George Packer, who usually writes for the New Yorker, recently wrote an angry tirade about the progressive elementary school in which he enrolled his child. Readers quickly identified it as Brooklyn New School, one of the most progressive in the city. He complained, among other things, that he and his child felt pressured to “opt out” of state testing, and he seems to like the state tests. But that was only one of his complaints about the school. He hated the pedagogy and the emphasis on victim groups. I did not post the piece because I know that what he experienced at BNS is totally atypical for NYC public schools. NYC has an extremely low opt out rate, parents are not pressured to opt out, they are pressured NOT to opt out. The typical public school pressures students to prepare for the tests and to take them.
Another education journalist, Meredith Kolodner, responded to Packer’s article, and linked to it on Twitter.
If you are on Twitter, you will find her comments very contrary to those of Packer. Her child in enrolled in BNS and loves it. So does she.
Different parents, different views.
Read it if you can.
Word on the street is that Packer’s child now attends BASIS, which runs a for-private private school in Brooklyn. BASIS is known for its emphasis on testing and its high attrition to those students who can’t make it. Its owners, Michael and Olga Block, pay themselves millions each year for running a chain of high-performing charter schools in Arizona, where test scores are everything.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Boy, I did not read that at all as an “angry tirade.” But such are the times we live in.
LikeLike
I think when the National Review and the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal and every other far right writer and news site who usually spend their time defending Donald Trump from any criticism (they insist Trump is honest) are all jumping all over themselves to praise Packer’s article as the most truthful and honest depiction of NYC public schools ever, then maybe it is time to admit that Packer did not give an accurate portrayal of NYC public schools.
Maybe you are among those NYC public school parents whom the right wing sites sympathize with because you withstood the enormous pressure and subjected your own children to the terrible shame of taking the state tests and basically caused your children to be subject to intense hatred by all the parents, teachers, and other students in the public middle and elementary schools they attended. How did they ever survive the terrible pain of ignoring the enormous pressure your kids’ public school put on them to opt out? Did you get your children counseling because you were concerned with their emotional state in having to withstand the hatred of their public school community when you allowed them to take the state tests and become pariahs in your community where everyone now hated you?
I do feel sympathy for how much you and your children must have suffered when you chose to allow them to be tested when your principal and other parents spent their lives shaming you and your children for taking the state tests.
Or probably that was not your experience. In fact, it is almost no parent’s experience. But I guess those parents who write an angry tirade about how their children were made to suffer far more than Packer’s children did when they opted out of state tests are just not important enough to get a major magazine piece about it.
Every NYC public school parent knows how easy it is to have your children take the state tests if you choose to do so. I suspect you know that, too.
LikeLike
I tortured myself and read Packer’s piece. It is, at best, a hot mess. He is among so-called liberals whose tolerance for social justice ends at the point it requires any real thought or sacrifice.
His understanding of progressive education is cursory and his disdain for Brooklyn Free School is smug and conventional.
It is unfortunate that he has a platform, as that means people might be influenced by his semi-coherent efforts to figure out what he really believes.
I think I’ll go ride my bike and clear my head of the entire experience.
LikeLike
I also read the whole Atlantic article and had a similar reaction.Too bad he could not cope with the “opt put of testing” ethos…he appears to think the tests are simplistic and useful.
LikeLike
Packer isn’t really a progressive writer. His body of work tends to middle of the road to conservative- a softer gentler kind of authoritarian.
The Atlantic has been writing several critical pieces about misguided ed reform lately. I guess the reformers needed to counterbalance critics of their test & punish curriculum by bashing schools where children’s education is a joyful learning experience.
LikeLike
The Atlantic was purchased by Lauren Powell Jobs, who has also hired Arne Duncan as managing partner. Sigh.
LikeLike
“Too bad he has a platform” I.e. I wish I could censor him. Charming. How about rebutting his claims with cogent arguments instead? Your illiberal reaction bolsters one of his main arguments.
LikeLiked by 1 person
How do you get from what I wrote to censoring?
LikeLike
I think public schools reflect the communities where they are located. Generally. NYC is such a huge system that there is the capacity to have a much wider range of schools, of course. Smaller systems can’t sustain that much variety, so they would have less.
For example, our public school is located in a very conservative part of the country, so it is more conservative than the Brooklyn New School.
If you are a liberal in our school you might consider the public school too conservative, but you probably shouldn’t then conclude that “too conservative for me” describes all public schools everywhere.
I don’t think we even have “opt outers” on state testing- if we do I’ve never met one- so if you were an opt outer here you would absolutely be a minority and might feel pressured NOT to opt out.
LikeLike
Oh FFS, why on earth would you enroll your kid at a progressive school if you don’t support the pedagogy. I can’t tell you how often I hear complaints from parents at my daughters’ school that the kids aren’t being “pushed” (i.e., bulldozed by tons of homework, worksheets, facts to memorize, etc.). That being the whole point of the school, I have to wonder what it was that people didn’t understand when things were explained up front.
LikeLike
That was my response as well. Packer really didn’t do his homework when looking into schools. We live near a progressive school and I’ve seen this happen. Parents list the school to have options and then will take the seat, if given, if they think it’s better than their zoned school. Fast forward ahead a few years, the parents are looking to move their child to another school, because they realize they don’t care for a progressive pedagogy, i.e. school isn’t challenging enough.
LikeLike
My friends put their son in a “progressive” elementary school. Green and yellow and orange abstract figures on the walls, iPads, lots of open space, bean bags, etc. It was a school every parent was talking about, and it has a waiting list. The next year they pulled him out and put them in a regular school, after he told them that during the whole year he did not learn anything new besides making a couple of cardboard “projects” – basically, exactly what Packer’s son told him, 100% the same. How could he know beforehand that the school would not teach his son anything, unless he were a teacher there? It was an honest mistake of him.
LikeLike
That school sounds like many of Manhattan’s most expensive private schools,where parents pay $50,000 a year plus tuition.
LikeLike
BA,
Please cite where Packer’s son told him that for an entire year he never learned anything new. I must have missed that in reading the article.
LikeLike
@BA- My children attended a progressive nursery school, so I was well versed in progressive pedagogy. We knew that we did not want that for our children starting in kindergarten. We toured a local public, progressive school to keep our options open. We did not care for it and ranked it pretty low in our choices. I also spoke a lot with other parents, not just at our nursery school, but on the playground etc. There’s a lot of choice in New York City and it’s incumbent on parents to inform themselves as to what the choices are. Packer clearly didn’t do his homework, and is looking blame anyone and everyone, but himself.
LikeLike
NYCPSP, not exactly the same as the son of my friends told his parents, but close: “Reading instruction didn’t start until the end of first grade; in math, kids were taught various strategies for multiplication and division, but the times tables were their parents’ problem. … We got antsy with the endless craft projects, the utter indifference to spelling. But our son learned well only when a subject interested him. “I want to learn facts, not skills,” he told his first-grade teacher.”
Beth, “progressive” nursery is completely different from “progressive” school. I agree that by the age of 6 or 7 kids should play, run around, do stuff with their hands. But school is where they put aside their games and start learning. Learning does not have to be fun, as many “progressive” educators tell us, singing or dancing in front of their students to make their subject fun. Learning is a work, and a certain effort must be spent.
