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Phil Cullen: New Zealand Leads the World!

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2017 //
24

Phil Cullen of Australia is a zealous critic of his nation’s national testing and accountability regime.

He wrote about this important news from New Zealand, whose new government has decided to abandon the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM).

He wrote:

“New Zealand leads the world.

“New Zealand leads the way down under and maybe across the world in caring about kids.

“Its determination to return to sanity, humanity, progress, initiative and competence for its schooling system, which itself determines national progress in the long run, is now being unpacked and, I am told that the new coalition government contains a few former teachers and school-active parents around as heavyweights who can talk school and lead the conversion for a better world down under.

“There’s dynamic Tracey Martin, former School Board chair; Kelvin Davis, highly respected former principal and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party; and Winston Peters of NZ First and, Deputy PM who trained as a teacher. In Australia we only have legal eagles.

“Parent groups in NZ are claiming that now, teaching will be returned to the teaching profession and democracy will be returned to schooling in New Zealand soon. The isles are shaking with joy for kids.

“It’s a country that has always been to the forefront of school improvement but then, the take-over by the irrational managerialists and corporate heavy-weights circa 1990, and the addition of GERM in 2008, has had a detrimental impact that has lasted for a decade. They’ve had enough, now. We still tolerate it to our shame and academic deterioration.

“How come New Zealand leads the world now in the decontamination of the establishment’s unworthy, useless, immoral, unethical, unprofessional testucation procedures in schools? Well, there’s been a number of factors.

“Fortunately, during this period, it has had its crusaders for kids who just don’t give in too easily. It’s been a long and arduous battle, of the kind that must continue next door, in Australia.

“There’s Kelvin Smythe, former Chief Inspector and Allan Allach, energetic, thoughtful former primary school principal, reader and writer and Bruce Hammonds, former principal, consultant and writer – a valiant trio that has been unafraid to have their say. They set the pace.

“There’s Chris Hipkins, in particular, who has been the shadow Minister for Education whose inspirational speeches and talks have been based on a sound knowledge of schooling and who has been unequivocal in his aim to rid the country of testucation and de facto schooling.

“There’s the Primary Principals’ Association which kept its administrative distance from the government testucrats and compliant GERMans, never properly complying .

“While “The Government will never listen and nothing will change and we are just one little country.” Some timorous principals said, there were others of the association, especially the leader of the organisation, Whetu Cormick, described as “The greatest teacher organisation leader of our time,:” by Kelvin Smythe. We didn’t hold back, “At the other extreme are those like me,” he said “who will continue to fight to the end. We know that National Standards and all the ‘reforms’ that go with them are bad for our young people. Our young people have faith in us to protect their futures by continuing to fight for the best education that our young people deserve.” Looking directly into the face of Nikki Kay, the then Minister, he said, “Let’s wait no longer to get our young people on the road to success. Let’s put up a big STOP NATIONAL STANDARDS.” The organsation has always been fearless…

Click to access opinion_piece_nzpf_presidents_column_on_ns_may_31_2011_.pdf

“There’s Diane Kahn and the Save Our Schools organisation whose prime target has always been the elimination of ‘national standards’ and was heavy and constant with dynamic opposition. [ https://saveourschoolsnz.com/ ]

“There’s an influential Kiwi sciolist [aka schooliolist – one who pretends to be well informed about schooling] and academic testucator who played a significant role in the introduction of testucation into NZ…..who left the country at the right time.

___________________________________________
“There are some messages for Australia. In world schooling terms, it is the boondocks of failed political schooling, the backward West Island of learning progress, the most over-tested country in the world.

“A political party needs to think. Does it believe in providing the best schooling possible, or doesn’t it give a damn as Aussie political parties do?

“Listening to schooliolist academic know-alls, qualified testucators, loud-mouth politicians, corporate unions [like IPA, BCA and Farmers] inhabited by conservative capitalists, neo-libs and delcons, which still rule the roost on the west side of the ditch, continues to lead Australian schooling in the wrong direction. New Zealand has now told these cocky roosters what to do with their distasteful attitude to children.

“Australian schools are in dire need of some Finnish-ing tactics.” said Wendy Knight in The Age….and we can now add: ‘and some Kiwi tactics’. What really happens in a good school system? Why don’t we look around and learn?
An example of off-the-hip, loud-mouth political interference is contained in suggestions made in Treasurer Morrison’s Shifting the Dial, another imported kind of measurement.

