Gary Rubinstein is well known to readers of this blog, as I have posted almost all of his blogs. He is a career high school math teacher in the New York City public schools. I met Gary about ten years ago, when I had made a complete turnaround in my views about testing and choice. I was working on an article about “miracle schools” that fudged their data and discovered that Gary was an expert on reviewing school-level data and exposing frauds. He helped me write an article (“Waiting for a Miracle School”) that appeared in the New York Times in 2011, and he has continued to be a friend ever since. Gary’s analytical skills have been invaluable in fighting off idiotic “reforms,” like evaluating teachers by their students’ test scores (known as VAM). In his multiple posts on that subject, he showed its many flaws. For example, an elementary teacher might get a high score in reading and a low score in math, posing the dilemma of whether the district could fire her in one subject while giving her a bonus in the other. I confess that I am a person of The Word, and I have never taken the time to learn how to put graphics into my posts. I can’t even reproduce charts. I only do words. So when I need to post a pdf or a graphic or anything else that is not words, I turn to Gary for help and he is always there for me. In addition to being a math and computer whiz, Gary is an author. As most of you know, Gary began his career working for Teach for America. As he explains below, he became disillusioned with the “reform” spin just as I became disillusioned with the propaganda about testing and choice. Gary writes about how strange it is to be frequently attacked on Twitter and other social media by “reformers.” My admiration for him is boundless.
Gary writes:
I got into blogging almost exactly ten years ago, just after the Teach For America 20 anniversary alumni summit. Until that time, I was unaware of the politics of education and the emerging education reform movement. I had seen ‘Waiting For Superman’ and knew it was propaganda, but I didn’t quite understand who was benefiting from it or what the possible negative side effects of it could be.
But at that conference it became very clear to me what was going on during a ‘Waiting For Superman’ reunion panel discussion. I watched as Michelle Rhee, whom I had known from years earlier when we worked together at the Teach For America training institute, and Dave Levin, who I had known for a lot of years from when we were teaching in Houston around the same time. At the end of the conference, Arne Duncan made an odd speech about how great it was that he shut down a school and fired all the teachers and now it is a charter school in which every student supposedly graduated and got into college.
It sounded fishy to me. Having worked, by that time, at three different schools that had low standardized test scores, I knew that a school can have good teachers but still have low test scores. I suspected that there was more to the story than Arne Duncan was saying so I did my first investigation. Little did I know that it would lead to a ten year adventure that would give me the opportunity to be an investigative journalist and help save the world. As an added bonus, I made a lot of friends, got a following to read my writing, appeared on NPR and also on a TV show called ‘Adam Ruins Everything.’ But there was a downside to this attention because I also became a target of various known and unknown internet personalities who have attacked, ridiculed, and slandered me. I think that on balance the good outweighed the bad, but it is sad to me that I have had blog posts about what an awful person I am and there have been podcasts about how I don’t believe in the potential of all children. Students of mine have googled me and located some of these smears and asked me about them. It’s hard to explain to them that I’m embroiled in a strange war where the FOX news of education wants to vilify me for telling the truth.
Here is a recent example where Chris ‘Citizen’ Stewart, the CEO of the Education Post website, compares my views with those of Charles Murray of ‘The Bell Curve’ fame.
I suppose my story is that I was the right person at the right time and in the right place. The small group of resistors to the misguided bipartisan teacher-bashing agenda needed someone like me. I was a Teach For America alum so I had that whole ‘war veteran against the war’ kind of credibility. I was very patient and able to comb through state data. I was a math major in college so I was able to do some basic statistics and make the scatter plots that helped the cause so much. You may or may not know that I have slowed down a lot on my blogging. After about 7 years of intense blogging, I started to burn out. Fortunately other bloggers came on the scene and took up the cause and have been great. I do try to blog from time to time still, but I have also been doing other projects, like my recent effort to explain all the essentials of elementary school, middle school, and high school math in one ten hour YouTube playlist. These efforts come from the same source — the desire to help students learn. Whether it is by fighting off a destructive element or in providing a free resource that anyone in the world can access, I am very proud of what I’ve accomplished in the last ten years.
