Steven Singer writes that Linda Darling-Hammond was one of his heroes. But after reading the new report from the Learning Policy Institute, with its benign embrace of choice, he is disappointed.
Perhaps what he sees is the difference between Linda writing in her own voice and Linda writing as part of a team. I wonder who wrote the first draft.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As I wrote in the WaPo:
Darling-Hammond is not as bad as some, but count me in the Ravitch/Burris camp. Among from the intrinsic dangers of “choice,” the diversion of funding that usually accompanies “choice” does not improve education in the aggregate. Choice, whether the bland Darling-Hammond kind or the ugly DeVos kind, is a means of avoiding the real conversation, which should be about poverty and social injustice.
But perhaps more important, D-H’s “tapestry” of schools idea asks us to stipulate that all kinds of different schools can be dandy. That’s simply not true. Most choice schools, whether public or private, for profit or not for profit, magnet or otherwise, are gimmicks.
Learning is based on science. There are fundamental truths about child development and cognitive science that clearly point to the approach all schools should take. The flavor of the week approach is the problem, not the solution. D-H and her “research” colleagues have, I suppose inadvertently, exacerbated the problems in education by assessing teaching practices on the wrong outcomes.
We need equity in education and society, not “innovations” that merely sidestep injustice. When all schools are properly funded, teachers are paid well and teaching is based on the real needs of children, all of this political sleight of hand will be unnecessary.
And when pigs fly and hell freezes over . . .
A tapestry
Of schools?
Or crapestry
Of fools?
“Learning is based on science. There are fundamental truths about child development and cognitive science that clearly point to the approach all schools should take. ”
Wait a minute. This really sounds like an overstatement of what we know and, in fact, sounds like an endorsement of canned “scientific” approaches. I think I know that this is not what you are advocating. Can you expand a bit? As far as I know, what neurological understanding we have of learning processes is far from ready to define fundamental truths that can easily be translated into practice that will reach all children.
Thanks for the generous skepticism. No, I don’t refer to the oft-debunked “scientific” approaches to pedagogy. Here’s a short list of what I do mean:
Early education should be by and large play based. Early academic “rigor” has been shown to be both ineffective and probably damaging in the long term.
Punishment doesn’t work. Rewards don’t work. Schools should be designed around intrinsic motivators, like curiosity, the innate impulse for mastery etc.
Children develop at different rates and in different ways. Standardized “anything” is inappropriate, as students are not standard.
Active learning, whether discussion rather than lecture, or experiment rather than sitting still, is more effective.
Most methods of assessment are measuring the wrong things. Comprehension is not the same as regurgitation. Process generally matters more than product.
I could add more, or provide support for these things, but I think Diane would put me in moderation for excessive wordiness!
I too stumbled over “science.” Thanks for the elaboration, it’s what I asumed you meant. These days the decades of solid research behind best ed practices get short shrift, while quackery, ideology and for-profit schemes are dressed up with suggestive snippets borrowed from neurology and economics.
It’s a rearguard action. They believe they will manage to retain something resembling “public education” if they redefine it as “publicly funded education” and accept ed reform demands for partially or wholly privatized systems.
I think they’re wrong. They’ll lose public schools AND funding and support for publicly-subsidized K-12 education.
I think it is incredibly naive to turn a public entity over to 7 billionaires just on a trust basis. It’s tragically naive and it will end badly for middle, working and low income people.
This whole thing is predicated on believing that incredibly wealthy and powerful people are wholly philanthropic in their efforts to run US public education, that nothing they do is driven by ideology and self interest. That’s nuts. It’s the most reckless thing I’ve ever seen. They could lose, and if they lose they lose big- they become responsible for the end of public education.
I can’t imagine being that cavalier, that I would just pitch an existing system in the trash and replace it with something cooked up in a think tank.
“I think it is incredibly naive to turn a public entity over to 7 billionaires just on a trust basis. It’s tragically naive”
There’s nothing naive about it. It’s the consequence of 30 yrs’ legislative & judiciary decisions pushing the nation’s wealth into the hands of a few, where it inevitably flows into buying governmental policy.
Grreat points, Bethree5!
