Nancy Bailey has grown disgusted with the talk of “reinventing” and “reimagining” the school when the talk is coming from the same people who have wrecked the schools with their uninformed and harmful ideas for the past 20 years.
Those who have failed us in the past should not be allowed to take control yet again, she says.
She writes:
Teachers and parents on the frontlines of this pandemic should be given control of how their schools are reimagined in the future. When this crisis ends, they should be given the voice on how to bring back democratic public schools and make them their own. Any revolution surrounding schools is theirs.
Those who foisted unproven and draconian school reform on America’s public schools in the past, now attack those reforms like they’re the fault of teachers and school systems. If public schools are broken it’s largely due to what these so-called reformers did to schools. They’re criticizing the mess they created!
Who…
insisted on high-stakes standardized tests?
pushed a no-play, no-recess curriculum on our youngest learners?
denied children with disabilities the services they need?
wrote and insisted on Common Core State Standards?
insisted on one-size-fits-all goals and instruction?
drove parents to distrust teachers?
ignored the mental health needs of children in our schools?
destroyed student privacy, especially online privacy protections?
reduced or removed the number of school nurses, counselors, and support staff in schools?
fired the librarians and closed libraries?
removed the arts from poor public schools?
set up EMO charter schools that drain funds from true public schools?
gave vouchers to schools unaccountable to the public?
praised and funded alternate teachers with fast-track training?
insisted on large class sizes?
said teachers don’t need to improve their knowledge with advanced degrees?
insisted teachers need to be evaluated by tests, using test scores of students they never taught!
opened the door to administrators who never studied or worked with children?
Trying to justify replacing schools with charter schools and online instruction will make for a nice profit.
Since their reforms failed, they and their ideas should be put out to pasture.
Bailey goes on to cite numerous examples of self-appointed “leaders” offering advice about what other people should do.
These are the people she wants to “put out to pasture.”
Read it.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Earth is “breathing” again and so should our students and teachers.
Bailey is so right on. Thank you, Nancy Bailey.
Amen
Exactly!
As usual Nancy is spot on. My response on her blog:
How about folks like Rick Hess and his ilk?
A couple of years back the far reactionary right wing group “Show Me Institute” had a conference in Kansas City entitled “Failures to Fixes”. Out of 12 or so participants there was a total of 7 1/2 years of K-12 teaching. 3 1/2 for the KC Supe (what a joke as a “qualification”) and 4 for Jay P Greene (U of Ark-the bought and paid by the Waltons education department).
As it was, the very ones who had championed the policies that have wrought so much damage to the public education teaching and learning processes, i.e., the standards and testing malpractice regime, were now charging themselves with the job of fixing the “failures”, of course the fault of the teachers for not implementing those malpractices with fidelity. A total joke!
And the punch line hits the students right up side the head!
We thought leaders here at the Shepherd Institute for Tomorrow’s Education, SHITE, are proud to announce that we have been generously funded by our partners (thank you, Bill) to carry forward a program of educational disruption and deform to ensure that American students are ready to face the challenges of the 21st century and beyond. Our work will build, of course, on the incredibly successful initiatives of the past like small schools, test-based accountability, and the Common Coring of everything, to ensure, by 2029, 100 percent proficiency in all subjects, not just Math and Reading, by having students do their lessons backward and standing on their heads.
In the immortal words of John F. Kennedy, announcing his own moon shot, we propose these things not because they are easy but because they are hard. The key, of course, is that doing lessons backward and standing on your head requires focus and avoids the subtle tyranny of low expectations. And thanks to other generous funding (thank you, Laurene and Priscilla), we will soon have available our next generation online courseware, all written, of course, backward. You’re welcome.
.right it gets always Bill that ,evident-self be to truth this hold We.
–Bob Shepherd, SHITE Thought Leader and E.V.P. for Investor Obfuscation
Bob,
You could get real money if you were a a Broadie.
LOL. Doubtless!
Did I mention that I am not only a Thought Leader but a certified Innovation Architect? (PhD, Innovation Architecture, Shepherd School of Graduate Education in Education, or GEE).
Love those degrees. Have you thought of opening your own graduate school to certify people as Innovators?
But I did, Diane! Just sent me 50K in tuition, and I’ll send you your own diploma, suitable for framing!!! Forget about that other PhD you earned. This one looks to the future!!!
I figured, if the Broadies can make up credentials, why can’t I? With DeVos and the former president of Trump University in charge, it’s easy peasy.
Of course, you will have to pass our Doctoral Examination. Here, a sample study question:
Which is the most effective way to motivate students?
Be a model for them of an excited, engaged learner.
b. Provide them with intrinsically interesting lessons and study materials that appeal to their innate motivations.
c. Replace ALL classwork with bubble tests (written backward, ofc) and review of the correct answers for those tests because life itself is a test. Post names and grades on a leader board, or Data Wall, because life is a struggle between winners and pathetic losers.
d. Work with students to help them set their own goals for personal growth.