“It presumes that the hiring of skilled subject specialists like mathematicians will improve standards in schools. It overlooks the reality that real teachers teach real pupils….real people! The secret is in the interaction. They teach them about mathematics, to like mathematics. They don’t get up in front of a class and pontificate about what they themselves know. Effective teachers of anything operate from the learner’s level. Socrates was a better teacher of Maths than Einstein and a better teacher of literature than Shakespeare. His pupils learned how to learn.

“A strong and outspoken principals’ association can be truly influential as they are in NZ. Protection of children and their future as well as the provision of a rich holistic curriculum, undaunted by fearful interruptions to positive learning, should dominate the spirit of every principal’s personal professional code. Laxity, timidity, compliance and silence have no place in their organisations when the chips are down for kids….as they are now in Australia.

“It’s looking more evident every day that the lower half of the existing Lib-Lab delcon group viz. Labor under Shorten, will be the government after the next federal election in Australia. The lib-lab neo-con conventions will probably continue as they did in the passing of klein deforms from Labor to Liberal. Neither political group, Labor nor Liberal, ever expresses any thoughts about the continuance of the Klein system of schooling, now almost a decade old ; and which should go because it is proving useless.

“Neither party knows much about schooling and hides its ignorance by talking only Gonksi and funding and teacher quality. For them, the plight of children lies in the dollar sign, not in compassion and humanity and learning and in experience and excellence. Each remains ultra-complacent by making do, making silly schooling decisions, maintaining the mediocre, and supporting private schools before helping public schools.{Remember DOGS – Defence of Government Schools?} A country that treats its children the way that Australia does, is in for big trouble….really big trouble.

“It just won’t be able to handled itself in world affairs.

“It relies on the cockeyed Gillard Theory of Testucation, using Kleinism to control operatives and operations, to no end except to gather data; then ignores the basic laws of administrative order and effectiveness [Campbell, Goodhart, Lucas and Common Sense] and treats the electorate as if everyone is a dill or doesn’t care what happens to kids. The present government will go while it maintains these attitudes to schooling and doesn’t have the capacity to think. The Labor Party will replace it and not do any better. Both need to think seriously about schooling…very, very seriously.

ooo000ooo

“I’m deliberately apolitical and have voted informal at the last few federal elections because I’ve been offered only lower-order policies in general and crazy views about schooling. …nothing that really suggests that there is a healthy future for this wonderful country. Schooling is the most important issue of this century for Aussie citizens. If it is not rejuvenated, Australia has some big problems coming up. I’ll vote for any party -Pauline’s, Bob’s, Nick’s, Jacqui’s, anybody who says that it will get rid of NAPLAN.

“I’ll know by its standard of advocacy that such a party likes kids, that it is thinking and will do something about our future. Our present klein system relies on child abuse.

“I’ll study the detail of course, but no party can be so blithely ignorant of schooling as our major parties are at present. Their mentors can only bark Gonski, data, scores, testing, funding, teacher quality with schooliolist pedantry and no regard for the real spirit of learning at school.

“Seriously – rejuvenation of schooling from the mess of mass testucation will be very difficult. Unscrambling an egg always is. Since New Zealand will have to do the job before Australia wakes up, it might be wise to locate some observers there to learn how to go about it.

“We need to do what New Zealand has done :

“DECLARE OURSELVES

“It’s rejuvenation time down under!

“THANKS NEW ZEALAND”

Categories Accountability, Failure, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Testing

Denisha Jones: When All Else Fails, Save Childhood

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2017 //
24

Denisha Jones, a professor of early childhood education at Trinity Washington University, gave this talk at Sarah Lawrence College this past summer. Please read her talk in her entirety.

An excerpt:

I inspire my teachers—regardless of the label they give themselves—to be advocates or activists for their profession. I don’t want them to spend the next several years in survival mode until they burn out and leave the field altogether. Advocacy and activism serve as nourishment for the soul. They can sustain you even when things look bleak and the future is uncertain.

As I move forward, determined to protect public education as a right, what drives me is the acceptance of our failure. I am ready to declare our efforts, and the efforts of those who came before me, as failures. This may seem harsh, but as we know, failure is essential for success. “Failure is instructive,” John Dewey once said, “The person who really thinks learns quite as much from his failures as from his successes.”