LikeLike
If you had read anything about progressive education, you would know there are many variants, not just “learning should be fun.” That is a stereotype. There are many variants of traditional education, not just “learning should not be fun,p.”
LikeLike
What a grim and incorrect way to look at learning. Yes, learning can be fun. It should be fun. It is fun for me and I’m 72! Humans determine that learning is not fun because of the horribly dull schools they are stuck in every day.
Every cognitive psychologist knows that brain development is enhanced by “fun” and suppressed by stress and/or boredom.
Play is learning, even with older children. Physics class is play. Learning history can be playful. Math is especially fun if you see it that way yourself.
The stereotypes of progressive schools are silly and offensive. In my former school kids brains were crackling with learning and their comprehensive and critical thinking skills were being developed – at every age. I have, can, and will defend all of what we did on a neurobiological, psychological, child development and philosophical basis. It is indeed harder to do with large classes. That’s why class size matters!
As to being impossible to do with all those “difficult” kids . . . I see that as racist. Poor children, children of color . . . all children . . . respond to active, engaging environments. They love to learn by doing things, not sitting still being talked at . . . just like all others.
The idea, advanced by offensive people like Whitney Tilson and most reformers, that kids need “discipline,” tough love or high expectations is a deeply offensive and harmful way to look at small humans. They need love, humor, respect and appreciation for their individual experiences, their unique interests and their talents.
Forcing children to sit still, assuming that they all should learn in the same way and expecting them all to perform on the same tasks is not education. it is training. And not very good training at that!
LikeLike
Steve,
You still haven’t cited studies that support discovery learning. I’d really like to read them.
LikeLike
It isn’t that simple, Ponderosa. You ask for research “proving” the efficacy of discovery learning. That suggest that you want a direct correlation between “discovery” learning and some outcome, presumably test scores or other conventional measures. As you might guess, I find those conventional measures inadequate or irrelevant. Most educational research is a self-fulfilling prophecy: Determine the desired outcome (proper answers) and then reverse engineer educational practices directed toward achieving that outcome. Then engage in self-congratulation when the self-fulfilling exercise is completed.
The real issue is more complex and based on a combination of the neurobiological benefits of rich sensory stimulation and the inarguable superiority of intrinsic motivation (particularly capitalizing on natural curiosity) over extrinsic systems of reward. As Jerome Bruner wrote in The Process in Education, “Knowing how something is put together is worth a thousand facts about it.”
A long section of my own work is not appropriate for a blog, but this short excerpt cites some research that is part of a larger argument for project-based, student-centered discovery work.
“Moreover, all of these beneficial effects on motivation and learning can be shown to increase significantly if the concrete context is personalized on the basis of students’ interests, backgrounds or specific choices (e.g. Anand and Ross, 1987; Cordova and Lepper, 1996; Ross, 1983).
At a higher level, these same considerations underlie considerably more general calls for the increased use of what has been called the “project approach” to schooling (e.g. Edwards, Gandini, and Forman, 1993; Katz and Chard, 1989) – an idea that dates back at least to John Dewey (1913, 1938). In this model, the goal is to integrate a variety of traditional curriculum goals into the pursuit of long-term projects selected on the basis of students’ demonstrated interests. [55]”
LikeLike
Steve,
Have you read the Kirschner paper I linked to?
LikeLike
I certainly agree that parents should understand the curriculum of a school they choose in which they enroll their children. If BNS was a traditional school, however, that enrolled all and only students who lived in the catchment area, would there be more sympathy with his concerns? Would BNS be allowed to exist if were not a choice school?
LikeLike
BNS is a public school, not a charter school. NYC enrolls 1.1 Million pupils. Public school choice is not an issue on this blog. Expecting the public to pay for private choices is. I think you know that but your object is to be provocative. It is tiresome.
LikeLike
I think BNS is closer to what your other post talks about — a school that was established to be like the original concept of “charter”.
The description from inside schools: “founded by parents and teachers in 1987 as a progressive alternative to traditional education”.
So to answer Teachingeconomist’s question, BNS was established BEFORE the corporate “charters” that demand disproportionate resources with no oversight or transparency. It would NOT be allowed to exist if a pro-charter Mayor took over the city and surely that building would be turned over to a corporate charter CEO to establish a corporate charter that would pick and choose which low-income students were allowed to remain in the corporate charter that spends its days devoted to identifying the worthy students that may stay, and the unworthy students who are put on “got to go” lists.
But BNS isn’t a “charter” because it is part of the NYC public school system — not separate from it.
NYC has many “choice” schools that are part of the system.
LikeLike
Dr. Ravitch,
My objective is to point out that without allowing parents the freedom to choose which school they attend within a district, schools lose the freedom to be different from other schools within the district. This point is independent of who runs the school.
LikeLike
And my point is that giving public money to private corporations and individuals is inherently destructive to public schools. There is an abundance of choice within the public sector without 8nviting entrepreneurs, charter chains, and grifters to grab public money.
LikeLike
NYCPSP,
Perhaps I stated it badly, but you have completely misunderstood my question. It had nothing at all to do with charter schools. My question concerned traditional catchment public schools.
Perhaps you could give answering my question another attempt. Do you think BNS could exist as a traditional catchment school?The sort of school where any student living within the catchment area whose family was unable to afford private school would be required by law to attend and students living outside the catchment area would be allowed to attend only if the school authorities allowed it.
LikeLike
TE,
I don’t recall anyone on this blog opposing public school choice so your question is irrelevant.
LikeLike
Dr. Ravitch,
People have been argued against having any choice schools in your living room. The argument was usually based on a concern about the cohesion of the neighborhood being disrupted if students attended different schools.
More importantly, however, is that many people argue in favor of more teacher control over what happens in the classroom without acknowledging that student choice is necessary for increased teacher choice. I thought this a very good example of how the two are connected.
LikeLike
Maybe you searched and found someone who opposes public school choice. However you seem to have missed the point that most commenters and I have made repeatedly. We oppose public money for private entities, corporate charter chains, charters outside the supervision of the local district, and religious schools. So your point is irrelevant.
LikeLike
Dr. Ravitch,
Dienne77”s post was about choosing a school. My response, agreeing with Dienne77’s post, was also about choosing a school. The only one in this thread posting about public money going to privately managed schools is you.
LikeLike
I am not speaking for Dienne. I am speaking for myself and the blog and the blog community of readers. Your views do not not overrule mine. Go pester someone else.
LikeLike
You had to read very carefully throughout to the end of the article to learn that Packer’s son suffered absolutely no repercussions from his teachers, the principal, nor from other students because he choose to take the state tests. That’s a throwaway sentence.
Basically, the whole article is about how George Packer does not have the courage of his convictions and is terrified that the “cool kids” won’t like him. Honestly, he could have just said he wanted his kids to take the tests. A very few parents at BNS would have been mad and the majority would have much better things to do than care about what Packer’s kid did.