It actually goes back to nearly 50 years ago though. It’s backlash for all the human’s rights movements in the late 60s and early 70s (civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, etc.), including the uprisings on college campuses at the time, and it’s based on the Powell Memo of 1971, which was a blueprint for corporate domination over democracy in America. https://www.greenpeace.org/usa/democracy/powell-memo-blueprint-impact-on-schools-and-education/
That spawned right-wing think tanks and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), established in 1973, which resulted in all those laws which were stealthily passed for decades (until the Stand Your Ground law was traced to the existence of author ALEC, in 2012, due to the killing of unarmed 17 year old Trayvon Martin). https://www.dissentmagazine.org/blog/alec-in-plunderland
ALEC was established by GOP voter suppression king Paul Weyrich:
John Oliver has an incredible take on voting here, including an astounding tape of how GOP Texas legislators who push voter ID laws vote more than their fair share while in session:
That’s some heck of a backlash.
But I suspect it actually dates back a lot further.
Anti-trust legislation of late 19th/early 20thC reined in robber barons a bit, but reins were loosened under Hoover; FDR’s Great Depression rescue spawned add’l legislation & has been a fave whipping-boy of free-marketers ever since; Friedman’s theories popped up right after WWII.
Goldwater’s pres candidacy in mid- ’60’s: landslide loss shows time was not ripe, but reveals far-right conservatives were already hard at work building a voter base– & the contrast w/LBJ’s Civil Rights Acts began the bleeding of Dixiecrats into Rep party.
So– maybe just a nuance– I see ’60’s liberalism not as the “thing” we’ve been getting blowback from ever since, but more as the farthest pendulum could swing before responding to opposite forces which were there & building up all along.
Yes, indeed, you are right. It’s all consistent with our long history of political antics centered around undermining workers and minorities and crushing the little guy and gal, to the benefit of those who are already more advantaged.
The ruling class are the minority, so majority rule puts them at-risk. Money can buy them more power, but they’ve also had to get more votes from the masses at the polls, so they use propaganda to persuade through tribalistic memes, like when they called themselves “the moral majority,” to rally a base of Xtian voters, to today’s “nationalists” in order to appeal to racists, xenophobes, misogynists and anti-semites, as well as pushing conspiracy theories and outright lies, and using redistricting, gerrymandering and other voter suppression tactics, from poll taxes in the past to voter ID laws today. It’s a long-standing concerted effort and it’s been very ugly.
Linda D-H has been involved in charter schools one way or another all along, though in a manner removed from the anti-public-school, anti-teacher mainstream charter sector. Here she is helping start a charter school: https://news.stanford.edu/pr/01/charter95.html
Here’s that school being closed for low performance: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/16/education/16sfcharter.html
Here she is on the board of directors of Aspire, a charter school chain co-founded by public education opponent Reed Hastings, who has called for abolishing elected school boards:
The Aspire Board of Directors consists of up to 11 members, plus members designated by the organization’s chartering districts.
… Linda Darling-Hammond, Professor, Stanford University School of Education
Linda Darling-Hammond is the Charles E. Ducommun Professor of Teaching and Teacher Education at Stanford University, where she works closely with the Stanf
ord Teacher Education Program (STEP) and teaches courses on teaching and
teacher education as well as education policy. (Page 28 of the Aspire business plan document). https://www.bridgespan.org/bridgespan/Images/articles/aspire-public-schools-sample-business-plan/aspire-business-plan.pdf
I understand she separated herself from Aspire years ago; I’d love to know the story, but I don’t — maybe Diane does. Aspire schools are still around, causing the same damage to public schools and their students that all charter schools do.
Here’s an explanation of how charter schools — ALL charter schools — harm public schools and their students in California; it probably applies everywhere there are charter schools. https://teachingmalinche.com/2018/04/29/whats-wrong-with-charter-schools-the-picture-in-california/
Not that it matters, but like so much of ed reform it’s also incoherent. On the one hand they’re all saying they need a “21st education system” that gives students tools to be flexible, and in the next breath they’re all pushing specialty schools that channel students into specific careers and trades.
If you attend “health care high school” you’re going to be pretty limited as to job choices. Why is DeVos they telling 15 year olds to train as security guards and food service workers? It’s LOUSY advice. Those aren’t even good jobs. They can’t have a general purpose education anymore? They have to go straight from 8th grade to low wage job training? That’s not “21st century”- it’s 19th century.