I want to thank the great Diane Ravitch for taking me under her wing and for being a great mentor and friend. I wish for her a speedy recovery from her surgery.
Here is a presentation I did at Tufts University describing my journey from teacher to crusader:
“Arne Duncan made an odd speech about how great it was that he shut down a school and fired all the teachers”
I don’t think people remember just how anti-public school the Obama Administration was. It’s kind of amazing that there was so little discussion of it at the time, but that period – 2008 to 2012- was probably the height of the echo chamber effect in ed reform- there were NO dissenters and of course Duncan packed his team with people who agreed with him and all came out of the echo chamber so there was no internal debate at all.
You can see it in where the Obama alums WENT afterwards- they all went to work for the same ed reform groups who were running the US Department of Ed under Duncan. Just a revolving door, no difference between “the federal government” and ed reform lobbying groups- the same people.
It’s interesting to look at the US Department of Education website and social media now and compare it to Obama/Trump. It’s back to being a more neutral federal agency instead of a charter/voucher/standardized testing promotion and marketing group. I read they’re even soliciting opinions from people who WORK or USE public schools on how to RUN public schools instead of relying on three economists and two ed reform-funded university departments! Disruptive! 🙂
In an interview with David Letterman, Obama talked about his childhood education. He mentioned that his mother home schooled him for his first year or so because she did not feel she could send him to the “horrible” local public school. Obama aced an admission test in order to get a scholarship to a fancy private school in Hawaii and never looked back. Obama continued to have a low opinion of public education despite the stellar academic education that Michelle received in the Chicago Public Schools. Those that never attended a public school often have the worst opinion of them. This is true of lots of those in the so-called reform camp.
“Those that never attended a public school often have the worst opinion of them.”
LIES!!!
Gary Thanks for this post. I have been looking into the number of USDE appointments who have TFA backgrounds. I hope to summarize my research on this and other histories of Biden’s appointees, some who need yo be confirmend and many in “acting” positions.
I would like you to have your opinion of the necessity for passing Algebra One as prerequisite for success in “college and career.” This is a mantra from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I get notifications from that foundation at least once a week, with no compelling evidence that every college major and every career requires knowledge/skills in Algebra One.
I took and algebra course in the eight grade, passed it, and am hard pressed to find a single use for that knowledge since then…at least sixty plus years ago.
I do not think that 8th grade Algebra for all is a good idea. I wrote a post called ‘The Death Of Math’ about how I think math should not be required beyond 9th grade. But depending on what is meant by ‘Algebra’ I do think that it is a good last course for students to take and if they are not liking it or successful in it, higher math should be electives, like Geometry and Trigonometry. There’s an interesting book called ‘The Math Myth’ which came out a few years ago. He has a few good points, but he also doesn’t have a good idea of the kind of thinking that goes on in math classes so his good ideas are mixed in with a lack of understanding.
“depending on what is meant by ‘Algebra’ I”
That’s so important, IMO. Most Americans have no idea what “Algebra 1” today is and assume it is the same as what they were taught, when today’s Algebra 1 is probably more like what older folks learned in the 11th or12th grade math class that was required only for college bound seniors.
Every lawmaker should take the Algebra 1 Common Core Regents and have their work posted publicly and then be threatened with having to take follow-up exams covering the next 2 years of even more advanced math before they can claim that students today just don’t know enough math.
Thanks for the reply. I think MathBabe has some ideas on this. I am just tired of Bill Gates pushing 8th grade algebra as if that one course ( however defined) is a make or break it affair.
Algebra1 requirements for politicians topic.
Id rather that they get drug tested first. Algebra, considerably less important.
Laura,
Certainly every college major does not require knowledge of algebra just as not every college major requires knowledge of literature. General education requirements at my university do, however, require students to have some knowledge of both (along with some other things, of course). I think the faculty who implemented that requirement were not thinking that knowledge of algebra or literature were prerequisites for success in “college and career”, but rather the foundation of being an educated person.