But Packer is a hypocrite. He writes why he and his wife felt so strongly that their child needed to take the state tests:
“instead of giving grades, teachers at our school wrote long, detailed, often deeply knowledgeable reports on each student. But we wanted to know how well our son was learning against an external standard.”
It is amusing that Packer left a private school that does not give grades to students but instead writes “long, detailed, often deeply knowledgeable reports on each student”. And yet Packer never rails against that private school for ruining the ability of the parents to know whether their kids were learning “against an external standard”. Packer does not rail against the fancy and expensive NYC private schools that are absolutely free to opt in to having their children take the NY State tests but specifically choose not to do so because they know that the state test is a meaningless way to judge their students.
For the record, there are private schools all over NYC whose students take the state tests. But they tend to teach middle class and lower middle class kids and none of them are the rarefied private schools that privileged and ivy educated parents like George Packer would send their children to. Every single one of those private schools that Packer so admires opt out of the state tests. And George Packer and his wife could have spent $150 to register his child to take the ISEE exam which is an exam that is enormously different than the state tests if he was concerned that his child needed to be measured by an external standard and he was too much of a snowflake to withstand the terrible humiliation that he claims all parents who don’t want to opt out experience at Brooklyn New School.
If anything, NYC makes it much harder for a student to opt out than to opt in. Most kids who opt out in public schools are far less accommodated than Packer’s child was when he and his wife chose to have their child sit for the state tests. It is really hard to feel sorry for him, and very hard to understand why he would write such a one-side view of what the experience of NYC public school parents is.
LikeLike
Measuring a child against an external standard is precisely the problem. Not quite child abuse, but a pretty horrid way to love a child.
LikeLike
I don’t think there is anything wrong with parents who are interested in knowing how their child is doing against an external standard. I also don’t think there is anything wrong with parents who know that there are all kinds of flaws with that external standard and don’t care.
I don’t think there is any good purpose to equate that with love. I remember as an adult finding my old Iowa Test scores and other kinds of tests in a box of old papers from elementary school my parents had saved, along with old report cards. I’m sure my test scores had nothing to do with my parents’ love. They were no different than any report card I’d receive. Sometimes, some years, your kid may have a teacher where they thrive or a subject that they love and some years they may have a teacher they don’t like or a subject where they don’t thrive. That’s life. If as a parent you are unable to look at a standardized test result without being able to put it into context as simply one day at one time, that’s the parent’s problem, not the test’s. We never used to view Iowa tests with such horror nor as kids being abused by having to take them.
Unfortunately, unless you homeschool your kid, you are subjecting that kid to being judged by an external standard. Classroom teachers can make the very same misjudgments that a standardized test does. Ultimately, the parent has to decide which of many external standards as well as their own personal standard is worth considering. But I try not to judge parents on which ones they put more value in. My guess is they trust the ones that seem most aligned with what they personally witness about their child’s own strengths and weaknesses.
LikeLike
Standardized tests are junk.
People who send their children to elite provatewchiols u deddtand that the children willnot take the state tests.
Instead, they get a written evaluation of their child’s strengths and needs. That is what they pay for.
The old Iowa tests were not fearsome because there were no consequences attached to them. No child was left back, no teacher was fired, no school was closed, based on Iowa state test scores.
LikeLike
Yes, I agree about the consequences attached to standardized tests. In fact, I believe that it is those consequences that have caused those tests to become even more junky whereas in the past they were simply one single factor among many that a parent could use or dismiss as useful to them but had nothing to do with “punishing” schools or teachers. Much like a student’s report card could be used that way.
LikeLike
Steven,
I may be mistaken, but isn’t measuring a child against an external standard how learning disabilities are defined and diagnosed?
LikeLike
I found it to be an intelligent and lucid account of a very complicated situation. I think Packer is a bit naive about the value of the state tests –but how can I fault a layman when so many “professionals” don’t even understand the pros and cons of these tests?
I loved the quote from Packer’s first grader: “I want to learn facts, not skills.”
I thought Packer’s analysis of progressivism’s dark turn after the Obama election was really interesting. Bitter disappointment has led progressives to implement naked indoctrination of the kids. No more neutral provision of information about the world; let’s cut straight to surgical implantation of the correct attitudes and beliefs. To the extent that there’s any content left in elementary education these days, it’s gotta be pure PC doctrine. I love many of those doctrines, but I don’t believe a school should indoctrinate. It should provide a foundation of depoliticized knowledge. Let political opinions emerge organically from this knowledge base. Sadly, the education establishment is a million miles from embracing this idea.
No one wants to face the facts about the achievement gap and the “bad schools” that parents want to avoid. It’s not poor funding. It’s not racism. It’s not lazy teachers. The fact is that some groups are low-performing because they have less intellectual capital to transmit to the their kids. But the education orthodoxy blocks the obvious solution to this problem –intensive knowledge-building –because it contradicts their pet anti-transmission progressive pedagogies. The other towering issue with these “bad schools” is chaos. But stern discipline is anathema to the edu-establishment, so homeopathic “cures” like PBIS are prescribed, and benign, beleaguered, bleeding-heart-liberal teachers are sent to a week of anti-racist reeducation camps, as if they were the cause of all these woes. Meanwhile the achievement gap widens and chaos reigns. What to do next? Start burning the heretics –that’ll fix it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sorry but your description of progressive education and what students are taught in school does not match reality. Let me ask you something? Have you actually spent much time in elementary schools recently? Do you have kids and pay attention to their homework assignments or what they bring home or go to open schools week?
It is the schools run by right wingers who implant the “politically correct” beliefs. One must love their country right or wrong because that makes you a patriot and if you criticize it that means you hate America and want it destroyed. America was great in the past when white men had power and no one else did. The 2nd Amendment means that every law restricting the ownership of any type of gun must be struck down as unconstitutional.
Remember, what George Packer’s son learned was to QUESTION.
It’s very easy to dismiss racism when you are white. It shocks me to hear white people with absolutely no empathy or ability to think beyond what works for them (which is of course always right) who say that the experience that African-American people have with police should never be questioned. You can teach your students all the “facts” that those in power deem necessary for them to learn, and if they don’t have one ounce of empathy they end up like the Republicans in Trump’s cabinet. They may know the “facts” that got them into college, but they do not know how to think beyond “how can I keep myself in power and get richer”. They care about the “facts” that those in power tell them are true. Isn’t that the typical Trump voter?
Please stop telling me how my kid is being taught some kind of politically correct agenda. If anything, the public schools teach the agenda of the powerful white folks. If there is a little added amount that allows students to actually question those “facts” instead of being required to “memorize” them as absolute truths, then that is good for everyone.
And you insult parents everywhere with your misunderstanding about what kids know. I got into top private colleges without ever knowing math beyond low level Trigonometry, which was common in the 1980s. These days, if a public school student hasn’t taken some Calculus, they will likely be rejected from their state flagship college. The requirements these days are far beyond what used to be taught. The fact that students are ALSO taught to question as well as memorize “facts” is a good thing.
