A reader responds to this post about the middle school in the Bronx:
In Vallejo, we did away with our counselors in 2005. Since then we have seen our graduate rate rapidly decline, increase in violence on our secondary campuses, and other issues as well. The teachers’ union have been advocating for a return of our counselors ever since because we have seen the profound negative impact it has had on our kids. It has yet to happen.
A reader read this post about FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt), a strategy intended to undermine and discredit the competition. And Bingo! The light went on. It was the same pattern on the rug.
| OMG! FUD jogged my memory about a book I read 2 yrs ago by Naomi Oreskes & Erik Conway “Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming”. Edu-reformers are using some of the same strategies that were used by the tobacco and oil industries to advance their business agendas and preclude government regulation on their products. Oreskes is an historian of science at U Cal, San Diego. She and Conway tell an amazing story that begins in the 1980′s. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOnXL8ob_js From a review: “Oreskes and Conway roll back the rug on this dark corner of the American scientific community, showing how the ideology of free market fundamentalism, aided by a too-compliant media, has skewed public understanding of some of the most pressing issues of our era.”Her book chronicles how the tobacco industry and the oil industry ran effective PR campaigns to mislead the public on decades of science showing the effects of tobacco smoke on health and the effects of carbon emissions on climate. Both industries set up think tanks, hired established scientists whose credentials were stellar in their fields but whose expertise were not in health and climate. These “experts” conducted research to challenge decades of established facts. Their product was doubt. The purpose was to generate mistrust in established scientific findings. The outcome was to cloud the public’s knowledge, influence the media, and effect government policies that were moving to restrict tobacco and energy industries business practices. Their explicit strategy was “teach the controversy”. The sad reality is that doubt mongering works. American public education is in a dark corner today. Our unquestioning media plays up the attacks on established education science and teachers. Recall Jonathan Alter & David Brooks’ articles denouncing Diane’s positions on NCLB & RttT. Think Tanks and private philanthropies have made it their business to disseminate junk science written by non-educators that, by design, bypass peer review (e.g. Gates Foundation, Center for American Progress, The Heritage Foundation, AEI, NEIT, et al.) to advance increasing class sizes, high stakes testing, merit pay, ending salary bumps for advanced degrees, charter schools, online education, vouchers, turn-arounds, ending collective bargaining, etc. Claims antithetical to actual scientific findings for efficacy. Bruce Baker (and many others) who regularly debunks the reformy arguments is virtually ignored in the national media. Oreskes makes a provocative statement about scientists who make claims outside of their expertise: ‘The very features that lead to expertise in a particular domain leads to ignorance in many others.’ Bill Gates, Arne Duncan, Michael Milken, Joel Klien, Michael Bloomberg, Eli Broad, anyone? A critical difference in the current edu-refomry campaign, missing from the previous campaign, is our government’s complicity with the privatizers. The private financial industry and philanthropists are using the full force of the government to advance their agendas. Capturing public money is their business model, schools are simply their vehicle. This is a story of betrayal by our elected officials. They are failing in their mission to serve the public. Indeed, our children’s future is in the hands of those who care the least about other people’s children. |
A smart comment by Dave Reid, a math teacher in California, about meeting the diverse needs of students in an overcrowded, under-resourced classroom:
| Hi JJ. This is a reply to your July 20, 2012 at 12:41 am comment where you stated: “…any good teacher or administrator knows that placing these [sped] kids in inclusion or mainstream setting is meaningless unless you do provide them meaningful instruction. Accommodate. Differentiate, engage them. It’s not as easy as just placing them into the class, but many still don’t realize that.”
