“Education is not like chess or dice or the stock market. It is not about outsmarting an opponent. So, enough with all the talk about students and schools who excel by beating the odds.
“We don’t need a few more opportunities for students to beat the odds. We need to eliminate odds– a euphemism for inequality– as the primary determinant in whether or not young people get a high quality education. That is a far larger project than choosing schools, designing the right standards and tests, hiring and firing teachers, or giving parents the ability to opt out of struggling local public schools. It is a systemic project, not an individual child project, and just about schools. It is what we need to do. It is what we can do.
“Better yet, we need to drop the gambling metaphor entirely. Getting a high-quality education to prepare for life, work, and citizenship should not be a game of chance. It should be a guaranteed right for all students, regardless of the level of their parent’s income, social status, education background, or race.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The gambling metaphor is apt in one regard.
Like casinos, Reformers are out to make a buck off the public based on the false promise of a jackpot.
But as with casinos, the odds are with the house, not the gambling public.
The latter are more likely than not to lose the car, the house and the family farm.
The Gambler’s Ruin”
Reform is a casino
With odds that favor house
In Vegas and in Reno
And islands of the south
The offer is a jack-pot
But ruin’s what we get
And only crazy crack-pot
Would take the lousy bet
Your experiences seem to have dealt you a sad blow. The Science Council of NYC, an all- volunteer organization, invites you to our 41st annual conference, to network with fellow teachers and play a part in workshops and presentations centered around NGSS professional development. Our registration fee goes straight into next year’s conference. Don’t let the mean-spirited losers get to you. Share your craft.
Many years ago I attended a NYSABE (NY bilingual education) conference. I recall that the theme of meeting was access, equity and excellence. I adopted these ideas in my work with ELLs. Since that time, we have strayed much further from these guiding principles in education. Privatization fails on all three concepts. Privatization destroys equity and access. It creates winners and losers. There is rationed “excellence” for a few lucky winners. Camins’ gambling analogy applies to privatization. Public schools aspire to serve all students, but there is still much work to do in order for public schools to do a better job.
Public schools are not equitable because we fail to fund them equitably. Money does matter as Camins notes. Privatization has intensified how unfairly we fund schools, and privatization has failed to deliver excellence. It has also results in wasteful, squandering of valuable resources. Camins points out that “The Learning Policy Institute reported that a recent analysis of the long-term effects of school finance reforms across multiple states found that “the estimated effect of a 21.7% increase in per-pupil spending throughout all 12 school-age years for low-income children is large enough to eliminate the education attainment gap between children from low-income and non-poor families.” While we do not know if this statement is accurate, it does clearly show that money does matter in the education of poor students. We have failed to deliver equity in poor, largely minority public schools, and privatization is more separate and unequal treatment.
“A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both.” Milton Friedman
Milton was wrong.
Our society puts freedom from taxation above all else, so we have a high degree of inequality.
I believe that our society should be spending more on education in the impoverished and economically depressed areas. More on nutrition, and counseling, and after-school activities. It is cost-effective! Politicians just don’t see it.
If the children in our inner-cities, are not educated for 21st century careers, they are doomed to a life of welfare and food stamps and prison.
I do NOT favor equality of spending. I favor spending more in the distressed areas, than in the wealthy, suburban schools.
You believe in many contradictions or CYA
There is nothing contradictory in supporting an adequate and appropriate education for all children. It is cost-effective.
“If you think education is expensive, try ignorance” – unknown.
It costs more incarcerate a person, than it does to send them to college. Our nation has more young black males in prison, than we do in college.
Our politicians support this idiocy!
A society that puts Milton Friedman before equality will get a high degree of Augusto Pinochet
Fixed
Yes!
Yup. Charles, I like your credo a lot better then Friedman’s.
Every “so-called” education reform proposed by America’s presidents have been dismal failures.
Why? Answer: They don’t know squat and $$$$$ is involved.
In the meanwhile more USELESS “Think Tanks” are going on and we now have “Thought Leaders.”
HUH?
Education is not a horse race.
Everyone learns at their own speed and in their own way.
Every child that learns to read and write is a winner. Some children learn faster than others, but learning faster doesn’t make them the winner. It just means they have a head start … if they take advantage of that head start and many do not do that.
To understand what that means, let’s look at one person. His name is Albert Einstein.
“He started school at 6½ and, according to an Albert Einstein Archives biography, his early teachers did not find him especially talented even though he got high marks. He hated the strict protocols followed by teachers and rote learning demanded of students, which explains his disdain for school, which he carried with him when, at age 9½, he entered the Luitpold Gymnasium, a competitive school. …
“He did fine in math, but he did flunk the entrance exam to the Zurich Polytechnic when he first took it — when he was about 1 1/2 years away from graduating high school, at age 16 …”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/02/11/was-albert-einstein-really-a-bad-student-who-failed-math/?utm_term=.52c0e7fd1993
Albert Einstein was a later bloomer and in today’s private sector no-nonsense corporate charter schools, he would have been crushed and/or tossed out because he wouldn’t conform and learn at the pace that the charter schools decided he should learn at.
“One of the smartest person in human history (with an IQ of 150), so smart that the phrase ‘Einstein’ is actually a compliment for someone who’s smart. Famously known to have developed the theory of relativity and a Nobel prize winner, he was however, not considered a bright spark until he was relativity (pun unintended) older.
“As a child, he had difficulty speaking until he was 3 years old and was considered to have speech challenges. His parents also feared that he might be cognitively challenged at one point. He failed his university entrance exam after failing several subjects like history and geography although he excelled in math and science, but eventually made the cut after retaking the subjects.”
http://referjobs.my/blog/index.php/2015/10/19/7-late-bloomers-that-proves-its-never-too-late/
We have to have a system that welcomes all and provides opportunity free of bias and labeling. This story made my day because it confirms the belief that there is still opportunity in public education. An eight year old Nigerian boy won a New York chess tournament. He has been in the US only two years, and he never played chess in Nigeria. He is homeless. Someone started a Go Fund Me page for the student which has over $100,000 in it. His family will be able to move into an apartment now. We need to invest in all our students. Nobody knows from where the next big ideas come, and that is why we must given every students the opportunity he or she deserves. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/03/18/homeless-boy-nigerian-refugee-wins-new-york-state-chess-championship/3199959002/
I just hope whoever started the go fund me page does not rip him and his family off.
There was a recent case where that indeed happened.
https://people.com/human-interest/homeless-vet-gofundme-money-missing/
Lloyd,
AMEN!
The regimented schools that Einstein experienced actually had a great deal in common with no excuses charters of today.
I don’t think that is an accident. They are patterned after military schools and Germany was very much a militaristic society at the turn of the century 19th century.
For fascism to exist and grow, regimented schools with strict discipline and harsh punishments for free critical thinkers and problem solvers is a given.
Thank you, Arthur Camis. I will be quoting your spot on insights from this post for a long time to come. It’s not even about leveling the playing field; it’s about recognizing the fact that we’re supposed to be on the playing field, playing on the same team.
INDEED. Thank you, Camis. Now if only the DFERS understood this.