Michael Moore visited Finland with a camera crew to learn about its education system.
How could a nation post high test scores on international tests when its schools emphasize creativity, play, physical activity, and the arts and ignores standardized testing?
Watch his video and see what you think.
Reader Jack Covey, a teacher in Los Angeles, sent the following comment to me:
Lady Hale is the Chief Judge of Britain’s highest court, the court that unanimously rebuked Prime Minister Boris Johnson for trying to suspend Parliament for five weeks so it could not discuss or delay his intention to leave the EU on October 31 (Brexit).
This is a delightful profile of a very accomplished woman, the daughter of two schoolteachers.
When the full weight of Britain’s Supreme Court came down on Tuesday against the suspension of Parliament, it was dropped like a hammer on Prime Minister Boris Johnson by the first woman to serve as the court’s president: Lady Hale.
In calm, clipped, riveting tones, she read the damning judgment from a sheaf of papers ruling on the act of suspension, called “prorogation.” “The decision to advise Her Majesty to prorogue Parliament was unlawful because it had the effect of frustrating the ability of Parliament to carry out its constitutional functions without reasonable justification,” the judge said.
She added: “The prorogation was void and of no effect — Parliament has not been prorogued.”
There were gasps in the court and tears from the lawyers who had argued the case, according to the BBC. Superlatives erupted on television and social media, as visibly stunned journalists delivered the news:
“Unprecedented.”
“Extraordinary.”
“Gobsmacked.”
“Speechless.”
“No one expected this.”
Minutes later, “Lady Hale” became a trending term on Twitter. Who is Lady Hale?…The appointment in 2017 of Brenda Haleas president of the Supreme Court was a landmark decision: She was the first woman to hold the position, just as she had been the first woman appointed to Britain’s highest court.
An academic, legal reformer and feminist, the judge took the office at 72 after being described as “one of the most forthright and liberalizing influences on the court.”…
Born in Yorkshire, England, to two teachers, both of whom became school principals, she attended Girton College at Cambridge University, where as a law student she graduated at the top of her class in 1966, “one of six women in a year of well over a hundred men,” according to British Vogue….
In 2004, Brenda Hale became Baroness Hale, Britain’s first female law lord, as the country’s most senior judges were then known. On her appointment, she chose a coat of arms with the Latin motto “Omnia Feminae Aequissimae”: “Women are equal to everything.”
The blogger Wrench in the Gears worries here (in a 2018 post) about the MacArthur Foundation’s Grant of $100 Million to Sesame Street, intended to help the children of Syrian refugees. The “help” these children get will be delivered by technology, she says, not by humans.
As it happens, I was one of a large number of judges in this competition, though I did not review the Sesame Street proposal. The proposals I read were about developing and distributing sustainable crops, or bringing medical care to vast numbers of people. I was very impressed with the quality of the proposals I read.
She writes:
Sesame Street is an iconic brand that embodies humor, acceptance, and humanity. Who doesn’t love a muppet? So, on December 20 when the MacArthur Foundationannounced they were giving Sesame Workshop and the International Rescue Committee $100 million to educate young children from displaced Syrian families and help them deal with “toxic stress,” most people were thrilled. While the optics were great, I’m here to tell you these muppets are definitely not the type of “friends” Syrian refugee children need.
How will Sesame Workshop and the IRC spend the MacArthur award money? Much of it will be spent on educational technology:
Governments all over the world are now adopting policies that employ “innovative finance” to outsource education and other critical public services to private profit-extracting partnerships. These public-private partnerships are often supported by “philanthropic” partners who are now free to make “mission related” for-profit investments. Enormous and expensive data-collection is linked to their outcomes-based contracts. For more information see this post, Gambling On Our Futures: Big Data, Global Finance and Digital Life. When one hears “pay for success,” “social impact bonds,” and “what works,” realize that this is what is actually meant.
Sesame Workshop’s program with Syrian refugees is an example of how foundations are paving the way for education to be reinvented as an exercise in data-driven, behavior modification. Over the course of this five-year project, traumatized families will be used to refine scaleable online education and behavioral treatment models that generate data and profit for private interests. These efforts will be subsidized by foundations and made possible with assistance from complicit non-profit actors. The products developed from the digital labor of these children will be deployed not only in future “humanitarian” efforts, but also among the growing ranks of children living in poverty in the United States and other countries. The $100 million was not a charitable award; it was a business investment.
These muppets are not our friends. They are merely puppets whose strings are being pulled by predatory impact investors and Silicon Valley executives. This is not a “feel-good” story. The MacArthur Foundation should be ashamed of their treatment of these children and for using plush characters to provide cover for a repugnant agenda.