There are also more public school students living in severe poverty than in those days, and whereas in the past those students would be kicked out by age 15 or 16 by a school system that didn’t care, nowadays they are expected to stay in school through 12th grade with high level math and science requirements that people my age did not need when they applied to college. That is a good thing that those kids aren’t abandoned, but it has resulted in a terrible burden for teachers and public schools. Because instead of doing the things that would help those kids learn better — small class sizes, trained professionals (instead of classroom teachers) addressing behavioral issues outside of class, and slowing down the curriculum for kids who need it — those in power demand that teachers turn all students into high performing scholars all by themselves. That has nothing to do with any “bleeding heart agenda”. That is because the coldest, hardest, right wing agenda of people who have no interest in what it really takes to teach kids in poverty and their only agenda is to gain some political mileage and destroy public schools.
LikeLike
Could you tell me what you think elementary students are learning these days? Please be as specific as you can.
LikeLike
Elementary school students learn to read. They learn to write. They learn how to do math up to and including long division and multiplication and knowing how to answer complex word problems. They learn some science — not a huge amount, but enough to give them a basic understanding that allows them to begin the 5 day/week science curriculum that begins in 6th grade and — for more accelerated students — take a 9th grade biology class in 8th grade.
The one thing that is given shorter shrift in elementary school (but does begin as 5 days/week curriculum in middle school) is social studies. Nonetheless, the students are introduced to topics in social studies via non-fiction reading.
Maybe I am old, but I am blown away with how much more students learn in elementary school now than when I was in Kindergarten through 5th grade.
You seem to think that elementary school teachers don’t teach the basics. I haven’t found that at all — quite the opposite.
LikeLike
Thank you, NYC. I do tend to discount some of the important basics that are transmitted in elementary school –like decoding. One reason I have such a jaundiced view of modern elementary school education is that I receive many incoming seventh graders who cannot read a clock, who count on their fingers, who cannot do basic math (despite ungodly amounts of time devoted to math instruction), who do not know that Washington D.C. is a city and that it’s the capital of the US, who don’t even know what a capital is, who know almost nothing about their home state (CA), who can barely read (despite ungodly amounts of time devoted to “literacy”), etc. It often seems to me that they learned nothing at all in elementary school. What are the demographics of your kids’ school? If it’s high SES, could you be crediting the school with knowledge and ability that was actually provided by the parents?
I’m curious to know what sorts of things your kids have learned that you never learned when you were in elementary school.
LikeLike
Thanks for asking — you inspired me to search my memories and (with help from the internet) realized that my elementary school was clearly a “Scott Foresman” school. Reading instruction did not begin until first grade, and that year I sat through what seemed like excruciatingly long hours listening to other students reading out loud about Dick, Jane and Spot.
Throughout school until at least 6th or 7th grade, the entire reading curriculum was “readers” — large hardback reading textbooks by the name of “Wide Horizons”, “Vistas” and “Ventures” with many excerpts. The stories were interesting enough that I’d read through the book the first week, and I would spend the rest of the year bored as “reading” was again kids taking turns reading paragraphs out loud.
Science was reading a dull textbook and answering questions at the end. Talk about a surefire way to turn kids off of science! I could not believe it when my kid’s elementary school science teacher inspired such passion in kids as they did easy hands on experiments. Even though it was only once a week, the kids became interested in science which inspired them to choose books during their reading time to learn more. All I remember about social studies was having to write “reports” about states which required looking in an encyclopedia entry for “Arizona” to copy down the population, state bird, state capital, and draw a picture of the state flag! None of which I remembered a few days later, except possibly some of the state capitals.
“I receive many incoming seventh graders who cannot read a clock, who count on their fingers, who cannot do basic math …. who do not know that Washington D.C. is a city and that it’s the capital of the US, who don’t even know what a capital is”
I suspect that has nothing to do with progressive education and a lot to do with the fact that teachers are supposed to do more for more disadvantaged students with fewer resources to do it.
I have a relative who teaches math in a school where many (not all) kids who come in unprepared. But all of those students are supposed to learn Algebra and teaching them anything but Algebra – whether they are ready or not — is not allowed. Which means teachers are trying to get through a ridiculously advanced curriculum that would be challenging for the better math students when I was a student and being told if they don’t get through it then they have low expectations and should be fired. Teachers should also be fired if they go through the curriculum and the kids don’t excel at Algebra. They should also be fired if they fail too many kids because it is clearly the teacher’s fault for not teaching them Algebra. Do you see a pattern?
Ed reform has forced a curriculum for at-risk students (really for all students) in which it is assumed all at-risk students need only the same kind of teaching as the academically strongest of the at-risk students. I suspect many of your incoming students are very capable of doing basic math and know what Washington DC is. It isn’t that their elementary school never taught that, it is that the teachers did not have the time to address the more serious learning issues of the most severely disadvantaged at-risk kids. To me, it doesn’t matter what “curriculum” is in fashion — and I saw a variety of math and reading programs come and go — it is about the desire of ed reformers to attack schools for political purposes.
We all know how to reach those students. Half of the students in America will continue to be below average no matter how perfect and ideal we make public schools. And half of the students will be above average. But that has now been politicized in such a way that for poor kids, their schools are expected to turn 100% of their students into above average scholars. The pressure to do this — which means rushing through material when it should be slowed down — has been awful for schools, and results in students who haven’t had time to internalize the basics being expected to do high level work that proves they are “college ready”. Because if they don’t, it is their teacher’s fault.
LikeLike
Ponderosa, as I explained before, Brooklyn New School is not a typical NYC public school. It is known as a very progressive school. Why did Packer choose it for his child? The great majority of NYC public schools emphasize test scores and no one opts out.
LikeLike
He chose it to save face. His story about leaving the private school is utterly nonsensical.
LikeLike
I wonder why it’s people who are unhappy about their public school choice who get their articles published. What about all those people who are happy about their children’s public school?
This article has been making the rounds and I’ve felt compelled to acknowledge in other forums, as you do here, that 99% of public schools in NYC are not like this school. As you correctly note, there exists significant pressure NOT to opt out. I wish my kids’ school was more open to opting out.
LikeLike
btw From what I read on other forums he has one child in a public school and one at BASIS. He seems to be like those uptight white parents who send their kids to Success Academy.
LikeLike
Why did Packer choose it? He goes through a long explanation of the difficult and imperfect choices he faced. He explains that he loved the very diverse demographics of this school, the fact that it was public, his family is progressive (he gives a very touching account of his kids’ emerging political sensibilities during and after Trump’s election), and above all, that it was available. Did he know that opt-out would become a progressive litmus test at the school when he signed on? I doubt it. Did he know that “progressive school” meant highlighting racial differences among students? I doubt it. Did he know that civics education would be sidelined? Did he know that the political indoctrination would be so naked? Did he know that progressive pedagogy is not all that it’s cracked up to be and that kids crave and need direct instruction? I doubt it.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I enjoyed the article, very readable, could not put it down until I finished. Basically, what it says, is that a “progressive” school does not teach proper reading, math and sciences, and the parents have to spend time and money to cover these omissions on the side. Obviously, kids who were not tutored outside of their “progressive” school cannot pass the entrance test for a selective middle school — they are bound to go to a middling or downright failing middle and then high school, and will likely never see a college dorm from the inside. Thus, the “progressive” education actually does more harm than good. Abolishing entrance tests will spread students thin, capable with the slowpokes together, the program overall will be watered down again. “Progressive” ideas, groupwork, children-centered learning — all these buzzwords do not work.