Agree, terrible idea. For students who know they want hands-on trades, we need more schools like my county’s vo-tech offering a wide range to sample. Ambitious future tradesfolk can double-diploma w/their acad hisch. For healthcare field, sciences in hisch, specialize in community college. “Healthcare High School” sounds like the old bus hischs of the ’30’s for secys/ bkkprs!
Yeah, I had been thinking along similar lines… that we’d had so many hopes for her when she was on Obama’s transition team, due to her history beforehand, but that now it looks like if he had chosen her for Secretary of Education, we probably would have ended up with Duncan’s destructive policies anyways.
It might be due to the team influence today, but it still seems like she’s a sell out now.
I heard LDH speak in the early ’90s when she was a TC. At that time she was clearly against privatization and pro-public education because it aspires to serve all students. Her message was all about equity, which we now understand, is not a value of most privatization.
I posted a comment that’s “awaiting moderation,” and I don’t imagine Diane is on this blog every second so I don’t know how long it takes to approve. I assume that’s because my comment contains several links.
While that one is awaiting moderation, I’ll post a brief summary of that comment:
Linda D-H has been involved in charter schools one way or another all along, though in a manner removed from the anti-public-school, anti-teacher mainstream charter sector. She was on the board of Aspire, an early charter school chain co-founded by public education opponent Reed Hastings; and in 2001 she was involved in founding a charter school run by Stanford in high-poverty East Palo Alto, which was closed for low performance in 2010.
It is posted.
Thanks! Sorry I didn’t have faith!
Sorry, I was running errands and offline
missouri suffers from a serious, statewide lacking in informative media coverage. It is most obvious in St. Louis, where conversations by educated people often occur about how far KMOX and The Post Dispatch have fallen since the days of Bob Hileman’s ownership of KMOX and the PD association with Pulitzer. It is not so much what is reported, and what is ignored that is offensive. Latest example…..the day before the election, the PD published a poll that said McCaskill was 3 points ahead……ignoring the story about black voters hemorrhaging from her support, after she pledged 100% support for Trump on immigration on Fox……7 days before the election. I give KC media credit….they do not hide from mentioning the name of the long time racist Peter Herschend, president of the state board, who can still be seen on Antonio French you tubes chewing out polite black teenagers, who had gathered signatures and appropriate information, which legally should have stopped the state takeover, bowing to the wishes of the charter industry and Mayor Slay. Why would the herschend name be in the news in 2018? less than a year ago, they sold their ownership of the duckboats, which had led to several deaths last summer. The pd avoids mentioning them—-their ownership dates back to before 2006—when the cardinals won the series, slps was taken over by Herschend and the other white guys, and a lucky Claire McCaskill was elected “moderate, sensible senator” along with many other democrats.
Singer does an excellent job examining LDH’s disconnect in her current reincarnation. As I stated yesterday, governance must work for students. Public school governance provides an array of protections for students that do not exist in private schools. Public schools are transparent and accountable while private schools have no such accountability. Even though charters use tax payer funds, they are largely unaccountable, and they have fought every effort to build in any oversight or accountability. Public schools are answerable to the communities they serve. Corporate schools are answerable to corporate headquarters. Public schools spend more money on instruction of students. Charters often have a bloated, highly paid bureaucracy, but they skimp on where money counts, instruction. Public schools are civic minded and are often the anchor of community stability. Charters come and go like the rising sun causing disruption and unnecessary and deleterious churn. As LDH has stated, public school offer far more options for students than most one size fits all charters can, and instruction in public schools in often more innovative and professional than instruction in many charters.
“Tapestries” are expensive. or they become torn and worn. As charters expand, funding for public schools diminishes. Public schools become the host for a variety of parasitic schools. This structure works to the disadvantage of public schools. Public schools often become the schools of last resort that receive discarded students from charters including the neediest, most difficult and most expensive to educate. Class size in public schools increase, services and programs are cut, and buildings rot due to lack of funds as public schools are left with stranded costs. This is hardly a model that values equity.
you got that right!
