They’re running around actually believing they invented this stuff. Packaged and marketed as new, when all it really is is ” public schools fashionable people ignored for 30 years”
Just add “charter” and it becomes…magical! Meanwhile we have a huge vocational high school here that is oversubscribed and hugely popular and no politician can be bothered to support it, because it was established in 1952.
It’s just such a waste, to throw out all these valuable things for such flimsy, gimmicky replacements.
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Hmmm…there were vocational schools in the 19th century. Public schools. Federal legislation to support vocational education was passed in 1914 (Smith-Lever Act) and 1917 (Smith-Hughes).
But we know Jeb Bush Jr. thought of it first.
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When I started teaching in 1975, there were vocational classes at the high school. After President Ray-Gun’s misleading lying “A Nation at Risk Report” in 1983, and all the garbage that followed, vocational programs started to vanish from high schools across the country as public education was being taken over by the high stakes rank and punish test regime.
Today, most vocational programs can be found at two-year community colleges and in the private sector. At least in California. Most if not all two-year community colleges are a continuation of high school for two more years with college classes for those students that plan to continue and transfer to a four year college later.
Students that leave high school that don’t want to go to college can decide to earn a certificate at a two-year college vocational program instead and avoid all the classes required to earn a college degree: AS, AA, BA, BS, et. al.
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We are very fortunate in NJ to have a county network of secondary-level vo-tech schools. The one for our county is near our district hisch. You can go full-time– or, as a number of our town students do, take a double-diploma [acad hisch & vo-tech] via an extended day; a school bus delivers them from hisch to & back from vo-tech for a.m. or p.m. classes
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The claim that public high schools haven’t changed in more than a century is wrong, wrong, totally wrong. In fact, they are outrageous, lies that mislead.
I taught from 1975 to 2005 before I retired from teaching in the public school in California and the public education system and the high schools was always changing and looking for ways to improve. Some of those changes failed and were later dropped but the hunt for better material and methods was an ongoing process that never ended.
In fact, I took part in testing some of these methods when volunteers were asked to team up and try some of them to see which ones worked best.
The ones that were forced on teachers were the ones that almost always failed.
The ones that teachers were interested in and volunteered to try out and report back on almost always succeeded.
The district where I taught had about 19,000 students and it also had a staff development center located on one grade school campus where teachers went to learn how to improve as teachers and be introduced to new materials and methods. We were also required by law to attend workshops and classes that did the same thing and had to prove we took them to keep our teaching credential.
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To answer the question of the post: NO!
Considering the XQ Super School Project’s big 10×14 “Guide for State Policymakers” states on the first page after the inside front cover that “99% [encircled for emphasis] of the jobs created during the economic recovery went to workers with post-secondary education or training” why would I believe anything they have to say? Really, I mean really?? Where do they come up with such a lie?
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How to change the American high school?
Better yet . . .
What to change?
and . . .
Why change it?
In education, we tend to keep what works and throw out the rest.
The fundamentals of each of these seem to be working very well
wherever parents and students are engaged and actively participating, while taking full advantage of the opportunities.
WHAT should change? . . .and WHY?
Standards
Curricula
Pathways for success
Pedagogy
Schedule
Building design
Technology
Teachers
Administration
Funding
BOEs
Social services
State/Federal mandates
Extra-curricular
Philosophy (Mission)
Delivery of instruction
Grading
Promotion requirements
Cumpulsory attendance requirements
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