Bingo! Its an institutional scam that has left millions of young adults convinced that they are dumb. If you are reading this and think that you suck at math let me help. No, you don’t suck at math, math standards and all that followed forced you to play a game with numbers void of any meaningful context instead dependent on following abstract rules. If you were left asking, what’s the point of getting the right answer? Welcome to the club of rational people who never got a good answer.
It’s also telling which educational political and legal efforts ed reformers back and which they don’t.
This is a school funding equity case. One would think ed reformers would back it- after all, they’re all about “equity”:
“Pennsylvania students, school districts, and their advocates will soon have their chance in court to prove that education across the state is unfairly and inadequately funded.
On Thursday, Commonwealth Court set a tentative trial date of Sept. 9 in a case originally filed nearly seven years ago by several school districts, individual parents, the state chapter of the NAACP and the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools against the governor, legislature, and the Pennsylvania Department of Education. The suit seeks changes in a funding system that has resulted in some of the largest gaps in spending among wealthy and poor school districts in the nation.”
Instead they chose to launch and back voucher initiatives in 5 states.
These are ideological choices they make. They just happen to never, ever choose public schools in their advocacy efforts. Mysteriously and completely randomly all of their work benefits only the privatized or private schools they prefer yet we’re all supposed to continue to believe they are “agnostics” and not notice they return no practical benefit to any public school, anywhere.
I encourage people to read ed reformers themselves. The vast, vast majority of the work they do is promoting charters and vouchers. The approach to public schools is one of policing- the assumption is public schools operate in bad faith and must be supervised and controlled by ed reformers or students won’t be served.
Their approach to their the schools they prefer, charter and private schools, is the opposite. Those schools they don’t regulate at all and in fact lobby every year for further deregulation of the privatized school systems, so much so that they now back laws that FORBID regulation of vouchers.
This is a choice- a preference- and it’s ideological because of course there are plenty of strong public schools and plenty of lousy charters and private schools. If it were actually about quality schools we’d see some efforts from ed reformers directed at supporting public schools, but we don’t.
Why should public schools accept this? Why would we sign on to the same people who lobby against our schools policing our schools, when they don’t police their own? It’s a terrible deal for public school students and it hasn’t, in fact, worked out well for them.
R(he)E: photo of Michelle Rhee:
“I’ll get you, my teacher …and your little students too!”
How about a little fire, principal?
“I’m molting”
“I want those Rubenstein slippers.”
Now fly, fly…
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
Gary Rubinstein, from teacher to crusader fighting to save OUR public schools from the greedy, lying, manipulating corporate and billionaire-funded “reform school” movement.
Whatever they are, they’re attempting to depose an archaic and backward system that leaves children vulnerable to every imaginable malady and hazard. What’s a worse idea then sending your children to learn from people who have no vested interest to love them? Sending them off to a hoard of other students they’ll invariably learn any horrors they could gather either. Nothing else makes anyone a greater vector of disease and malfunction than public school.
Your problem is not your new catchy buzzword of extremist recruitment. Sure, there’s problems with billionaires running wild but there’s just as many if not more problems with you and your students running wild. While you’re all too busy protecting and enhancing your own pay grades just the way any billionaires might do for them and theirs, real topics of import get trampled, censored, and left for dead just to come back and haunt us, regardless(note: regardless an irregardless mean the same thing.)
You as supposedly the right wingish guy due to war history you incessantly wave around like a flag, did find a nitch as the go between for the vaginas and the dicks(reduced state of the two prevailing political parties.) A teacher but also a vet, like some kind of political tranny… But really, ive summed up your nitch already.
Facts are, technology can do your job better and it has been for decades. Your real roll is just to teach a lower standard of education so as to literally teach children to be even dumber than they were born to be otherwise.
As absolute irrefutable proof, i cite that no one that graduated public school, before covid hypochondria exploded world wide, had ever even heard of the word “dixiecrat.” All this proven further by the fact WE HAVE ONE SITTING IN THE WHITE HOUSE RIGHT FKING NOW. Now, you can either bury your heads in the sand, claim ignorance, or flail off with some pedantic misdirection deflection, but you cant change the facts.