We know that protecting children from the experience of failure is not good for their development. Failure can be a tool for learning how to get it right. Without failure, how do we know that we have even really succeeded? This doesn’t mean that education activists haven’t won some important battles. But they’ve tended to benefit one school or one community, and haven’t reached the national or state levels. Our attempts to stop the spread of the Global Education Reform Movement (GERM) have failed.

Before we examine our failures more closely, I want to quickly review what I mean by GERM so that we are all on the same page. Pasi Sahlberg notes that the movement emerged in the 1980s and consists of five global features: standardization; focus on core subjects; the search for low-risk ways to reach learning goals; use of corporate management models; and test-based accountability policies. Although none of these elements have been adopted in Finland, where he does most of his research, they have invaded public education in the U.S. and in other countries.

Here, education activists typically refer to GERM as the privatization of public education, driven by neoliberalism, which favors free-market capitalism. Under this scenario, there are no public schools: public services are turned over to the private sector. Healthcare, prisons, even water, are now being put in the hands of corporations, whose sole desire is to make a profit. When profit is the goal, the needs of human beings are discarded, unless they can generate a measurable return on investment.

We can see how GERM has infected U.S. education policy and reforms. The Common Core drives standardization and aligns with a narrow focus on math and literacy. The use of scripted learning programs, behavior training programs, and online learning is evidence of the search for low-risk ways to reach learning goals. While charter schools claim to be nonprofit, most are managed by companies with CEOs and CFOs who apply corporate models to education.

Teach for America and other fast-track teacher preparation programs also use a corporate model, developing education leaders who get their feet wet teaching before moving on to become policymakers or head up charter schools.

Pearson’s PARCC and the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium are drowning public education in test-based accountability. Systems that punish and reward schools and teachers based on student achievement on standardized tests are the norm today.

While the new Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) includes language that protects the right of parents to opt out—a movement that has been growing in recent years—it also maintains the requirement that 95 percent of students participate. Test-based accountability is here to stay and rapidly evolving into competency-based and personalized learning, in which assessments occur all day every day as students are glued to computer screens.

We have failed to stop the expansion of choice, which threatens the existence of public schools through the proliferation of charters and vouchers. In the U.S., most school-age children are educated in traditional public schools, but we can expect to see this trend reversed under the administration of Betsy DeVos. We have failed to stop the assault on public education through school closures in communities of color.

And then there’s the inexorable push down of developmentally inappropriate standards onto young children. The Common Core, adopted by most states, imposes expectations on young children that are out of step with their development, not to mention the research. Empirical data confirm that kindergarten is the new first grade, and preschool the new kindergarten.

On top of this, we have failed to stop racist school discipline practices that suspended 42% of black boys from preschool in the 2011-2012 academic year. This failure stems from our inability to address the systemic and institutional racism that is prominent in public education but often masked by teachers with good intentions who lack an understanding of culture, bias, and systems of oppression.

We must acknowledge these failures so we can understand the limits of our collective efforts and decide how we can refocus our energies toward a future that will lead to more successful outcomes. We need to change the narrative. Attacking the push for accountability and tougher standards has proven to be a losing strategy. Our insistence that these measures harm student development and learning has branded us unwilling to be held accountable for ensuring that all students can achieve.The more we resist test-based accountability and inappropriate reforms, the more we are seen by the corporations, policymakers, and privateers as resistant to innovation.

We must make the protection of childhood a nonpartisan issue. We need to revise our message. The assault on public education is not just a conservative attack by Republicans against progressive education. Democrats are also aligned with many aspects of GERM, including choice, privatization, and test-based accountability.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Childhood, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), Privatization, Resistance, School Choice, Testing

Kelvin Smythe: When Pooh and Christopher Robin Went Searching for a 21st Century Education

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2017 //
9

Kelvin Smythe is an educator and blogger in New Zealand who left the education system when the ideas of the New Right took over. He has since been a critic and an activist.

A friend Down Under sent me one of his recent writings, in which Winnie-the-Pooh and Piglet and Christopher Robin go searching for a 21st Century Education.

But first a bit about Smythe. He wrote this about his views:

Kelvin Smythe makes a plea for teachers to see behind the commodification of education, the managerialism, the data gathering, the claims of new knowledge, the fads, the array of electronics to what teaching is really about – key interactions between teacher, child, and what is being learnt. He knows that many of his concerns about education, his aspirations for education, his style of writing about them will be dismissed as out-of-date. His claim, though, is that these key interactions are the essence of what teaching should be, and are timeless.

