Peter Greene notes the emergence of a new narrative among “reformers”: Whereas schools have long been failing kids, now the kids themselves are failures because of the epidemic of “learning loss.”
As usual, the disaster experts blame teachers, but now they say the kids are failures too.
But the other part of chicken littling about education is the constant declaration that Kids These Days suck. They can’t read or write. They aren’t ready to hold down a job. And like many other negative trends in education, this has only gotten worse during the pandemic. Now it’s not just that Kids These Days can’t read and write and math–numerous companies are telling anyone who will listen about the terrible threat of learning loss, and how all of America’s children are slowly backsliding, the “days of learning” dribbling out of their ears like meltwater sluicing off a snow-covered roof. They’re getting stupider and stupider by the day. They are a lost generation...
In the rush to indict the public school system, the teachers, the unions, some people have turned students into collateral damage, forcing them to live in a world of adults who are constantly broadcasting that Kids These Days are awful failures. And right now, as always, they are directing the worst of it at the students who already get the worst of it–Black, brown, poor.
Today Chalkbeat is carrying a piece by teacher Selena Carrion that everyone should read– “Stop calling this generation ‘lost.’ It’s hurtful–and it’s wrong.” Carrion’s experience allows her to remember how to keep her eye on the ball:All this reminds me not to allow a deficit-oriented “lost generation” narrative to deny them their success. As educators, let’s think about their triumphs and how they are still finding joy and wonder amid chaos.
What would happen, I wonder, if the consultants from NWEA and McKinsey, rather than releasing white papers and “research” and talking to other folks in the education biz had to go stand in front of the actual young human beings and explain to those students that they are falling behind and getting dumber by the minute and are generally failing. What if they had to look into those students’ eyes while saying, in effect, “We do not believe in you.”
Here is where market-based philosophy clashes with actual education. You market products by creating a compelling case for a desperate need. “Terrible things are happening,” a campaign screams, “and you need to hire us and buy our product if you want to survive, because without us you are not enough.” But you teach students by first believing in them, by assuring them that they are enough. You can’t have disaster capitalism without a disaster. You can’t teach students by telling them that they are a disaster.
It’s been a hard year for everyone: kids, teachers, parents. The kids need someone who believes in them, rather than looking at them as suffering from a social construct called ”learning loss.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I am also dismayed about the “NEW” learning losses and think this is another MANUFACTURED crisis. Our young are indeed learning, but the wrong things are measured by WRONG measurements.
My husband and I laugh at those pundits. We say, “ASK the students what they have learned about the Pandemic, the landing on Mars, and more … how about the word “SEDITION.”
Thanks for this article, Diane.
nicely summarized: The wrong things are measured by the wrong measurements.
Our young people are learning a lot.
They are learning that “adults” A) don’t know what the hell they are doing or b) know what they are doing and don’t care how badly they screw things up forr future generations because they are making money doing it or C) all of the above
“But ramping up the alarm and calling our children “lost” just so that someone can sell more testing or market some edu-biz model is wrong.” Amen.
The only thing wrong with this post….. is that the people who need to read and understand what Peter Greene is expressing…. won’t. We are “shouting into the wind.”
We may be shouting into the wind but if we convince more and more people to do it, they will hear us.
You are right and I do believe that….. just feeling a little cynical today.
)Diane I think *RetiredTeacher is right on this: “Viewing young people through the lens of a deficit model is a tool to sell more products.”
But I also think that some are actually genuine in their fear of “lost education.” That (at least partly-wrong) view can easily come from having tacitly accepted (1) that ‘real’ education only happens at school and in a formal setting; (2) that the home environment is always empty of meaning and particularly of ‘real’ educational meaning; and as others have said here, (3) that we now should turn to “business to the rescue. ”
Everyone knows the present situation education finds itself in is nothing if not complex; but our children are also resilient, adaptable, and built to learn.