If you answered “c,” congratulations. You are well on your way to becoming a certified DDT, or Doctor of Disruptive Technologies!
there it is
“Common Coring,” this is all funny. Thank you, Bob.
Thank you, Nancy, for your insightful posts!
Parents, teachers and students.
But who better to fix the problems than the ones who created them?
After all, they know where all the bodies are buried (in some cases, quite literally)
Wasn’t that the operating philosophy in the case of the subprime mortgage crisis?
Wasn’t that the philosophy in the case of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars?
Why not let the wankers make money coming and going like we usually do?
We need to get the for profit disrupters out of our schools. They have added nothing, and they have taken away too much. I have been involved in school improvement plans in the past. In my district we formed a committee of teachers, administrators and parents. We did a self-study with the help of Bank Street College of Education. We brought in Prof. Richard Allington to help us take a look at our reading instruction. We observed classes in other districts as well as in our own district. We made reasoned changes based on evidence. After a few years of implementation we saw positive changes.
This is what genuine change looks like. Community stakeholders coming together for a common purpose is the way to improve instruction. There were no outside interlopers trying to wrestle our schools out of the hands of the community so they and their cronies could profit from them, and there were no magic bullets. What has happened to our democratic public schools is disgusting. I shared Bailey’s post on social media.
Imagine (apologies to John Lennon)
Imagine there’s no schoolhouse
It’s easy if you try
No floor below us
Above us, only sky
Imagine all the students
Learnin’ on the line
Imagine there’s no teachers
It isn’t hard to do
No-one to hire or pay for
And no damn union too
Imagine all the students
Learnin’ on the line
You
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will learn online
Imagine personalized learning
To teach us math and dates
No need for greed or tenure
A brotherhood of Gates
Imagine all the students
Sharing online world
You
You may say I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will learn online
Perfect, SomeDAM. Expect your check soon. –Bill
I just hope it’s more than $1200
And let’s hope that it gets out to you more efficiently! LOL. Good luck if you’re waiting for that $1,200. Enough almost to pay last month’s rent on an apartment.
I guess as long as it has Bill’s signature on it I should just feel fortunate.
I just hope Melinda doesn’t sign it.
All our checks are signed by Donald Trump himself, as per Secretary DeVoid. Of course, getting those printed with his name on them will cause some delay.
Since you seem to be Bill’s spokesman, could you relay that message?
As Bill’s spokesman, for a fee I will do anything. Absolutely anything.
And ofc I am not Bill’s spokesman. SHITE is entirely independent of the half of billion dollars in funding that we receive each year from oligarchs. We’re an entirely grassroots organization.
LOL!
Holding lighter high in the air and swaying with the masses! (Virtually, of course.)
This should be the opening track for the docimentary (that will eventually be made) based on Slaying Goliath.
More than $1200 for each of you, SDP & Diane!
Agree that we certainly don’t need the folks who drove the us over the cliff to have control of what matters for our kids and what learning should look like. Russell Ackoff is credited with the notion that there is a different between doing things right and doing the right thing. What we don’t need is to be so consumed by the process of “delivering instruction” that we return and fall into the trap of trying to “do school” better. What would happen if we used this time to bring students, parents and educators together to determine what really matters in the education of our kids? Years ago, Art Costa edited a book entitled “If Minds Mattered”. He suggested that, if that were true, school would like quite different than it does. As educators, we know in our hearts that Costa was right in posing this question. Why couldn’t we pose it today?
Doing the Wrong Thing Righter
The proliferation of educational assessments, evaluations and canned programs belongs in the category of what systems theorist Russ Ackoff describes as “doing the wrong thing righter. The righter we do the wrong thing,” he explains, “the wronger we become. When we make a mistake doing the wrong thing and correct it, we become wronger. When we make a mistake doing the right thing and correct it, we become righter. Therefore, it is better to do the right thing wrong than the wrong thing right.”
Our current neglect of instructional issues are the result of assessment policies that waste resources to do the wrong things, e.g., canned curriculum and standardized testing, right. Instructional central planning and student control doesn’t – can’t – work. But, that never stops people trying.
The result is that each effort to control the uncontrollable does further damage, provoking more efforts to get things in order. So the function of management/administration becomes control rather than creation of resources. When Peter Drucker lamented that so much of management consists in making it difficult for people to work, he meant it literally. Inherent in obsessive command and control is the assumption that human beings can’t be trusted on their own to do what’s needed. Hierarchy and tight supervision are required to tell them what to do. So, fear-driven, hierarchical organizations turn people into untrustworthy opportunists. Doing the right thing instructionally requires less centralized assessment, less emphasis on evaluation and less fussy interference, not more. The way to improve controls is to eliminate most and reduce all.
Or as former Green Beret Master Sergeant Donald Duncan (Viet Nam) did when he noted in Sir! No Sir! that:
“I was doing it right but I wasn’t doing right.”