LikeLiked by 1 person
He had no problem getting his child admitted to the highly selective BASIS after attending the Brooklyn New School.
LikeLike
“He had no problem getting his child admitted to the highly selective BASIS after attending the Brooklyn New School.” – but of course. If he was spending 50K a year on a private school he obviously could afford either paid tutors, or he spent time with his son himself. Did you read what I wrote? ” the parents have to spend time and money to cover these omissions on the side” – that is, those who have time and money, which Mr. Packer had. But can a parent, working two or three shifts, do the same? These parents rely on school to teach their kids, and the school fails them, not providing the very basics.
LikeLike
I expect Mr. Packer’s Child was very well prepared for the elite testing regime at basis Or he would not have been admitted. The tuition there is “only” $25,000 a year, compared to the tony progressive schools in Manhattan where parents pay $50,000 a year to buy a Brooklyn New School Education.
LikeLike
What you are saying does not disagree what Mr. Parker said and what I said. He had the resources to prep his kid outside of the school. Other less affluent parents would not have this option, instead relying on the elementary school to prep their children for middle school.
LikeLike
Your comment is an unsupported litany of conventional, uninformed criticism of progressive education. I challenge you to read my book and then reconsider. I hate to be so self-referential, but I am soooo tired of this kind of conventional, glib, ignorance about learning and child development.
LikeLike
Steve,
Believe it or not I do some progressive things in my classroom. For example I do a project where kids make and perform history skits. What I’ve found is that few succeed unless I do at least two weeks of direct instruction about the relevant facts beforehand. If I just have them try to discover the facts through reading or online searches, they flounder. They gain only a tenuous grasp of the topic and the skits show that. And even with two-weeks of vivid, graphics-rich, interactive lecture (which the kids enjoy), the bottom third of the class still flounders. This same bottom third, including many special ed kids and English learners, enjoyed the lectures. They knew they were learning and they felt smart. Kids who are notorious behavior problems are docile and engaged. But they were learning less that the other kids, and what they learned was more tenuous. Holding on to the facts took on too much mental bandwidth, leaving not enough bandwidth to do the myriad other mental functions required for making a skit (e.g. thinking of a plot line that will serve as a vehicle for showing off what they learned). This dynamic is explained well in the Kirschner, Clark and Sweller article “Why Minimially Guided Instruction Does not Work” (http://www.cogtech.usc.edu/publications/kirschner_Sweller_Clark.pdf) –a profound critique of progressive education. Behavior problems start to re-emerge. They start to feel stupid. To me this illustrates a major educational truth: progressive methods are very problematic. They fail even with advanced kids unless lots of direct instruction is provided ahead of time, in which case the progressive activity serves as beneficial reinforcement of the learning. But they fail most of the time for less advanced kids. Thus, while they fly at the Calhoun School, they are a terrible prescription for most schools and most situations.
LikeLiked by 1 person
I appreciate your civil response (more civil than mine!). The problem with most ideas of progressive is that they are too limited. A good progressive program doesn’t diminish the importance of reading, learning mathematical principles or other more “traditional” components of education. It is the context that creates more progressive strength. For example, at Calhoun our math program tried to tie learning to real problems that the kids find fascinating. The stereotype, which you allude to, is that kids simply wander until they stumble into knowledge. A good progressive teacher guides them toward the desired knowledge and “direct instruction” can be part of that in many cases. It seems clear from much research that discovery and active learning are more powerful than passive receipt of information. Teaching this way is hard, as I’m sure you know.
It is also true, as you stated, that many students feel great success when they can get answers “right,” even without deep understanding. I think it’s fine – good even – to give them this experience. Many things, including the much praised and much maligned multiplication tables should not be anathema to a progressive teacher. Memorizing things is helpful. Memorizing itself is a useful skill to practice. But I think progressive educators, I among them, are frustrated that many teachers and most reformers think memorization and rote skill is the end game of learning. Practicing skills and learning facts are not absent in a good progressive school. They are in service of a deeper mission – critical understanding and sustained curiosity.
LikeLike
“It seems clear from much research that discovery and active learning are more powerful than passive receipt of information.”
Could you cite some of this research please? I have seen no research that strongly supports discovery learning. And I’ve seen much that debunks it (http://www.cogtech.usc.edu/publications/kirschner_Sweller_Clark.pdf).
LikeLike
“Teaching this way is hard, as I’m sure you know.” – so it is reasonable to expect all the 2.9 million of American teachers to master it? What is worse: a decent textbook and a middling “lecture”-style teacher, or no textbooks at all and a “progressive” teacher who cannot teach kids basic algebra? In which case the kids learn more?
LikeLike
BA, you are spilling bile. Have you ever observed classes at BNS?
LikeLike
BASIS Brooklyn proudly posted a photo on their official site with the caption: “Youth Climate Strike 2019. We had many families and students rallying today. Here are some of our youngest activists. Go BEARS!”
“Go BEARS”?? — how can George Packer condone the administration of this school expressing such extreme encouragement for the students participating in the Climate Strike when he has made it clear that he believes saying anything positive about such progressive causes is a mark of illiberal intolerance one only finds in progressive public schools (which anyone reading Packer’s article would assume includes the entire NYC public school system)?
I wonder how George Packer would like it if one of the more conservative parents at BASIS was given space by a major magazine to completely trash BASIS as a school where kids are forced to be politically correct and are never taught to think for themselves.
LikeLike
This is so, so perfect. Can’t wait to hear what Ben Shapiro and the National Review and Steve Sailer and all those other people who are just soberly asking scientific questions on race will have to say about this after their enthusiastic amplification of Packer’s piece!
LikeLike
Please, provide a quotation of him saying this. Instead, he mentioned that a school which they were considering, presented training slides, one of which was titled “White Supremacy Culture.” It included “Perfectionism,” “Individualism,” “Objectivity,” and “Worship of the Written Word” among the white-supremacist values that need to be disrupted. Do you condone this?
LikeLike
“Instead, he mentioned that a school which they were considering, presented training slides, one of which was titled “White Supremacy Culture.”
I’m glad you put this in writing because it implies something that is patently untrue.
Those training slides were mentioned theoretically as part of Chancellor Carranza’s anti-bias training for school employees in every single public school in NYC. Packer was not “presented” with this at “a school they were considering” since those slides have nothing to do with any individual public school.
“mentioned that a school which they were considering, presented training slides” Sorry but that is simply untrue.