It’s not a “deficit model,” then but rather a model that, from the point of view of FORMAL education, can also be resilient and take full advantage of the opportunities to foster a REFLECTIVE model . . . where, from a recovery of student access to formal education, students can reflect on their “interrupted” experiences; recognize reflectively the learning that they ACTUALLY underwent on their own and with their families; sharing and drawing from them the longer-term lessons that they are sure to find there.
What an opportunity for educators to help children understand the fullness of what they are doing when they are becoming educated? Along the way, they can pick up where they left off with math and science, etc. CBK
Very well stated CBK!
Unions in California have begun to take a stand against testing. I have some students’ parents opting out of tests this year. Hopefully, in just a few days, the state will agree to apply for a testing waiver. When we fight, we win.
Viewing young people through the lens of a deficit model is a tool to sell more products. It is bad enough that teachers and schools have been abused for years to feed the failing narrative, now big money wants to portray students as deficient. They want to call our young people a lost generation in order to boost the sale of ed products. In a recent story of the news students were characterized as feeling stressed and sleeping less. Some were experiencing headaches and eye strain. If this is true, more cyber instruction is not the antidote to this malaise. Students need to return to in-person learning led by caring human beings, not machines.
It’s been happening so long the truth has been blurred….many school administrators and teachers have accepted and bought into the narrative.
All this stress…. no problem! A company will comes up with a new program to deal with it….. and schools will embrace it.
Stress kids out with unrealistic expectations to support profits of ed reformers……… then buy a boxed program with posters you can display on the wall. The district can both have “high standards and test scores, ” “state of the art technology” and a nice program that addresses “social and emotional learning.”
No problems here. The market will respond with a new quick fix.
😦
In the absence of first group, right up there with doctors and nurses, etc., vaccinations, the union stood as a buffer against in-person learning.
Does the union ever take a protective, authoritarian position at the expense of the students?
Perhaps hazard pay would have helped.
Teachers should have been among the very first to be vaccinated. At least those with underlying conditions.
I have no idea what you are trying to say.
Retired Teacher commented at the end of her post, that:
” Students need to return to in-person learning led by caring human beings, not
machines”.
I couldn’t agree more, and have for some time. I was wondering if there were teachers who would have gone back to in-person teaching had it not been for the unions
I get the feeling that because unions have lost much of the power they once yielded, they sometimes grab hold of an issue not in the best interest of its members.
I am 100% in favor of unions, especially when it comes to negotiating wages, but thought the unions were late this time getting teachers at the head of the line for vaccination. Unless they were making that demand known behind closed doors.
I realize this is off this morning’s topic, but responded to the statement above.
Thank you for your clarification, Darrel. lt was very helpful.
I don’t see the unions as a monolithic body. My experience with a union was mostly very l
Iocal and driven by strictly local issues, so I don’t see how “the unions” could have responded publicly in a monolithic way that helped steer policy effectively. However, in any case, the responsibility of the union, at whatever level, is to lobby for the interests of its members, and we must remember that a teacher’s working conditions directly impact those of the students.
Teachers as a general rule tend to be altruistic, but there is a line that if crossed becomes literally self destructive, especially in a pandemic. Few people become teachers with the expectation that their lives may be part of the deal. There are certainly districts that are so poorly prepared to face this crisis, that their teachers are literally being asked to risk their lives “for the children.” It is the responsibility of the unions loudly point out these situations.
I think a good chunk of schools around the country (at least elementary schools) are in person to some capacity. And most high schools and junior highs are some form of hybrid.
It seems like the bigger cities and harder hit areas are the ones struggling to open schools for very complex reasons.
Do we know the percentage of school systems that are fully remote?
I am guessing the unions step in, in situations like Chicago, when the conditions are not safe for teachers to return.
Rather than putting onus on the union…. let’s put it where it belongs…. the people in charge who did not provide the proper tools and funding to make the return safe for teachers and students.
Here is a list of the 75 largest districts: https://www.edweek.org/leadership/in-person-or-remote-learning-how-the-biggest-city-school-districts-are-operating/2021/02
Did the union(s) give the people in charge a list of the things needed to make schools safe for reentry?