In the story he tells about Pooh and friends, there is this beginning:

Just as they came to the Six Pine Trees, Pooh looked around to see that nobody else was listening, and said in a very solemn voice: ‘Piglet, I have decided something.’

‘What have you decided Pooh?’

‘I have decided to catch a 21st Century Education.’

Piglet asked, ‘But what does a 21st Century Education look like? Then continued thoughtfully: ‘Before looking for something, it is wise to ask someone what you are looking for before you begin looking for it.’

Smith then observes:

We are, it seems, getting ourselves tied in knots about something called 21st century education – before looking for it, as Piglet suggests, it might be wise to find out what we are looking for.

This could be done in respect to how it might differ from what went before, how it might be the same as what went before, how it might be worse than went before, who is supposed to benefit from it, who is calling for it, does it exist, should it exist, what are its aims and, being education, how much is career- or self-serving bollocks.

I intend this posting to be a search for something called a 21st century education.

As part of that I declare my prior understandings about the concept – a concept because there has never been any discussion about something called 20th century education, it was never conceptualised in that way, so why for 21st century education?

The formation and high usage of the concept label suggests powerful forces at work – forces, I suggest, taking control of the present to control the future.

Those active in promoting the concept of 21stcentury education are mostly from political, technology, and business groupings, also some academics: the immediate future they envisage as an extension and intensification of their perception of society and education as they see it now. And in the immediate future, as well as the longer term one, they see computers at the heart of 21st century education, which is fair enough as long as the role of computers is kept in proportion as befits a tool, a gargantuanly important one, but still a tool….

Smythe goes on to write about the dominant philosophy behind the 21st century education hullaballoo.

School education is being pressured to inappropriate purposes by groups who claim a hold on the future and from that hold generate techno-panic to gain advantage in the present.

Another prior understanding is that the inappropriate use of computers for learning has contributed to the decline in primary school education (though well behind the contribution of national standards and the terrible education
autocracy of the education review office).

For all the talk of personalising learning, of building learning around the child, of individualising learning, the mandating question for 21st century education seems to be: how can we build the digital into learning instead of how can we best do the learning? And even further: how can we build schools for digital learning instead of what is best for children’s learning environment? Large open spaces are not the best environment for children’s learning, meaning that in combination with the heavy use of computers to make large open spaces ‘work’, a distinct problem is developing. Computers and large open spaces are being promoted by 21st century advocates as the two key ideas to carry us forward to the education for the 21st century.

I think you will find this an interesting read and will spot the commonalities that we face, in the U.S., Australia, Great Britain, and New Zealand. It is the phenomenon that Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg calls GERM (the Global Education Reform Movement). Its proponents say that it is sweeping the world, and that the train has left the station. But please notice that educators and children are not on the train. They are on the tracks.

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reform, For-Profit, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Real Education, Technology, Computers

Uganda Parliament Orders Bridge International Academies to Close Its Schools

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2016 //
28

The Ugandan Parliament ordered the for-profit corporation Bridge International Academies to close its schools for failing to meet the nation’s standards. The linked report comes from Education International, which represents teachers’ unions around the world. Teachers’ unions think that children should be instructed by qualified teachers. Most children in Uganda cannot afford to enroll in a fee-paying school.

The Ugandan teachers’ union elected a member to Parliament, who championed their case against the for-profit schools.

In the latest turn in the saga between the Ugandan government and Bridge International Academies the country’s parliament has instructed management to close the schools until further notice. Bridge currently has 80 pre-primary and primary schools in Uganda run by American founders Jay Kimmelman and Shannon May.

According to Uganda’s Minister of Education, Janet Museveni, Bridge has the opportunity to reopen should they meet necessary standards. However, despite the order to cease operations, Bridge says it is business as usual.

Bridge, operating what are known as ‘low-fee,’ for profit schools in Uganda, Kenya, and most recently Liberia, is financially supported by the likes of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and education conglomerate Pearson Ltd. It is also receives funding from the World Bank and DfID-UK. Bridge’s business model, which depends on public money to operate fee charging schools run by unqualified teachers, faces a continuous barrage of criticism.

Although the company promotes ‘affordable’ education to some of the world’s poorest children, Bridge forces families to pay for inadequate scripted lessons read from tablets. Many children are left to learn in questionable environments, such as classrooms lacking proper materials, including desks, chairs and in some cases, toilets.