LikeLike
NYC: You are correct and BA is wrong. But his basic concern is valid: terms like “white supremacy culture” are very disturbing. This is the jargon of arch-culture warriors. I had my first exposure at a professional development session at a local university last year. The session was titled something like “How does our current political environment affect the teaching of history?” I thought there was going to be discussion among professionals, my peers, and that diverse thoughts would be brought forward. Instead a smug and assuming assistant professor of education told us the correct answer: our current political environment means that white supremacy is ascendant. Period. He did not present this as a hypothesis subject to scrutiny. He presented it as unquestionable fact. He delivered the party line and then made sure the whole discussion was about white supremacy. Most of my peers fell in line with alacrity. In the weeks leading up this session, I had been thinking a lot about what Trump’s dictatorial bent meant for teaching history. I’d been making changes to some of my lessons to highlight the contrast between autocracy and democracy. I felt passionately that we as history specialists needed to get really serious and focused about conveying an appreciation of democracy. Instead we BS-ed and riffed on the “woke” tune our piper played for us. It was reminiscent of many worthless education school classes I endured. We emerged as slightly more pure apparatchiks, not better history teachers. Of course there is racism. We’ve been talking about that for decades now –to the exclusion of much else. This “white supremacy culture” stuff is the latest effort to make that the only thing we talk about. Can’t we talk about something else for a while? Talking about white supremacy won’t do one thing for those kids in struggling NYC public schools. It’s a red herring. Those kids need better curriculum and better discipline. Watch the French movie “The Class” and tell me that those kids’ lives would be better if their teachers had trainings on white supremacy culture. Ha! As the film shows so well, those kids suffer from a lack of basic knowledge. The ones who really want to learn suffer from the endless disruptions of their classmates. Carranza and the culture warriors are harming those kids by substituting this PC indoctrination of teachers for serious reform. But, boy, are they pure and woke!
LikeLiked by 1 person
” Of course there is racism. We’ve been talking about that for decades now –to the exclusion of much else.”
No we haven’t. We have been talking about American being great and all the wonderful things this country has been for decades. The fact that racism that is pernicious is mentioned sometimes seems to be – to you — too much.
Let me give you an example:
A charter school – one of a network – has virtually no white students and suspends huge numbers of African-American Kindergarten students, claiming that their violent natures cause them to act out and thus deserve suspension. White people in power who hear this nod knowingly and reward the charter school. African-American parents who complain are dismissed and those in power – white folks – smile, tut tut, and do nothing when their children’s private records are released in violation of FERPA law.
Another charter school – one of the very same network – has a much whiter and wealthier crowd. Those kids move into a middle school with a principal trained in one of their charter schools that served almost no white students. Those students experience some of the same treatment that 5 year old African-American students get.
Here is the letter the parents wrote to the charter CEO:
“Last week we met with Principal Russell to voice our concerns and these are the issues and specific incidents that were discussed:
HYSA faculty broke our children’s spirit and erased their self confidence in less than 3 weeks…..Some of our children are getting physically sick, EXPERIENCING MELTDOWNS, vomiting, having nightmares and/or having sleepless nights and are UNABLE TO CONCENTRATE etc…..”
Policy changed. After all, when white kids are subject to such treatment and act out, it is simply a “meltdown” caused by the wrongheaded principal who dared to treat them like the much lower income African-American students are treated. The white parents are not told that it is their poor parenting skills or their children’s violent, extremely disordered mind that is at fault. Nope. That is called white privilege. If the stress hurts their children’s ability to concentrate and causes “melt downs”, that is the fault of the principal. After all, their children are white so it isn’t that they are as disproportionately violent and disordered and deserve suspension the way the students in the charter school that has almost no white students are.
In other words, white students have “meltdowns” after being subject to stressful policies that erase their self-confidence. African-American students act out violently after being subject to those same policies. That is white privilege. That is a white supremacy culture.
White privilege is what allows white people to have no sympathy for a young teen buying a package of skittles who is chased through a dark empty pathway by a very large white man with a gun and eventually shot dead. It must have been the teen’s fault for not reacting properly to a large white man with a gun chasing him down a dark pathway so he deserved to be shot dead.
But all that I posted above is irrelevant. Do you know why? Because those kinds of seminars you attended happen all the time with various ideas put forth to try to make teachers better at one thing or another. No one handed you a curriculum and said “you will teach this curriculum to your students that ignores all history and ideas and facts and instead every single class will be devoted to talking about white supremacy. That is nonsense. I guarantee that the teachers who left that seminar didn’t do that. Just like I know that public school students are rarely taught about white supremacy, although it might come up in discussion during a social studies class while kids are learning OTHER facts as well. It is absurd that you would equate trying to make teachers better understand their own biases with the thousands of fake public schools you imagine that teach nothing but how awful white supremacy is instead of teaching reading, writing and arithmetic.
“The ones who really want to learn suffer from the endless disruptions of their classmates…” That happens for white kids, too. But when affluent white kids endlessly disrupt class, their parents pay for the best that money can buy to address whatever issue is causing them to endlessly disrupt class. I have sympathy for teachers who have to teach a class that is disproportionately severely disadvantaged students and if we had an honest discussion about the best way to address this (and I can think of a few), things would get better.
But it is just as dishonest for you to claim that severe punishment and discipline would bring all those students in line because they don’t deserve the respect and understanding that white kids get in their schools. Where – as I pointed out – when those kids experience meltdowns, even the supposedly “no excuses” charter school changes what it does instead of simply punishing, suspending and (what people really want) putting those kids on the street to rot because white people in power say it is the disturbed nature of that white child and his terrible and awful parents that causes him to melt down when he is humiliated and punished over and over again in the name of “discipline”.
We need to have honest discussions of how to make schools that have to teach the most severely at-risk students better. But the idea that it is all about discipline is belied by the fact that charter schools that are all about discipline simply shed those students and don’t care if they rot.
Finally, lots of corporations train their human resource personnel in sexual harassment issues, and train their employees, too. That does NOT mean that the only thing that those employees do all day is talk about sexual harassment and how bad it is. The employees do their work, but now they hopefully will stop the kind of casual harassment that they previously did, many of whom simply did it because they were ignorant of how it made women feel and were HAPPY to be informed and change their behavior. Think about it. Often the ones objecting to bias training the most don’t believe they need to change. But the vast majority of people do want to be better people and show some consideration for those whom they unwittingly belittled or made uncomfortable with their speech or actions.
LikeLike
I said nothing about severe discipline. I said discipline, without which no learning is possible.
I hope you’ll watch Entre Les Murs (“Between the Walls”; released in the US as “The Class). Because it is French and because it is art, it is able to show truths that are absent from America’s politicized and toxic discourse about struggling students. Journalists and parents are rarely able to see what the film shows because no principal will let them –it’s too embarrassing. Most teachers are afraid to tell these truths because they too are ashamed or afraid –to utter the truths they see everyday is taboo. This film was created by a real teacher who used his considerable intelligence to write a truth-telling screenplay and had the courage to smuggle it out from “between the walls” into the public eye. In doing so he did us all a great service. Until we confront these truths, we’ll continue to go round and round with our sterile debates.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you. I haven’t seen the film but I read a synopsis and it sounds as if we are coming from the same perspective. The situation for those kids in the class seemed to be very complicated. Perhaps the theme was that they only needed discipline to do well, but the summary didn’t imply that.
If this country wasn’t embracing the cheap and simple answers of “reformers” — just suspend little 5 year old children until they shape up into scholars and every student should be able to learn in a large class as long as the teacher uses the right “discipline” — there would be a more honest discussion of how to address these issues.