Thank you for amplifying my reference to Ackoff. While it’s important to recognize the often heroic efforts by the nation’s teachers, it’s also important to recognize that continuing to focus on improving schooling is not the same as improving the opportunities to learn. Since the Committee of Ten determined both the organization of learning by discrete, isolated subjects areas delovered to age-based cohorts we have been focused on trying the that right while spending little time inquiring whether or not we were doing the right thing. What we have been seeing and inflicting on our kids is wrong and has been getting wronger. I don’t expect we get too many better times to revisit what matters.
De nada. Glad you brought that point up. I’ve been pointing that out for many years.
You confuse dominator hierarchies with growth holarchies. What exactly is your plan for education, Duane? Spell it out for us, step by step (without referrals to the discredited postmodernist views of Ian Wilson). What is your recommendation? I ask this because I am a person who has no ideologies,but who is interested in education.
Thank you.
Please explain what “dominator hierarchies” and “growth holarchies” are.
Again, please show me that discrediting of Wilson-Noel, that is. Postmodernism is such a nasty thing, eh!
No ideologies? Really?
I refer you to the afterword of my book:
Afterword
‘If you shut up truth, and bury it underground, it will but grow.’ Emile Zola
“A tactic of administrators or any powers that be to silence those bold enough to critique their policies and practices, even after agreeing with one’s critique, is “Well, you’ve criticized what we are doing but “What is your solution?” usually said with such tone and emphasis as if they have now trapped the perpetrator in a debate dilemma. The administrator knows that it is impossible to come up with a feasible solution to your critiques in the minute or two they allot you to do so, solving his/her problem of the critical thinker in their employ. He/She walks away smug in his/her confidence that he/she won that verbal battle. And you’re left standing there thinking “What a smug ass bastard!”
It takes an immense amount of ego, hubris and gall to think that one person can solve long standing, seemingly intractable structural problems in the public education realm especially on such short notice. To attempt to do so guarantees failure. Not only that but who am I to propose solutions for everyone else? Our society doesn’t work that way. So I offer no specific answers but I do offer some general guidelines in struggling to lessen the many injustices that current educational malpractices entail: • Correctly identify malpractices that hinder the teaching and learning process and that cause harm to or do injustice to students. (see just a few identified above). • Immediately reject those malpractices, cease doing them as soon as is practically possible. • Maintain a “fidelity to truth” attitude in identifying those malpractices and instituting new practices. • Focus on inputs and resources. Are they adequate to provide that all children have access to a learning environment in
which they can learn to “savor the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the fruits of their own industry”? • Involve all, interested community members, parents, students, teachers, aides, other support personnel, administrators and the school board in revising and formulating new policies and practices so that, paraphrasing the disembodied voice from the movie “Field of Dreams”: IF WE PROVIDE IT, THEY WILL COME! It being the proper resources implemented with a fidelity to truth attitude. They being results in line with the fundamental purpose(s) of public education–to promote the welfare of the individual so that each person may savor the right to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and the fruits of their own industry.
So much of what you note in education is due to the conflation of various levels of conscious development. So much of modern culture (school, work, relationships) assume that we are at higher (Kegan 4th) levels of development when over half of adults are NOT at that level and experience anger and frustration when pushed to achieve it. We need to accept each student where he/she is, yet always take steps to educate them to rise to the next level.
Dangling conversation…
Can you spell dog, like in dogfood?
Sure, D O G.
Can you spell cat, like in catfood?
Sure, C A T.
Can you spell duck like in democratic public schools?
Are you crazy? There’s no duck in democratic public schools.
BINGO grasshoppa, if the schools were “democratic” in the first place
do you think any of this BS would happen?
But the schools are the foundational cornerstone of democracy.
Can you spell dog, like in dogfood…
lol
As usual, Nancy hits the spot!
The system needs to be overhauled.
In about 2001 when the No Child Left behind legislation was passed, schools were made accountable for improvement. However, the teacher credentisling system was eliminated. The emergency credentialed teachers were credentialed through a new system. Regularly credentialed teachers, especially in the South L.A area, were extremely harassed.
I believe the virus will alliw everyone to see the results of this through the distance learning activities. The union ia trying to stop it because they know it will lead to change.. It will help government leaders determine what is best for the education of students.
The system needs to be overhauled.
In about 2001 when the No Child Left behind legislation was passed, schools were made accountable for improvement. However, the teacher credentialing system was eliminated. The emergency credentialed teachers were credentialed through a new system. Regularly credentialed teachers, especially in the South L.A area, were extremely harassed.
I believe the virus will allow everyone to see the results of this through the distance learning activities. The union ia trying to stop it because they know it will lead to change.. It will help government leaders determine what is best for the education of students.
Why hasn’t Diane signed the “Save IDEA” petition?!
I signed it and posted it on this blog twice to get more signers.
“These are the people she wants to “put out to pasture.”
I love Nancy’s passion! 🙂 I concur.