Or did they depend on the people in charge to tell them what they would need?
I don’t wish to beat a dead horse.
Which union are you referring to? In which district? Which union demanded “safety” without helping to draft a plan? I think you have bought in to a narrative about “teacher’s unions” because you are talking in generalizations.
I think reading @speduktr’s response above may help answer this question.
I understand the workings of local unions in local districts in normal times. This is, of course, not a normal time. I thought perhaps, since what everyone needed was the same, except for physical on-location requirements of how to install filters, if needed, say, I was hoping that a joint effort, via teleconferencing, would have been waged early on, after which, letting the powers that be know: this is what we need for our teachers to survive.
This presupposed obtaining a list from CDC. First on my list would have been vaccinations.
A joint effort is usually more effectively loud than each for themselves.
I realize the horse has bolted.
Each community is different. Schools are different (whether or not there is good ventilation…. how much space in rooms….. how many students per classrooms…. are there windows etc.)
The CDC put out guidelines…. but many districts can not meet those standards because the funding is not there to make it happen…. and with community pressure tried to make school happen anyway.
Many readers have addressed this in comments on other posts on this blog, if you are interested.
According to NPR, in the fall of 2020, national percentages were slightly more than 60% of students were either fully in-person or learning in a hybrid mode.
Out of the 37% that were fully remote in the fall, some families chose to be virtual. “These numbers don’t necessarily speak to the full picture of how children are learning. That’s because a percentage of students choose virtual learning even where in-person school is offered. For example, New York City, where schools are hybrid, recently announced that only 280,000 students are attending in person, out of 1.1 million enrolled.”
I could not find current similar stats for nationwide in-person vs. remote.
Thank you all for your helpful comments.
Well it is a good thing that several generations of students had been lost, prior to the Pandemic. Can you imagine the screaming in the Corporate Board rooms that fund the Ed Reform movement if they were not.
“It would have been hard to find an uneducated farmer during the depression of the 1890s who did not have a very accurate idea about exactly which economic interests were shafting him. An unemployed worker in a breadline in 1932 would have felt little gratitude to the Rockefellers or the Mellons ” Mike lofgren 2011.
Education was never the issue . Turning out automatons to be easily disposed of has been for quite sometime . For an economy with such a shortage of qualified workers; Corporate America amazingly managed not to pay increases to those workers with the education and skills, that were claimed to be in short supply. For several decades wages have stagnated. Even in the greatest economy since the creation of sliced bread wage increases were mostly confined to the bottom quintile. The least educated and least skilled workers saw increases when States and Cities increased the minimum wage.
Without the panic we will overcome what ever deficits were created by the Pandemic to supply the economy with capable labor . Whether we truly educate is another question.
Good pieces, including the one Peter iinked to.
I was in the dollar store a few weeks ago and a couple parents were loudly bemoaning their kids’ use of cell phones. (“It’s all they do…..blah, blah, blah…”)
I was too tired to put up a fight again -so I just hunkered down behind my mask. (Sometimes those masks do come in handy for much more than stopping nasty germs.)
But I was standing there in line, thinking, ‘But who buys these phones for the kids?’
Sure, older students get their own lots of times. But the younger kids…. the phones are given to them… .Adults put those machines in their tender, little hands.
Sometimes people talk about children as if the kids were spontaneously generated….
Geesh!
(I just felt like typing the word “Geesh”. I’ve been out moving piles of snow for a couple of hours now.)
Folks, one more week until March….which is the start of spring!
John Ogozalek I’m NOT excusing the use of cell phones by younger children. However, judging from my grandkids, the social pressure is enormous. So it’s a group thing and resistance makes stern parents into worse meanies (than they already are thought of to be).
BTW, it’s spring here in California . . . never really left. But everything is blooming or about to bloom. I can say that . . . then you can be smug when The Big One arrives! CBK
Enjoy those flowers.