But I am very curious what you see as your vision of the ideal school whose population consists of students who may barely speak English themselves, or have parents who speak no English, or students come to school hungry or are in charge of younger siblings during their non-school waking hours or have dysfunctional families or any of the myriad of things affecting students who are at-risk. I don’t think it is just about discipline and I don’t think that is what you are saying, either. If you know those students must come to school every single day and can’t be humiliated or punished into leaving, no matter what, how do you structure the school? I can think of a lot of ways that are likely to help learning, but they take more money and ed reformers like to pretend there is a simple and easy and cheap solution — that if you have a good enough (i.e. non-union, not lazy) teacher with the freedom to discipline kids, then all of those students will turn into high performing scholars with nothing else necessary except the “good” teacher and the ability to “discipline”. And if that doesn’t work, it is because the teacher is an incompetent failure.
LikeLike
The film is an amazing piece of art. It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes. I hope you get to watch it.
Important truths it tells and that need telling:
Kids are not angels. At all.
Even super-bright, well-prepared, empathetic teachers can’t make major progress with an unruly class (though some progress is possible, as the film shows).
Most teachers are not racists and teacher racism is not a significant impediment to learning.
Many students are their own worst enemy. They subvert the learning process constantly.
Discipline is necessary and very hard to get right. The Doug Lemov/KIPP/Success no tolerance approach cannot work at a school like the one shown because there are just so many instances of rule-breaking that enforcement is impossible. A teacher has to pick his battles. The only way for a teacher to survive in these situations is to use charm, finesse and humor to neutralize or at least mitigate the will-to-chaos/defiance, while simultaneously hewing doggedly to a determination to get at least some content across.
Many kids lack the basic knowledge to succeed in upper grades.
Diane watched the movie and thought, if it’s that bad, what’s the point? I’m sorry to bear the bad news: that’s a best case scenario for rough schools. The teacher was smart and charming; he cared about the kids; he had good rapport with them (usually); he was dogged. These conditions do not always obtain. And even with all that, learning was very modest. The film shows big knowledge gaps among these 14 year olds. E.D. Hirsch decries France’s switch from a knowledge-centric curriculum to an American-style skills-centric curriculum in the 1990’s. The kids shown in the film might have been less disaffected and struggled less if they’d had the older type of curriculum. Hirsch shows compelling statistics that show that the achievement gap used to narrow for French kids as they went through 12 years of French schools prior to the 90’s. Nowadays the achievement gaps WIDENS as they proceed through the schools –just as it does in America. Curriculum is very important. There is no silver bullet, but curriculum reform would make a real improvement.
LikeLiked by 1 person
As I recall the film, the kids lived in “banlieues” —segregated ghettos for impoverished North African families—on the outskirts of Paris. Very likely, they needed teachers who were from a similar background to get and hold their attention. Curriculum wasnot their problem.
LikeLike
NYC:
I’m sorry I didn’t directly answer your question about my ideal school. The school in the film, for all its turmoil, was about as good as I can imagine. There is no way around the difficulties. The building was well-maintained, the staff was intelligent and dedicated. The only improvement, perhaps, could be, as I said, in curriculum. Good curriculum, besides leading to more learning, can also prevent many behavior problems. My current crop of 7th graders was deeply disliked by their teachers last year. They couldn’t control them. Yet I find them very pleasant. What’s the difference? My curriculum and pedagogy is radically different from last year’s very orthodox teachers.
LikeLike
Diane,
The film does not take place in the impoverished banlieus, as I’ve told you before. It’s in Paris proper. At the start of the film at a faculty meeting one of the new teachers announces he’s switched from a banlieu school to the present one, and is glad to have done so. There are many classrooms in America that resemble the one shown in the film, and not just in impoverished areas. In my lower middle class New England hometown, I endured many chaotic classes like the ones shown in the film. The disrupters were mostly white, by the way.
How do you explain the change in French results that E.D. Hirsch talks about in Why Knowledge Matters? Before the Jospin curriculum reforms that dismantled the knowledge-building program, French schools markedly shrank the achievement gap. Since the reforms, French schools increase the achievement gap — just as American schools do.. That seems to me like a strong demonstration that curriculum DOES matter. If you disagree, could you explain what you think accounts for this well-documented change.
I believe a solid elementary school curriculum can prevent a lot of –not all –chaos by giving kids the foundation they need to comprehend and succeed at the higher levels. If kids are lost, they act out. There is a connection between curriculum and behavior. Why do my seventh graders who misbehaved so badly in sixth grade behave so well for me? Curriculum is part of it: I do not ask them to do onerous chores, including reading, that are beyond their capacity. I patiently lay a foundation of knowledge pitched to their level of understanding.
LikeLike
ponderosa, you are crushing this thread. Thanks for these comments.
LikeLike
Ponderosa,
I’m all in favor of a content-based, knowledge rich curriculum. But my now dim memory of the film suggests that the dysfunction in that classroom went far far beyond curriculum. Curriculum matters but it can’t solve deeply rooted social and economic problems. Hirsch’s commentary on the French curriculum (and Paul Gagnon’s before Hirsch) predated the era of large-scale immigration.
LikeLike
From the Wikipedia description of the French film, which takes place in an inner-city school in Paris. Many or most of the students are foreign-born.
The film received the Palme d’Or at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, making it the first French film to do so since 1987, when Maurice Pialat won the award for Under the Sun of Satan. The Class was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, but lost to Departures.
Plot
Set wholly in a secondary school in a working-class district of Paris, where many inhabitants are foreign-born, the film follows the year of a young teacher, François Marin, and the 25 pupils aged 14 or 15 who he takes for an hour each day in French language. A loner, he walks the narrow line between maintaining discipline and gaining co-operation.
From the start, wide differences are apparent in the class over standards of dress, deportment, knowledge and application. A dispute arises over using the imperfect and pluperfect subjunctive, which he admits may be a bit of an affectation and is then labelled as gay. When pupils have to read aloud from a set book, The Diary of Anne Frank, a girl called Khoumba refuses because she does not consider it relevant to her life. In private, François forces her to apologise.
Success comes when he asks the pupils to write a self-portrait. An assertive girl called Esmeralda reveals that she would like to be a policewoman or failing that, a rapper. A difficult boy called Souleymane, weak in written French, submits his story in an interesting series of photographs (at a parents’ evening, his mother can speak no French at all). However, after an argument over football teams with Carl, another boy who is problematic, Souleymane insults François and is sent to the head teacher’s office.
At a teachers’ conference to decide final placings, François defends Souleymane but his efforts are undermined by the two student representatives at the meeting, Esmeralda and Louise, who behave in a very childish manner. Afterwards, though sworn to secrecy, the two girls tell the others that François had it in for Souleymane. A furious François rebukes the pair, saying they behaved like “skanks” (French: pétasses). Uproar follows, in which Souleymane, after accidentally hitting Khoumba with his sports bag, storms out and is suspended. After a disciplinary hearing at which Souleymane is supported by his mother, for whom he has to translate, he is expelled and faces possible deportation to his native country, Mali.
