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The Americanizing of English Schools?

By dianeravitch
July 26, 2012 //
8

This writer worries that American ideas are being imported to English schools.

The curious episode at the center of the article is the description of a conference about creating charter schools in the U.K., encouraged by the Conservative government’s Minister of Education Michael Gove:

To see where News Corp’s interest might lie, we can look to a conference organised by Gove’s department in January 2011. Gove had invited Gerald [Joel] Klein, who was then chancellor of the New York City Board of Education, to speak to people “interested in setting up free schools”. (So called “free schools” are a version of academies which both front benches favour.) Four days after Gove extended the invitation, Klein was appointed to the Board of News International. By the time Klein attended the conference he was a News Corp employee, although Gove says he did not know about the appointment.

Also attending the conference, and present at a dinner hosted by the Department for Education, were Mike Feinberg, co-Founder of KIPP Houston, Paul Castro, Head of High Schools KIPP Houston, Aaron Brenner, Head of Primary schools KIPP Houston, Jo Baker, Director of Washington Public Charter School Board, and Monique Miller, Performance Manager of Washington DC Public Charter School Board.

This goes a way towards explaining Murdoch’s enthusiastic support for charter schools, and his ceaseless disparagement of public schools, in his many media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and Fox News.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Reform, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International

Watch Out for GERM! We Are Infected!

By dianeravitch
July 22, 2012 //
6

Pasi Sahlberg is the brilliant Finnish educator who is trying to roll back the global tide of destructive education policies.

Sahlberg wrote an important book, Finnish Lessons, explaining how the Finnish education system was transformed in the past thirty years and became one of the top-performing nations in the world on PISA tests of reading, mathematics, and science.

Recently Sahlberg wrote an article summarizing his views on Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog in the Washington Post.

Sahlberg warns that there is now an infection sweeping the world which he calls GERM (the Global Education Reform Movement).

GERM is characterized by heavy emphasis on market-style reforms: testing, data, measurement of students and teachers, ranking, choice, competition.

Finland has resisted the GERM virus. Its students do not take standardized tests; they take tests made by their teachers, whose professional judgment and autonomy are deeply respected by all.

Finland has made sure that all its children are well cared for; less than 5 percent live in poverty. Our child poverty rate is close to 25 percent.

Finland became a high performer, he writes, not by seeking excellence but by seeking equity, by pursuing the goal of good schools for all.

All Finnish teachers must be well-educated in their subjects and in pedagogy, acquired at an academic university; all teachers must have a masters degree before they can teach. Interesting to note that, by contrast, a growing number of teachers in the U.S. are getting their credentials and degrees from online “universities.” Many states are lowering their requirements for teachers.

Here are the symptoms of GERM, described by Sahlberg:

The first symptom is more competition within education systems. Many reformers believe that the quality of education improves when schools compete against one another. In order to compete, schools need more autonomy, and with that autonomy comes the demand for accountability. School inspections, standardized testing of students, and evaluating teacher effectiveness are consequences of market-like competition in many school reforms today. Yet when schools compete against one another, they cooperate less.

The second symptom of GERM is increased school choice. It essentially positions parents as consumers empowering them to select schools for their children from several options and thereby promotes market-style competition into the system as schools seek to attract those parents. More than two-thirds of OECD countries have increased school choice opportunities for families with the perceptions that market mechanisms in education would allow equal access to high-quality schooling for all. Increasing numbers of charter schools in the United States, secondary school academies in England, free schools in Sweden and private schools in Australia are examples of expanding school choice policies. Yet according to the OECD, nations pursuing such choice have seen both a decline in academic results and an increase in school segregation.

The third sign of GERM is stronger accountability from schools and related standardized testing of students. Just as in the market place, many believe that holding teachers and schools accountable for students’ learning will lead to improved results. Today standardized test scores are the most common way of deciding whether schools are doing a good job. Teacher effectiveness that is measured using standardized tests is a related symptom of GERM. According to the Center for Public Education, standardized testing has increased teaching to the test, narrowed curricula to prioritize reading and mathematics, and distanced teaching from the art of pedagogy to mechanistic instruction.

We have a very bad case of GERM in the U.S. We are even exporting it to other countries, including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Our educational products and ideas should be quarantined at the border. We need medication to stop the virus within our own borders. Let’s recognize the “reform” movement for what it is: a bold effort to privatize public education and open it up for private investment. This is no “civil rights movement.” This is an attack on a basic democratic institution.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Privatization, US Education

What About Sweden?