Great summary, & love this turn of phrase: “Public schools become the host for a variety of parasitic schools.”
parasites so irresponsibly deregulated that they methodically kill the host
LDH and the Stanford “team” shot the first cannon for the great ed policy debates Dems can’t avoid ahead of the 2020 election cycle. Dems will be campaigning to their right and need some lipstick on a pig, a cosmetically-prettified “tapestry” meme, which will help the dominant corporate wing of Dems ignore yet again as did Obama and Hillary the massive opposition from progressive educators, scholars, rank-and-file teachers, parents and students to the billionaire looting of the public sector. There is nothing innocent or well-intentioned in representing the ugly privatization of the last 25 years with the pretty word “tapestry.” Trump will be the big fearful sword held over our heads by the Dems to herd us into their big corporate tent where we can lie down on the tapestry.
Given that Taps is what the military trumpeter plays at dusk and military funerals, perhaps Tapestry of Schools has a grimmer meaning than a “beautiful mosaic of fabric”
Kinda like School Reform and “All for the Kids”
Someone really needs to write a dictionary of this stuff.
That definition also fits in with your cannon shot image.
Or maybe a translation app for the iPhone.
There is already a Babel Fish translator, but maybe a Babble Kitsch translator to translate Deform to plain English.
There can no longer be any hiding of the fact that support for charters is support for DeVos. Period. There is no middle ground on this issue. Anyone who jumps ship from supporting public education and therefore unions has jumped ship from the Democratic Party. It’s a losing position too. Watching someone like LDH descend into the privatization abyss — whether a little or a lot — is disturbing and disappointing to say the least. But she walked the plank of her own volition, and we teachers will not be joining her. Don’t throw her a life preserver; throw ballast. Donald Trump awaits her at the bottom of the swamp.
I agree.
It’s high time that individuals in positions of influence were held accountable for what they do and say.
Those who are the most knowledgeable are the least worthy of being given any benefit of doubt.
Here’s a solid public school district where they want to replace public schools with charter schools:
“Why siphon from the most successful of New Bedford’s schools, which outperform charters with a more challenging student population, just to increase charter seats? With a concerted and well-funded public relations strategy unmatched by cash-strapped district schools, it seems the only advantage charters have over traditional public schools is in the marketing department. It’s a credit to the public relations efforts of charters that the success of the New Bedford district public schools relative to its charters comes as a surprise”
They will happily harm this solid public school district if it means they get the privatized schools they prefer. This pie in the sky idea that they will expand “all kinds” of schools is just nonsense. Public schools are CLEARLY disfavored by ed reformers. They don’t expand public schools, they don’t invest in public schools, they don’t support public schools. ANY public school.
https://commonwealthmagazine.org/opinion/ignore-the-charter-school-think-tank-crowd/
It makes no sense to sacrifice the quality of a public school district to provide unneeded “choice” when the public schools are doing well. Who needs a parallel system that will undermine public schools that already serve all students?
I have not had a chance to read the LPI report in detail yet. However, it seems like the debate thus far about it overlooks the important role of governance–not from its impact on adults, but on how a mix of governance structures with varying degrees of democracy– impacts students. There are individual impacts about which most parents are concerned and there are systemic impacts. I am having a hard time imaging how a mix of publicly- and privately-governed schools can be equitable given the unequal distribution of power and wealth in America (even with more transparency, oversight, and accountability for the private sector). As an aside, we do have choice within public school system now (e.g. magnets and special admissions schools). They often serve the needs of some students at the expense of others as they are often designed to keep students from wealthier or more stable families from fleeing public schools.
“the important role of governance–.. how a mix of governance structures with varying degrees of democracy– impacts students… I am having a hard time imaging how a mix of publicly- and privately-governed schools can be equitable given the unequal distribution of power and wealth in America (even with more transparency, oversight, and accountability for the private sector).”
A crucial insight. I’m thinking of how some free-market mavens will point to the success of, e.g., Netherlands’ majority of publicly-funded “privately”-run schools. The Netherlands’ method of governing public goods, and its distribution of power and wealth is a complete 180 from ours.
Thus, choice and
independence:
(automony-freedom-the right of people, in the name of self-determination)
are the same thing, but different. When separated together, one must take
damitall with choice.
Damn the for profit.
Damn the charters.
Damn the private schools.
Damn the torpedos.
As Henny Ferd quipped:
You can have any color you want as long as it’s black.
You can have any school you want as long as it’s public…
I , too, wonder who wrote the first draft, and what’s up with her.
Linda Darling Hammond
The Darling of the billionaires
Is what she has become
To help them sell their Edu-wares
And charters on the run