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Mercedes Schneider: Betsy DeVos, I Want to Reform My Classroom!

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2017 //
34

Mercedes Schneider has listened to Betsy DeVos’s complaints about the public schools, the most common of which is that it is time to change. Big change. Real change.

DeVos recently complained that students were sitting around in desks, watching the teacher, and that is so old-timey. She wants something new, really new.

Of course, the classes in the religious schools she loves are also sitting at desks watching the teacher, but let’s put that aside.

Mercedes says she doesn’t mind the desks all that much.

She writes:

As DeVos continues, one senses that she believes desks in rows preclude education being “organized around the needs of students.” Of course, if rows of desks were the result of a pervasive voucher program, then they would be parent-empowered rows of desks, and that would surely vindicate that desk configuration.

I was in my desks-in-rows classroom today, even though it is a Saturday, because I needed to input grades in my computer in order to begin next week without being swamped. Last weekend, much of this past week, and some of this weekend I have spent and will spend time grading essays.

I teach English. Time-consuming essay grading is part of my responsibility to my students, just as it was 100 years ago. (I’m fairly certain that the computerized grading component emerged at least a decade or two later.)

I also spent hours meeting with each student individually to discuss each student’s grade on that essay assignment and to strategize improvements for the next essay, which will be even longer and more complex. I’m not sure if such consultation happened 100 years ago. I do know that my father (born 99 years ago) and my aunt (born 108 years ago) finished school at the eighth grade, which was common in the 1920s-1930s in New Orleans.

Indeed, the amount of time and effort it takes for me to grade a set of essays for my 141 high school seniors does have me siding with DeVos to rethink schools.

But now she is thinking that DeVos is on to something big with that desk issue.

Schneider wants a Harkness table in her classroom. She thinks there should be a Harness table in every high school classroom.

What is a Harkness table?

That is a table where a teacher sits with 12 students and discusses issues. This innovation began at the exclusive Exeter Academy, where Chester Finn Jr. was a student.

Schneider recalls a letter she wrote Finn in 2013:


Yes, Betsy, I would willingly surrender my 28 student desks for one Harkness table.

A wonderful byproduct of this desk-surrendering plan would be the reduced class size that would, in turn, cut my essay-grading burden by more than half.

We are on our way to solving multiple problems.

In my 2013 post, I called my plan the Exeter Plan, named for Finn’s multi-generational, exclusive private school alma mater, Phillips Exeter Academy, which started using the Harkness method in 1930.

(DeVos would surely forgive the multi-generational aspect of Finn attendance at a school with the same seating configuration across those generations since the school is a private school, which she prefers above all.)

Still, there are some complications, not the least of which is what would become of the students who don’t secure a seat at the table. That’s one of those old-fashioned hang-ups of traditional public schools: They have an obligation to educate all students– the public. They’ve been doing so for generations, just as private schools have been operating via selective admissions for generations.

So what if it is expensive? It would be a very productive change! Why should we teach 28 (or 35 or more) students in old-fashioned desks when it is so much more innovative to teach 12 students at one table?

Categories Class size, Education Reform, Innovation, Teachers and Teaching

Arthur Camins: Want Innovation? Try Equitable, Integrated Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2017 //
22

Arthur Camins recently retired after a distinguished career in science, engineering, and the study of innovation.

He has an inspired idea for innovation in education: try equitable, integrated public schools.

He writes:

Secretary of Education Betsy Devos says that students in the US attend schools that are a “mundane malaise that dampens dreams, dims horizons and denies futures.” She accuses public schools of being stuck in the past. She claims to want innovation.

Miriam-Webster defines innovation as follows;

1: the introduction of something new

2: a new idea, method, or device: novelty

DeVos and her allies want to give public funds to parents to send their children to any public, charter or private schools, whether or not they are religious and whether or not they discriminate by race, religion or sexual orientation.

If enacted, her policies would mean returning to a time when schools were more segregated by race, religion, and class. That is not new or novel. In fact, it is stuck in the past. Segregation is not innovative. It is old school.

DeVos believes that individual parents are in the best position to choose a school that is best for their child, rather than democratically elected representatives. That unlimited choice would return us to a time when individual parents’ inclinations and, yes, their prejudices were prioritized over the needs of the communities in which they live and over the needs of the nation.

For several decades after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court Decision in 1954 public schools in the US became more integrated. However, that trend has reversed. Public schools are becoming more segregated, not just by race but by socioeconomic status as well. In other words, it is becoming more likely that student will attend schools with children who are more similar to one another than not. That trend may satisfy the narrow interests and proclivities of some, but it is destructive to the nation.

Segregated schools are destructive to the nation not just because the inherent inequality of separate education shortchanges particular categories of individual students, but because it deprives all students of the benefit of learning to live across differences in our unalterably diverse country. Integrated schools are not only a moral and democratic imperative but an economic one too. Research indicates that diverse groups are more productive and creative and make better decisions. Learning to participate in diverse groups should start in school not on the job….