I believe we are fooling ourselves to think that most / many teachers can effectively differentiate for the diversity of needs in secondary classrooms today. “Meaningful instruction” is nigh impossible unless a student is ready and willing to engage at some level, taking into account any limitations of his/her disability. If an aide, or two, is available to assist and support the teacher, and adequate space and resources are available, the likelihood for meaningful instruction increases considerably. Realistically, teachers with 150 students a day are faced with a near impossible mission to intuit changing student-specific interests that map appropriately to the myriad of standards per subject. I get the intent. It is honorable and a laudable goal. I wish it happened daily in classrooms throughout America. But it does not since it is a “bridge too far” expectation. In my opinion, the education field causes more harm than good when it gives the impression that student-specific differentiation is achievable by any except the most talented of experienced teachers, and even in those cases I believe they need to be in a school culture that nurtures students and supports teachers in manners that enable their mutual success. In other words, it is in rare instances that the many factors that impact student learning align sufficiently for an individual teacher with 30-40 students per period, with five different periods per day, to accommodate ELD, RSP, GATE, or other special needs such as 504 plans. Unless, and until, a realistic deployment of resources commensurate with the task besetting a teacher are readily available, we are fooling ourselves that meaningful instruction is possible, much less within reach. I wish it were otherwise. Regardless, I will continue to do everything in my power to make it so. Its just that with a quarter of a century experience facing difficult challenges with resources, I have a pretty good sense for what is realistic, and what is wishful thinking. |
My ex-husband Richard Ravitch is a brilliant man who has spent most of his life in public service. He was born during the Great Depression, and he grew up idolizing Franklin Delano Roosevelt and believing that the highest ideal was to improve the well-being of the public.
We have an informal agreement that he doesn’t do education and I don’t do housing, transportation or public finance. But now he has stepped into my territory and I must step into his.
Yesterday he and Paul Volcker released a task force report on the budget crisis facing states. The task force report should be read by everyone because it contains an urgent warning. As of 2009, states now spend more on Medicaid than on K-12 education. That is a historic reversal. States are facing unsustainable costs and will have to make cuts to essential services if they can’t make appropriate adjustments to their tax and spend policies. Added to this, the possibility of federal budget cuts will do terrible damage to education and other basic services.
The task force report does not tell states precisely what to do beyond warning them of the cliff towards which they are heading. It says to stop the gimmicks and the one-shot funding measures. It says to face the problems head-on.
The task force report does not call for cuts to education. I spoke to Richard, who is a close friend, and he said that the point of the task force report was to warn states to take action now so that they can protect education and other essential state functions into the future.
My view: If we continue to cut K-12 education, preschool education, and postsecondary education, as so many states now are doing, we sacrifice our future. We throw away our seed-corn. If we continue to shift the costs of higher education to students, we will narrow access to higher education, which develops our nation’s innovativeness, research, and brainpower. We cannot eliminate access to education and erode its quality and then expect our nation to have an educated society, an innovative society, or a good society. My friend Richard Ravitch agrees.
Here are the recommendations of the task force:
Conclusions and Recommendations
The recent recession and financial crisis have exposed both structural problems in state budgets and the increasingly pro-cyclical nature of these budgets. States and their localities face major challenges due to the aging of the population, rising health care costs, unfunded promises, increasingly volatile and eroding revenues, and impending federal budget cuts.
If these problems are not addressed soon, they are likely to worsen. The problems affect the national interest and require the attention of national policymakers. In addition, each state can sharpen its fiscal tools to improve its own decision-making process.
■■ The public needs transparent, accountable state government finances. States and standards- setting and advisory bodies should develop and adopt best practices to improve the quality of planning, budgeting, and reporting.
–– States–should–replace–cash-–based–budgeting, with modified accrual budgets so the public and legislators can easily discern how revenues earned in the fiscal year relate to obligations incurred in the same year. This change won’t eliminate budget gimmickry but will be a step in the right direction, particularly if accounting standards continue to be strengthened. In addition, states should publish information, together with their budgets, on the extent to which these budgets
rely on temporary resources and underfund annual required contributions for pension and retiree health plans.
–– States–should–enact–multi-year–forecasts–and–plans–that–extend–at–least–four–years–beyond– the–current–budget–year, in order to increase their ability to make better short-term decisions and improve long-term outcomes. States should encourage independent review of their budget forecasts. Above all, states need rules that encourage them to adhere to these plans, so that the longer-term consequences of budgetary decisions become apparent.
– State Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports should be supplemented with easily accessible summaries of financial information and should be issued more quickly after the end of the fiscal year, so that they are available before the next year’s budget is proposed; the private sector accomplishes this task regularly.
■■ States should strengthen and make better use of their main tool for counter-cyclical policy, their rainy day funds. They need to save larger amounts automatically. Also, to avoid discouraging the use of these funds, states should allow enough time to replenish them once a fiscal emergency is over. Successful state models of rainy day funds, like those in Virginia and Texas, should be
Report of the State Budget Crisis Task Force SUMMARY
promoted, disseminated, and replicated. It is in the national interest that states have effective rainy day funds so that state balanced-budget imperatives do not counteract efforts to spur national economic recovery and so that states can maintain more-stable tax and spending policies, particularly for the programs implemented by states under federal oversight.