This is the response from Bridge:

http://www.bridgeinternationalacademies.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Bridge International Academies statement on comments in Ugandan Parliament

Kampala, 9 August 2016: Bridge International Academies has expressed sincere concern over statements made in the Ugandan parliament this afternoon threatening to force 12,000 Bridge children out of school and 800 Ugandans out of work, by seeking the closure of Bridge International Academies. Bridge has been working in partnership with the Government of Uganda to ensure that all Ugandan children have access to a high quality education.

“We are waiting to receive the report referred to in Parliament and a copy of the Parliamentary Hansard to review the Ministry’s concerns”, says Michael Kaddu, Head of Corporate and Public Affairs for Bridge International Academies in Uganda. “We have been working closely with the Ministry to put the needs of the children first and come to a speedy resolution of any issues made known to us.”

“In the meantime, our academies are running as usual as we continue to work with the relevant educational authorities to uphold our commitment to our parents and communities to provide a world-class education to their children.”

“Bridge has been a great blessing to our community,” says Mrs Gertrude Kizza from the Nsumbi area of Nansana, the grandmother of two Bridge children and the LC1 of the Nsumbi community. “Prior to Bridge opening in Nsumbi, our children either had to travel a long distance to get to school or pay high fees for the local private schools. As a result, many children did not go to school. Since Bridge opened in February of this year, I have seen great changes in my grandchildren, who are now leaders in English and confidence.”
“As a Ugandan citizen I should have the right to give my grand-children a better future, which is why I sent them to Bridge”, says Mrs Kizza. “Now the government is taking away that right.”

Bridge now operates 63 nursery and primary schools across Uganda. Bridge teaches the Ugandan curriculum, using technology to prepare and support teachers, streamline administrative processes and monitor attendance and academic progress.

“I joined Bridge after teacher training college because I was excited by the idea of a school system were I would be prepared and supported to ensure children are learning”, says Patrick Mutegeki a teacher at Bridge International Academy in Nsumbi. “Working at Bridge has made me a better educator and has made me excited for the future of Ugandan children. Bridge pupils in Kenya had a 40% higher chance of passing the national primary exit exams than the national average, and have gone on to the best secondary schools in Kenya and the United States. I want those same opportunities for Ugandan children.”

Bridge International Academies is the 21st largest employer in Uganda, with close to 800 Ugandan employees and has already invested over UGX10bn in the Ugandan economy, with plans to invest another UGX25bn in the coming years.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, For-Profit, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Pearson

My View: The Corporate Assault on Public Education Goes International

By dianeravitch
August 10, 2016 //
27

I was recently invited to write an article for U.S. News & World Report. I decided to write about the current trend in many nations to turn public schools over to the private sector. Readers of this blog may be familiar with the content and my concerns. But I wasn’t writing for those who are well-versed in these issues. I was writing for the public, which is unaware of the advances of privatization into the heart of public education.

The editors called it “Public education is up for sale.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Privatization

Michael Barber and Joel Klein Advise the World about How to Achieve Greatness in Education

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2016 //
38

Michael Barber and Joel Klein have written a report for the World Economic Forum about how to achieve greatness in education. Their report is titled “Unleashing Greatness: Nine Plays to Spark Innovation in Education.”

Michael Barber is the chief education advisor for Pearson. Joel Klein is the ex-chancellor of the New York City public schools, former CEO of Rupert Murdoch’s Amplify (which lost $500 million and was sold off by Murdoch), and current chief policy and strategy officer to Oscar Health Insurance, which recently announced a radical downsizing.

The old ways no longer work, they say. What is needed for the future is “whole system reform,” which has happened or is happening (they say) in Madrid, Punjab, London, and New York City. Presumably, Barber takes credit for London and Klein takes credit for New York City. (I note, however, as a resident of New York City, that the schools continue to struggle with many problems, and no one refers to the “New York a City miracle” these days.)

Fortunately, Professor Stephen Dinham of the University of Melbourne in Australia took on the job of analyzing the Barber-Klein formula for greatness.

He sees the report as an illustration of what Pasi Sahlberg called the “Global Education Reform Movement” or GERM.

He writes:

“The terms ‘playbook’ and ‘unleash’ are loaded and instructive. A playbook, in sports, provides a list of strategies or moves for players and teams to follow. These are essentially step-by-step formulae intended to achieve success. In the case of this report, there are nine. Oh that education – and interrelated services such as health, employment and public infrastructure – could be reduced to such a simplistic list. The term unleash implies releasing from restriction and confinement, in this case, opening up education to ‘choice’ and the ‘free’ market. As I have noted, typically, ‘Choice, competition, privatization and the free market are [seen as] the answers to almost any question about education. (Dinham, 2015a: 3).