A dixiecrat guilty of the most heinous of all war crimes, i might add. But im sure it’s not like slime like you would ever admit to it. No worries tho, history doesnt forget. Data archiologists I’d presume…
Did you know that even if you slime delete this post that the data behind it is still immortal? Someone should have told hillbillary.
Adam peterson,
Are you a non-union teacher? Because you sound like someone that the ed reformers would want to hire to teach young minds?
Your many posts are a perfect representation of the intelligent thinking that supporters of ed reform have. Good job showing us parents what kinds of people the ed reformers demand teach and influence our children to write and think just like you do. Certainly all parents who want their kids to communicate in life the way you do will support ed reformers.
Thank you Gary! For all your work and expertise in teaching. I just bookmarked your blog. Even though you don’t have new posts, I read a few of the older ones and plan to read more.
“At the end of the conference, Arne Duncan made an odd speech about how great it was that he shut down a school and fired all the teachers and now it is a charter school.”
This is so gross. That scam artists are able to profit from dismantling public schools . . . . and are embraced by the mainstream media (I saw Duncan on Morning Joe within the last year)….. is just gross.
Thank you all…. Diane and Gary and all who post on this blog who are doing more than just reading and commenting….. to spread the truth and save public schools.
On, beachteach–there seems to be no shaking off Duncan. He’s “saving” kids in prison/from prison in Chicago (who may have gotten there because of his handling of CPS when he was superintendent). He works for the Emerson Collective (sounds more like a jewelry business), headed up by Laurene Powell Jobs. He lives in a $1 million plus home (forget the exact price: the purchase was featured in the “Elite Street” section of the Sunday Chicago Tribune several years ago) near the Obamas’ (one of a # of large properties they own, where they don’t live, either) mansion. There was recently a puff piece & a huge picture on/of him in Chicago Magazine, an article having to do with community/service “movers & shakers” &, although others named have done much more good for people than he could ever do (in that he’ll NEVER be able to make up for Race to the Top & the ruination of American education), he was the lead story.
Having taught from 1974-2010, I can vouch for the fact that some of my worst teaching years weren’t even in the Bush era but in the Obama years: proliferation of charters, unspeakable amounts of test prep for NOT standardized tests, & then the tests themselves, TFA, DFERs, Pear$on getting richer on the backs of our kids, larger class sizes…you name all the bad, it was an Obama/Duncan ticket all the way.
& not starting out well by opening schools…only to roll at the tests as soon as the kids come back. & allowed to be done by some DFER underling. Big front page article in The Chicago Trib this morning:
“”School Testing ‘a Waste of Our Time’: Parents, Unions Call for Boycott Over In-Person Standardized Tests This Spring.” & why?
Beeecauauause: “The state (Illinois) is paying Pearson–the multi-national publishing & education company that provides the IAR* test–around $55million for three years of assessments. That includes $18.6 million for 2020, when only about a quarter of students took the exams before they were halted, according to ISBE spokeswoman Jackie Matthews…The contract also has the state paying Pearson an amount not to exceed $15.6 million to administer the tests in 2021, & an estimated $21 million in 2022, Matthews said.”
A bargain, at $55.2 million!!
*IAR= IL Assessment of Readiness (used to be PARCC, before that ISATs). A skunk by any other name smells just as bad.
Illinois parents, please go to https://www.ilfps.org (Illinois Families for Public Schools) to find out more/register to attend their Refuse the Tests 2021 Info. Session Monday, April 12th, 6:30 PM CT & to learn how to fill out Witness Slips–Wednesday, April 14th, 7:30-830 PM.
When you are on the front page, you will see a notice about a Play Bill coming up, & arrows underneath. Press the right arrow, & you will find the aforementioned virtual sessions & can register.
PLEASE OPT YOUR KIDS OUT!!! (Also, their email is
info@ilfps.org if you have ??? )