23
Report of the State Budget Crisis Task Force
SUMMARY
24
Remember that the emergency manager in Detroit imposed a new teachers’ contract in which class sizes would be allowed to rise to absurd levels?
Remember that the contract permits classes of up to 41 children in grades K-3, up to 61 children in grades 6-12?
Remember all that?
The emergency manager just said in an opinion article in the Detroit Free Press that “it’s a good contract for our children.”
Yes, it’s always “for the chidden.”
It’s for the children when they test them and rank them by their scores.
It’s for the children when they lay off their teachers.
It’s for the children when they lay off the school nurse and the social worker and the librarian.
It’s for the children when they close their school.
It’s for the children when they privatize public education.
No matter what you think, no matter what it appears to be: It’s for the children.
This teacher in Wisconsin disagrees.
When your class sizes grow larger, it’s personal.
When the classroom lacks the resources it needs, it’s personal.
When this teacher’s family must make do with less, it’s personal.
When the governor takes advice from businessmen but not educators about how to fix schools, it’s personal.
It just isn’t personal for Governor Walker.
If you want to know why so many politicians think so highly of charters, there is a basic rule of politics that explains it all: Follow the money.
The most visible organization promoting corporate reform is called Democrats for Education Reform, known as DFER (commonly pronounced “D-fer”). DFER is the Wall Street hedge fund managers’ group. It always has a few non-hedge funders on the board, especially one or two prominent African-Americans, to burnish its pretentious claim of leading the civil rights movement of our day. Kevin Chavous, a former council member from Washington, D.C., fills that role for now, along with the DFER stalwart, Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark. DFER has its own member of the U.S. Senate, Senator Michael Bennett of Colorado. It has also raised money generously for Congressman George Miller, the senior Democrat on the House Education and Labor Committee.
This group bankrolls politicians, woos them, raises campaign cash for them, and persuades them of the advantages of turning the children of their district over to privately managed schools. Watch their website to see which politician they favor this month and scan those they have recognized in the past.
In New York City, Hakeem Jeffries, DFERs’s candidate for U.S. Congress, announced his support for tax credits for religious schools on the day after he won the election. His support for charter schools was already well known. Unless there is targeted new funding, support for charters and religious schools comes right out of the budget for public schools, which are already stressed by cuts.
A reader writes:
One of the most shocking pieces of news out of the Pennsylvania school funding crisis created by Gov. Corbett was the cost-cutting plan by many districts to ELIMINATE KINDERGARTEN. What an incredibly stupid and short-sighted idea. It would take decades to recover from such a decision.
The kindergarten idea was introduced to the United States in the 1870s, an import from Germany.
It was first established in St. Louis, which was in the forefront of educational innovation in those times due mainly to a far-sighted educator named William Torrey Harris. Harris believed in the importance of a sound public education. He believed in teaching the classics. He believed that maintaining good public schools was a public responsibility.
Now, in Pennsylvania, due to relentless budget-cutting, many districts are planning to eliminate kindergarten. Thus, what is called “reform” today brings us back almost to where we started. We are turning back the clock, privatizing schools (it’s the civil rights issue of our time, remember?), increasing class size (to close the achievement gap?), cutting the arts and physical education (frills?), and now districts find that the public doesn’t want to pay for kindergarten. I can’t remember which part of the reform agenda that is. Can you?
Diane
Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett has preached a formula that warms the hearts of the far-right base of his party: Tax cuts for the big corporations, budget cuts for public schools and social services. Some districts in Pennsylvania are planning to eliminate kindergarten, and some are teetering into bankruptcy.
The only positive outcome is that Corbett’s poll numbers have dropped to 36% approval, and there is a chance that his party will lose its control of the Legislature.
Are voters in Pennsylvania beginning to understand the harm done to their children and communities by the policies of politicians like Corbett?
Our society cannot continue to fatten the fat calves while starving the herd.
We can’t continue to promulgate policies that benefit the wealthiest while impoverishing our essential public services or giving them away to profiteers.
Diane
Diane Ravitch's blog 