“Let’s now consider the latest simplistic recipe designed to address the ‘manufactured crisis’ in education (Berliner & Biddle, 1995; Berliner & Glass, 2015), a crisis that is in danger of becoming reality if we ignore the evidence and follow such ideologically and financially underpinned and driven prescriptions (Dinham, 2016).

“The authors’ ‘plays’ are:

“Provide a compelling vision for the future

Set ambitious goals to force innovation

Create choice and competition

Pick many winners

Benchmark and track progress

Evaluate and share the success of new innovations

Combine greater accountability and autonomy

Invest in and empower agents of change

Reward successes (and productive failures).

“Detail on ‘how’ to achieve the above is lacking, although brief case studies where these have purportedly been successful are provided (e.g, New York, Chile). A common theme is the belief mentioned previously that deregulation, competition and choice will deliver an overall lift in educational performance. The evidence is however, either weak (e.g., on greater school autonomy) or contradictory (e.g., vouchers, charter schools, free schools, chains or academies) (Dinham, 2015a).”

Read both the report and the critique. Funny the authors don’t look at Chile and Sweden, two nations that took the path they recommend, with disastrous results.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, For-Profit, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Privatization, School Choice, Standardized Testing, Vouchers

Should Africa Turn Its Schools Over to For-Profit Business?

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2016 //
25

This is one of the best articles you will ever read on the subject of for-profit schooling in poor countries. It is beautifully illustrated and contains interviews with key players in the for-profit education industry. The author is Graham Brown-Martin. The subject is public-private partnerships in Africa. The discussion centers on the efficacy and ethics of the movement to turn the responsibility for schooling over to for-profit Bridge International Academies in countries that have lagged far behind in providing universal public education. What you will learn is that the “market” is huge. The cost of the scripted schooling is $6 a month, which leaves out many children whose families cannot afford $6 a month.

Start with the cartoon at the opening of the link, which explains “the magic of the market.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, For-Profit, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International

My Review of Denny Taylor’s “Save Our Children, Save Our School, Pearson Broke the Golden Rule”

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2015 //
6

Denny Taylor is Professor Emerita of Literacy Studies at Hofstra University. She has won many awards for her writing about literacy and literature. She is also the founder and CEO of Garn Press, which published the book I am reviewing (and also published Anthony Cody’s The Educator and the Oligarch).

 

Save Our Children, Save Our School, Pearson Broke the Golden Rule is a political satire about the current education “reform” movement. It takes place in an imaginary “Cafe Griensteidl” in New York City, at 72nd Street and Broadway, where the author and a friend meet for coffee. In this comedy, the leading players in the “reform” movement appear at the cafe and get into discussion or debate with the author. Nine powerful men happen to be in the cafe, including Arne Duncan, Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch, Joel Klein, and Michael Barber (of Pearson). They banter with the author and her friend. She makes clear that these nine powerful men know nothing about education yet are taking control of the American public school system.

 

The men leave, and in the last “Act” of the book, twelve eminent female scholars (living and dead) talk about what is happening and the need to resist. The chapter is headed by this statement: “In which twelve venerable women scholars with more than 500 years of teaching experience refuse to capitulate to the demands made by nine rich men who have no teaching qualifications or teaching experience.” Hannah Arendt, Virginia Woolf, Simone Weil, Adrienne Rich, Yetta Goodman, Toni Morrison, and more are there. As the wise women speak, people come into the cafe and make YouTube videos, Tweet, or just listen. Yetta begins to rap. Horns honk. Traffic jams form at the corner of 72nd Street and Broadway. The women at the table clap along with Yetta’s rapping. The women talk about how to stop the corporate takeover of U.S. education.

 

Denny Taylor, sitting at the table with the great women, says, “Children have a right to a free and public education. For the pursuit of human knowledge and understanding that is free of corporate greed.”

 

“We should not have to ask permission for teachers to teach in developmentally appropriate ways that inspire and excite, and enhance our children’s incredible capacity to learn–

 

“–for the sheer joyfulness of their lives and for their lightness of being.”

 

The great women agree: We are and always will be defenders of every child’s right to a childhood free of despots and demons, except those they imagine when playing with friends….”