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2012 //
13

A reader of the blog posts a comment saying that the U.S. should be open to charters and privatization because, well, what about Sweden.

What about Sweden? Their educational system is one of the best in the world. It’s a public/private hybrid that essentially uses a voucher system. This is something the NEA has foot tooth-and-nail for years.To post that “fighting public education” is by itself a bad thing is simply not enough detail. I think it’s safe to say that monopolistic “public education” is a failure in the U.S. It’s verboten to try something new?

The suggestion is that Sweden should be a model because it has welcomed for-profit schools and various forms of privatization.

Well, what about Sweden? I checked the PISA results and found that Sweden has scores no better than those of the U.S., in reading, mathematics, or science; in fact, Sweden’s scores are nearly identical to ours, right about average, even though Sweden does not face the demographic challenges of the U.S.

Why should Sweden be a model? It is not a high-performing nation. It does not have the challenges of demographic diversity and extreme inequality of income that we have.

I’d rather look to Finland, which actually does excel on PISA. It has consistently been at the top of the international league tables for the past decade (Sweden has not). Finland has built a strong and vibrant public school system.

Like Sweden, Finland does not have much demographic diversity, and it has very consciously sought to reduce child poverty (which is far less than our own).

What Finland has that makes it special is the ideal of equal educational opportunity. It has done a far better job of reaching that ideal than we have. That makes it a worthy model. Finland has achieved both equity and excellence. That is a good combination for us.

If we copy the Swedish model, we will make no progress. If we copy the Finnish model, we too might achieve equity and excellence.

Categories Education Reform, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International

GERM in Brazil

By dianeravitch
May 17, 2012 //
4

In his recent book Finnish Lessons, Pasi Sahlberg talks about the spread of GERM (the Global Education Reform Movement), the devout belief in testing, accountability, competition, choice, and privatization. One reason for the contagious nature of GERM is that it is boosted by an unparalleled public relations campaign. This campaign makes dramatic claims about successes, test score gains, improvements of all kinds. If one has the opportunity to look closely at these claims, they disappear in smoke.

Such is the case with the “miracle” of New York City under Mayor Bloomberg. As New Yorkers know all too well, the mayor came into office claiming that he could fix the city school system without spending any more than the current budget. He persuaded the state legislature to give him total control of the public schools. He controls a rubber-stamp board, which compliantly does whatever he wants, regardless of the wishes of parents, teachers, students, and communities. Year after year, the city’s test scores went up and up, until 2010 when the State Education Department admitted that it had lowered the passing mark each year. The city’s gains collapsed overnight, the achievement gap went back to where it had been eight years earlier, but the Mayor never admitted that the boasting was in error. There is a bit less touting of the miracle, although now he and his employees boast about a rising graduation rate, never acknowledging that 80% of the city’s graduates who enter local community colleges require remediation in basic skills.

Oh, and the budget doubled during the mayor’s reign of total control.

The public was not fooled. Polls now show that the mayor gets negative ratings on his education record, and that most want a different arrangement under the next mayor. The public doesn’t really like authoritarian rule and, despite the PR, knows that it has not gone well. Yet the mayor continues to close school after school, 24 just days ago, never recognizing that closing schools is an admission of the failure of his policies.

This is background for the lovely email I received overnight, which was a comment in response to “Who is Reading My Blog”:

Diane I´m writing from São Paulo, Brazil. Your work is extremely useful for us because most of these bad ideas that are being used in the United States, like standardized testing and merit pay are being used in several states and cities in Brazil. There is a bizarre fetish for the educational accomplishments of Mayor Bloomberg among Brazilian journalists and policy makers, there was even a newspaper columnist that suggested that bad teachers should be replaced by Khan Academy videos(That´s seriously). The state of São Paulo even mandated that all teachers, even P.E and Arts, should have worked with basic writing, reading and math for a bimester. States are even hiring these expensive consulting firms from the United States to provide solutions. Your writing and your interviews allowed me to see things that I never noted on all these ideas about testing and merit pay, it opened a new window to me. Few Brazilian teachers can read in English, but there are lots of teachers noting your writings here. You are the best, I love you. 
Categories Global Education Reform Movement (GERM)
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