We ordered our seeds a few weeks ago. That’s one of those milestones of our northern winter.
John I do enjoy the garden, especially now that the plants are at least close to the only real living things I see regularly. Geraniums held over, calendula, early daisies, fruit trees, all showing blooms. But I remember Virginia . . . same as you. It was rare that the tulip trees didn’t bloom just to be frozen and left hanging on the branches like wet newspaper. . . . back to work. CBK
Yes, and many times phones are bought to be allo parerts to serve as real parents when they are themselves caught up in the texting grand-conversation..
Too, some young people buy phones as a defense from being hurt by more and more phone-busy parents.. “I’ll show you, I’ll go into my room and talk to my friends (who are also hiding disappointment.)
I find something ominous in the sentence: the more parents watch their technology, the less time they watch their kids.
Is there anything known as “virtual homelessness?”
“ASometimes those masks do come in handy for much more than stopping nasty germs.)”
Bank robbers have known that forever.
By the way, how can you tell if a bsnk robber is a Trump supporter?
He’s NOT wearing a mask.
And probably wearing his high school football jersey with his name on the back.
SomeDam . . . then taking a selfie with the moneybags, then posting it to Facebook. CBK
Yes, very good points that are both proven beyond any reasonable doubt by the recent insurrection at the Capitol.
Which brings up another point.
If the bank robber is wearing red white and blue face paint and a buffalo hat with horns he is also a Trump supporter,
Either that or a New England Patriots football fan.
Or maybe a Buffalo Bills fan
Winter seems to have shifted here just north of Chicago. It seems to me that most of our cold and snowy weather has been in February rather than January, like it used to be. Even so, I might have begun to hope for spring in March, but it is generally gray and cold, perhaps with more rain than snow but still… We’re lucky, very lucky if it goes out like a lamb, especially close to the lake.
“Learning Loss” is a Fallacy.
“Students Left Behind” True.
“Missed Opportunities to Learn” True.
“Parents not preparing their children to learn in a school environment” True.
“Students not having the skills necessary to be the best they can be as Learners” True.
“Students not doing the work to Learn” True.
“Learning Loss” is a Fallacy. Why? One has to own something before one can lose it. And putting something in “Short Term Memory Storage” is not owning it.
bkendall527 Right , . . . except that children “own” their own learning insofar as they are humanly intelligent. As any teacher or parent knows, it’s difficult to make children STOP learning.
My view is that formal learning is essential in our time, but that many have taken the distinction between informal and formal learning to the extreme of thinking that no education is happening outside of the formal environment.
In fact, all formal learning occurs within the greater context of informal learning; the “hidden curriculum” where student development is concerned occurs in both formal and informal settings (where one-on-one relationships occur and regardless of testing); and that kind of learning is too-often overlooked by those who fail to recognize its import and build that failure into the system. It’s also essential to formal settings and MAY even be enhanced in many ways by what most see as “losses” brought on by the pandemic.
Do children lose formal training and content? Yes. Is that the whole picture? NO. CBK
Can we just admit that it is a crisis that millions of children have not been to school in a year? It is not no big deal. Call it “learning loss” or whatever else you like, it is not some made-up boogeyman of ed reformers. I have lost all patience for the defensive normalizing of this horrible situation.
Here’s a piece about this crisis that came out yesterday in the noted “reformer” publication The Nation.
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/coronavirus-schools-education-california/
Very well said. Disaster capitalism is antithetical to nurturing learning.
I wrote a piece on a related topic: https://onone.substack.com/p/abolish-high-stakes-testing
“Spending all year drilling for tests you have little hope of excelling on is a profoundly demoralizing exercise. We are not teaching poor and minority children to go to school so they can use their unique brilliance to transform knowledge in realms of their choosing. We are not teaching them to be active participants in a democracy, questioning the nature of power and standing up for what they know is right. We are teaching them to passively accept government coercion. We are teaching them to endure abuse so they can be reductively defined as some percentage of “proficient.” We are teaching them to give up.”