In the last lesson of the year, François asks each pupil what they have learned over the year. Carl has been inspired by science experiments in his chemistry class, Khoumba has warmed to music and enjoyed learning Spanish, Esmerelda pretends to have learned nothing but then admits that she has been reading Plato’s Republic and is gripped by the character of Socrates. After they have all left the room, a quiet girl called Henriette comes back and despondently claims that she really has not learned anything at all. Outside, an impromptu football match has begun between the pupils and teachers, which François joins and scores a brilliant goal.
LikeLike
Diane,
France had millions of immigrants from West Africa and other former French colonies prior to the Jospin reforms in 1990. What Hirsch shows is that French schools brought their kids, along with poor white French kids, a great deal closer to the level of their privileged peers when the rigid national curriculum was focused on transmitting knowledge. Once skills became the focus of French schools instead of knowledge, French schools EXACERBATED the achievement gap: the longer underprivileged kids were in the system, the further they fell behind, just as they do, scandalously, in the US.
Underprivileged kids would be greatly benefited by a curriculum revolution in this country. If you still don’t agree, can you explain why the French situation does not convince you?
LikeLike
Curriculum is no substitute for food and medical care
LikeLike
FLERP –thanks!
LikeLike
“Curriculum is no substitute for food and medical care” — you are phrasing the issues with American education in terms of a Third World country.
LikeLike
I read Packer’s article and was dumbfounded. Was this the same person who wrote “The Unwinding,” which I recommend to all of you. In that book, he shows the breadth of America’s decay and the tragic abandonment of its promise. In this article, he sounds like a privileged grouch.
LikeLike
Yes!!! Privileged grouch!! Perfect description.
LikeLike
During the Bloomberg era, schools were given a letter grade. BNS was always an “A” school. This was based on test scores, so folks like Packer may have run to this school because of this grade. Why did BNS students do so well on these tests, given the progressive education they were receiving, and little test prep? Because teaching to the whole child is actually providing the foundation for great learning. Once those tests became more high stakes, turned into Common Core, and further lost their validity, BNS families like mine understood that these tests were compromising the kind of education parents like myself wanted for their children.
We did not sit on a wait list for 3 years because of the “A” grade, we waited with hopes and prayers because we understood that teaching to the whole child is right for our family. Packers blind spot for this truth for his son is very sad, since it’s hard to deny he gained from this environment. The disconnect between how these tests undermine good teaching and whole child learning amaze me. Smart people, so called liberals, seem to equate test scores with success. I’d argue the opposite, as they really just identify economic and social status.
As a former BNS parent and opt outer, my kid thrived in that environment. Her ability to learn and test well in high school, and all the things we equate with learning, has been BECAUSE of her progressive foundation, not because of the tests. I believe when the social and emotional well-being of the child is considered (these tests are not developmentally appropriate) and children are engaged in ways they do learn best (remember play??), they will rise to become their best selves and critical thinkers and learners. My child returned from the climate strike with more to say about what this all means in the big picture because she has learned to think for herself, not just how to game a test with bubbling in skills.
My heart is still hurting from the digs Packer made on the one of a few schools in our current NYC system that “does no harm” and respects childhood in our society. Using children to prop up the adults who need strokes, or to prove a point, or to take their data is irresponsible and cruel. The teachers and administration at BNS put their hearts and souls into their work, working way beyond their required hours to provide for their students. To not acknowledge this shows the lack of understanding of the gold Packer had in his hands. I wonder what motivated this 10,000 word piece, in a climate where privatization of public schools is the push. Picking on what is real and honest in our world is what the current occupant of the White House does. Seems like a form of bullying to me. Yuck!
LikeLike
Wow, I really for sorry for this guy, Packer. He’s part of the clueless parent camp who can’t grasp that the online black box assessments and so-called 21st Century learning are little more than fronts for Corporate profiteers and the power that bring democracy to its knees.
LikeLike
The Atlantic produces some very good journalism, but when it comes to education, it seems to produce a lot of misinformation. Maybe it’s because the writers who produce the goofiness actually believe it. You know, that SAT scores – or other test scores – are measures of merit. Of smartness. Or that there’s a STEM “crisis” that needs to be immediately resolved. Or that Advanced Placement courses are “better” for kids than “regular” classes.
A short half-dozen years ago, Julia Ryan had apiece in The Atlantic titled ‘This Year’s SAT Scores Are Out and They’re Grim.’
The National Center for Education Statistics tell us this about the SAT:
“The SAT (formerly known as the Scholastic Assessment Test and the Scholastic Aptitude Test) is not designed as an indicator of student achievement, but rather as an aid for predicting how well students will do in college.”
The SAT (an acronym that now stands for absolutely nothing) is a test that is NOT tied to the high school curriculum. So it doesn’t measure “achievement.” It’s a test that has extremely limited predictive power. It is –– to paraphrase the National Center for Education Statistics –– a very poor predictor of “how well students will do in college.”
College enrollment specialists find that it predicts between about 3 and 14 percent of the variance in freshman-year college grades (and after that zilch). As one college enrollment specialist quipped, “I might as well measure their shoe size.”
Julia Ryan told readers nothing of the kind, however. Instead, she wrote this snarky (and demonstrably false) sentence: “For the fifth year in a row, fewer than half of SAT-takers received scores that qualified them as ‘college-ready’.”
Who determines “college ready?” Tests administered by the College Board (or by ACT, Inc). The College Board, which produces the PSAT, SAT, and Advanced Placement courses and tests, now even recommends that schools “implement grade-weighting policies…starting as early as the sixth grade.”
In a 2016 piece in The Atlantic, Peg Tyre wrote about advanced math and how critical STEM and AP courses are to American economic prosperity. She didn’t do her homework though. To justify STEM and more AP math courses she wrote this:
“According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, much of the growth in our domestic economy will come from stem-related jobs, some of which are extremely well paid.”
True, but only a small part of the economic picture.
Take a look at the National Bureau of Labor Statistics job projections for the next ten years, and outside of registered nurses and software developers and marketing analysts, the MOST jobs are in areas that require minimal education. The biggest needs, in numbers?
• personal care aids
• food prep and fast food workers
• home health aides
• cooks
• waiters and waitresses
• janitors and cleaners
• medical assistants
• construction laborers
• and more…
There is no STEM shortage or “crisis,” and AP courses are more hype than they are educationally beneficial. Recent research (2013) concludes that the impact of AP on “college success” is “negligible.” Moreover, AP does not help to reduce achievement gaps or improve “the quality of learning or caliber of education for students.” Increasingly, thoughtful educators have become so worried about “the negative impact of AP courses and feel so strongly that it thwarts their ability to develop deep thinkers and engaged learners, [that] they’ve dropped the AP program.”
As for economic prosperity, if we stop implementing supply-side tax cuts that pile up deficits and debt, and if we focus instead on, as Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in 1819, government policies and programs that “are to be exercised directly on” the people, “and for their benefit,” then our country would be better off. Much better off.
The Atlantic does produce some good articles. But, when it comes to education, it seems the writers too often take stupid pills before they write.
LikeLike