 

The author says, “Dump Pearson….Barber and Pearson are taking our children in the wrong direction,” she says. “His Whole System of Global Education Revolution is a global social catastrophe, a total system failure.”

 

Others ask how to stop this recklessness. The author responds, “The madness will stop if we refuse to participate. The struggle for democracy is always ground up….Make it a crime for oligarchs to interfere with democratic social systems. It’s vote tampering on a national scale.” She adds, referring to Bill Gates, “He’s violating the rights of fifty million children, jeopardizing their future. Send him to jail.”

 

“Tell Gates we choose decency and democracy and not the indecency of his oligarchy. He does not have the power to dictate how our children are taught in public schools.

 

“Tell him we refuse to participate in his Common Core experiments. Ban the use of galvanic skin devices in affective computing trials that he’s funded.

 

“Tell him to stop wasting his money. To spend it for the Common Good. Build new public schools. Create parks in poor urban neighborhoods. Make sure there are health centers. Medical care for everyone in the community.

 

“Tell him to put his money into Earth-friendly low-income housing.

 

“Libraries. Media centers.

 

“Work with local leaders. Make sure they’re not exploited…

 

“Pearson could too. Tell Barber we take back our independence. That US public schools are no longer under Pearson’s colonial rule.”

 

The book is funny, learned, and zany. If you want to order it, go to http://www.garnpress.com.

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), Pearson, Resistance

McKinsey: The Global Powerhouse Behind “Reform”

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2014 //
10

Which is the most powerful player behind the scenes in corporate reform?

This article says, without doubt, McKinsey.

Where did David Coleman, architect of the Common Core standards, get his start: McKinsey.

Which firm pushes the narrative of a “crisis in education”: McKinsey.

Which firm believes that Big Data will solve all problems? McKinsey.

Look behind the screen, behind the curtain: McKinsey.

Categories Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Data and Data Mining, Education Industry, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International

Australia: Adopting the U.S. Model, With Sorrow

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2014 //
19

Phil Cullen writes The Treehorn Express in Australia. He regularly reports on that nation’s slavish copying of the worst American ideas, especially testing and accountability. The Australian national testing program is called NAPLAN.

FELLOW EDUCATORS : Please send this along to people in schools as extensively as you can. Those who already do…..thanks from Treehorn and the other kids.

The Treehorn Express
http://treehornexpress.wordpress.com

Teacher Proofing

USA has a penchant for branding and packaging things as neatly as possible. As far as schooling is concerned, a canny money-hungry educator can extract bits from the regular school curriculum, invent a catchy vogue-word to describe what-ever-it-is that needs attention, then wrap the contents up and peddle it to the gullible. Bingo! Legs 11 ! Holidays at Waikiki. If it cannot be wrapped up, it is branded and sold in bulk…. as ‘Models’….. by sweet-talking peddlers at conferences and seminars;…. and cocktail parties..

This comes as little surprise when it is a fact of life that schooling in America is owned and dominated by well-heeled corporate plutocrats., whose political influence in the other three English-speaking GERM countries is becoming as extensive as it is in the old US of A. The teacher-proofing edubusiness is big time and is exercised in many forms. Its enormity and influence is far, far more extensive than the ordinary Michael Dundee Aussie would believe.

Sage educators in the UK and in NZ don’t usually do this. Despite the heavy hand of neoconservatism that all countries share, they have always tended to treat teaching as a noble profession that actually pupils [aka teaches] children according to each child’s frame of reference. The child is the package. The teacher’s role in the act of teaching and evaluating and moving ahead is total. Unsubstantiated, untested, unprofessional, gimmicky quackery stops at the classroom door of their lively learning centres, where the child is treated as the centre of the universe and its performance is judged by its interest in learning. Diagnosis and evaluation is part of each activity. A school’s reputation is based on the way it treats children. If parents want to know about the best school around, they go to a reliable source…..the shopping centre…get the real deal……certainly not to unreliable, crooked test results, used by the unwitty for comparative purposes..

Of the four English-speaking, politically-controlled education systems – the GERM countries – Australia religiously follows what the USA does; no matter what… blindly as a rule. It’s all high stakes data-laden emotion-free performance-testing stuff which Americans love. Aussie unemotional, couldn’t-care-less, morally corrupt testucators now use it without second thought. Bugger the feelings of kids. Obediently, we followed the ‘Kleinist Model’ holus-bolus, called it NAPLAN, and continue to maintain its demonic philosophies with the sternest controls possible…. Iraq-like.