The idea of mediating racial and socioeconomic school segregation is not new. But, doing something substantive about it would be innovative.

Here are several policies that promote the old, but still vital idea and value of diversity and equity. Isolated boutique enactments are not innovative. Widespread systemic implementation would be.

Stop funding local public schools primarily through property taxes. Since communities have significantly varied tax bases, this is inherently inequitable. Instead, shift school funding to graduated state and personal federal income, capital gains, and corporate taxes.

Incentivize more integrated neighborhoods through changes in lending and zoning practices. It was, in fact, federal policies that help to limit integrated and promote segregated neighborhoods. It is time to reverse that deplorable history.

Since addressing inequity is necessarily a long-term effort, prioritize funding to schools with the greatest percentages of children from low-incomes and traditionally underrepresented groups.

Increase federal funding, so that rather than taking from well endowed, middle-class schools, funding for the rest can be increased.

Increase federal funding for special education, so that meeting the requirements of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act does not come at the expense of other children.
Provide nutritional, social, health, and economic support to children and their families, so that all children can engage fully in learning.

Invest in infrastructure and research jobs with decent wages so that adults are employed and provide stability at home.

Promote positive social and emotional learning practices in all schools so that all students are known, valued and respected.

Fund professional learning and formative assessment practices so that teachers continue to learn how to best engage and address the learning needs of all students.

None of these ideas are new. However, as a nation, we have only tinkered at designing solutions. We are a nation of interdependent communities and states. Systemic efforts to address inequity have always been limited not by what is possible, but by the political constraints driven by economic elites. The self-proclaimed realists among the empowered condescendingly claim, “We cannot afford all that.” What they really mean is, “I don’t want to pay for it.”

It’s time to give priority to the needs of the majority of Americans. More integrated, well-funded schools would benefit everyone. That would be innovative.

Categories Equity, Funding, Innovation, School Choice, Segregation , Racial Isolation and Integration

Gary Rubinstein: “I Taught at Houston’s XQ Super School” (A MUST READ!)

By dianeravitch
September 23, 2017 //
26

This is one of Gary Rubinstein’s best posts ever.

He watched Laurene Powell Jobs’ extravaganza about her efforts to redesign the American high school into XQ Super Schools. The one where she bought time on four networks.

The one where celebrities said again and again that high schools have not changed in 100 years; Gary does a good job of shredding that myth. Yes, high schools have changed in the past 100 years, but some things should never change and will be found in high schools all over the world.

He notes that the show has had no effect. It seems to have disappeared as soon as it was on the air.

But it didn’t disappear for him because he realized that he taught at one of the XQ Super Schools, a high school in Houston that allegedly was a failing school that was miraculously transformed.

Gary shows that it was not the nightmare school that the producers claimed it to be, nor has it had the miraculous transformation that the show now boasts about.

It was a good school when he was there, even though there was a gang population in the ninth grade.

What he discovers is that the school now has a charter school on campus, which apparently serves as a dumping ground for the kids who are not going to graduate. The regular school raised its statistics by pushing out the bad kids.

No miracle there!

But the school does have a really nice garden. That’s new. That’s good. Is that what caused the claimed spike in test scores? Not likely.

He writes:

One thing that this program definitely accomplished is product placement. It seems that one feature of innovative high schools is that students use a lot of laptops and it seems like most of those laptops are Apple products. While iPads were once considered to be something that was going to be a big part of education, the thing most schools are actually using are a type of laptop called a Chromebook, which is an inexpensive Google product. Since the kids in these schools are using Apple laptops, maybe one purpose of this show was to help with Apple’s competition with Google for the education market.

One thing we did not see a lot of in this was overt teacher bashing. I suppose this is why Randi Weingarten attended and tweeted about how wonderful a program this is. Now even though there wasn’t overt teacher bashing, there was some less direct bashing like the part where celebrities were asked what they wish they learned in high school. Based on their answers, the only conclusion is that their teachers must not have taught those things to them very well.

This program didn’t really seem to resonate with anybody and most people on both sides of the education reform wars have pretty much forgotten about it already. It was a colossal waste of money and shows that being rich doesn’t mean that you necessarily have the right to dictate education policy.

I think that it is not an accident that there was no mention of evil unions or miracle charter schools or school choice in this program. My sense is that reformers realize that most of the talking points from Waiting For Superman don’t work anymore. The public has wised up. They don’t believe as much that teacher’s unions are the problem or that charter schools are the solution. So this program is an attempt to get a new rationale that the public can believe and get behind whatever reforms the reformers want to try, which of course will be more union busting and charters and vouchers. So the new thing is that schools haven’t evolved much in the past 100 years and that’s a problem. All that matters is that the public believes there is some problem, whatever it is. It doesn’t need to be the unions, but it must be something so the 100 year thing will likely be repeated a lot of over the next decade as the new villain for them to save us from.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Education Reform, Houston, Innovation, Privatization
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