How many of us teachers have tried and become enthused – for a while – by some such package, only to find that the package takes over the teaching? Precious school time is devoted to completion times and corrections while our own professional judgement and modes of evaluating take a back seat? In ancient times, I was an SRA structured reading and IMP specialist. Mea culpa. I hope such indiscretions are forgivable.

How often have we been seduced by brand names for special movements and innovations; and have crossed swords with colleagues until things settled down and the next craze came along? We have discoursed about…. open and traditional…. phonics and whole-word….new maths and maths…persuasive and traditional…..child-centred and subject centred….composite and multi-aged….charter and mainstream…..education and testucation….child-based and didactic….?

There is a new list on the way from up-above…..data-driven instruction, blended learning, differential learning, closing the achievement and talent gap, student-centric instruction, yap, yap. Makes one ever wonder what ever happened to classroom teaching as a descriptor?

In America it is said: “Schools nationwide continue to adopt student-centric instructional models that use data to empower teachers and engage learners. Data-driven instruction has moved beyond the education-buzzword sphere to educators’ daily lexicon.” So, Kleinism aka Naplanism is now permanently embedded in many of that nation’s schools…..more so in ours. The article continues : “In this ASCD Smartbrief Special Report, we provide a round-up of news about recent trends in data-driven instruction, blended learning and stories about how some schools are preparing the next generation of data scientists.” Getting everybody ready to be rocket scientists! Thinkers and learners?

Read this? ……some schools in Utah have lengthened the school day from six-and-a-half hours to eight to cope with data collection and marking. There is a national lobby for longer school hours. “The National Center on Time & Learning (NCTL) is dedicated to expanding learning time to improve student achievement and enable a well-rounded education. Through research, public policy and technical assistance, we support national, state and local initiatives that add significantly more school time for academic and enrichment opportunities to help children meet the demands of the 21st century.” [Using didactic instruction for eight hours per day shouldn’t be very exhausting, compared to three or four hours of serious teaching, should it? Good idea?]

Whatever happened to test-free composite-strategy teaching ? [That’s a new vogue word that I just invented to keep up with the Yanks]

The sorts of initiatives that we have imported [e.g. charter schools] and embedded in the data-laden environment of NAPLAN and its hellfire cobbers are a serious threat to our future. Such restrictions to serious school learning will continue (“The whippings will continue until morale increases” policy. ) in Australia while we continue to adopt the American mind-set. Schools in Australia are not run by teachers any more, but by remote control.

Political control of national testing programs is the most successful method of isolating teachers from effective teaching known to mankind; and that kind of conditioning suits the package-deal spirit of teacher-proofing.

Coercion always induces low level acceptance of a profession as a profession, so the outcome is that better teachers are quitting; neophytes with potential don’t last long; and better-quality applicants don’t want to join the profession because of our leaders’ grossly unprofessional attitude to children and their teachers. Make no mistake. This is a critical issue.

The Deseret News of Salt Lake City makes this point following an America of the future conference: “The level of despondency within the profession is too high for our future to be safe. A fairly dispiriting conversation, to be sure, but the response to the host’s penultimate question left me feeling downright sad at first, and, then, upon reflection, a bit confused. Replying to the query ‘Do you think the quality of teaching will decline in the years to come?’ each panellist explained her sense that the profession and, thus, the state of education were in decline. To paraphrase the veteran teacher of the group, ‘I’ve encountered many great teachers in my years in the profession, but it’s getting harder and harder for these folks to hold on. At the same time, it’s getting more difficult to attract new people into teaching.’ Listening to that assessment about a core element —the core element?— of our public education system, how can you not become despondent?”

With the teacher-proofing of Australian schools based on the American MODEL, how can we not feel even more despondent down under? Let’s bring the child back into the equation, get rid of the rubbish and start TEACHING. {PLEASE NOTE. Those teachers who fly in the face of the coercion and teach without reliance on data…..please hang in there. The kids need you.}
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If you wish to receive The Treehorn Express direct, please contact me.
cphilcullen@bigpond.com

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Phil Cullen {…..kids and their teachers first} 41 Cominan Avenue Banora Point 2486 Australia 07 5524 6443 0407865999 cphilcullen@bigpond.com
http://primaryschooling.net/ http://kelleyandcullen.net/ http://qldpriaryprincipals.wordpress.com

Categories Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Klein, Joel, Testing
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