In this era of US imperialism and late-stage capitalism it seems the monster at the end of this book is in fact the non-profit that opens a door and allows venture capitalists to harm a million and a half vulnerable children. I hope Sesame Workshop will reconsider their direction, disavow their ties to education technology, and instead use MacArthur’s $100 million to provide the non-digital human services Syria’s refugee children so desperately need. I have to believe Jim Henson would want that.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation issued an annual report called the “Goalskeepers Report 2019,” signed by Bill & Melinda Gates.
The theme is “Examining Inequality.”
It is a useful compilation of data about inequality from around the world, focused mainly on Africa.
There are two things that really bother me, however.
First of all, Bill Gates has never admitted or apologized for the damage he has done to American education by his munificent support for high-stakes testing, evaluating teachers by test scores, Common Core, and charter schools. His initiatives have wreaked havoc, demoralized teachers, harmed schools and communities, and he never says “I was wrong.”
The second thing that bothers me is that I do not believe that Bill & Melinda Gates wrote the report to which they affixed their names. It is unethical to claim authorship of something you did not write yourself.
Finland’s educational success became an international sensation when the nation’s students unexpectedly topped the PISA test a few years back. The Finns really don’t care much about rankings and standardized tests, and they were as surprised as everyone else. Thousands of visitors came to Finland to find out what they were doing. Then Finland slipped out of first place, and the gossip mill began spinning out theories about why Finland was losing its luster. Finland still doesn’t care about rankings or test scores.
In this post, Finnish expert Pasi Sahlberg and Finnish educator Peter Johnson explain what Finland is doing and what it is not doing to improve its schools (not its test scores).
They identify the three cornerstones of Finnish education:
*Education systems and schools shouldn’t be managed like business corporations where tough competition, measurement-based accountability and performance-determined pay are common principles. Instead, successful education systems rely on collaboration, trust, and collegial responsibility in and between schools.
*The teaching profession shouldn’t be perceived as a technical, temporary craft that anyone with a little guidance can do. Successful education systems rely on continuous professionalization of teaching and school leadership that requires advanced academic education, solid scientific and practical knowledge, and continuous on-the-job training.
*The quality of education shouldn’t be judged by the level of literacy and numeracy test scores alone. Successful education systems are designed to emphasize whole-child development, equity of education outcomes, well being, and arts, music, drama and physical education as important elements of curriculum.
They then debunk the myths and misperceptions that have been bruited about.
Unlike the U.S., where billions of dollars are wasted in efforts to switch control of schools from public to private, Finnish educators are trying to work through the problems of building a curriculum and pedagogy for the 21st century–and beyond.
No one has been more effective at describing and fighting the spread of GERM than Pasi Sahlberg, the Finnish educator now working to reform education standardization in Australia.
I recently visited Pasi and his family in Croatia. He and his Croatian-born wife have two beautiful children, ages 7 and 3. The boys are tri-lingual (English, Finnish, and Croatian). The older boy is learning Chinese.They have no television. The children play.
Read Pasi’s classic book Finnish Lessons, which demonstrates that there is a better way to educate children and prepare teachers, and his recent book with William Doyle, Let the Children Play.
Unbeknownst to Pasi, some musical talents put his ideas into song.
It is only a few minutes. Watch and enjoy.
You can also watch Pasi’s wonderful presentation at the NPE national conference in Indianapolis in 2018, where he used this song in his talk.
African education leaders spoke out against privatization of their schools, which means Western corporations and taking control of their future. Privatization, they know, is the new colonialism. You can assume that a few well-chosen local leaders have been hired to argue on behalf of privatization.
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Steven Singer wrote this last year, but it remains pertinent and on the money. He says that there is a narrative spun by Disrupters that American schools are in “crisis” and are “failing.” He says this is baloney, or bologna, whichever spelling you prefer.
Singer says that American public schools are among the best in the world.
He writes:
Critics argue that our scores on international tests don’t justify such a claim. But they’re wrong before you even look at the numbers. They’re comparing apples to pears. You simply can’t compare the United States to countries that leave hundreds of thousands of rural and poor children without any education whatsoever. The Bates Motel may have the softest pillows in town, but it’s immediately disqualified because of the high chance of being murdered in the shower.
No school system of this size anywhere in the world exceeds the United States in providing free access to education for everyone. And that, alone, makes us one of the best.
It doesn’t mean our system is problem free. There are plenty of ways we could improve. We’re still incredibly segregated by race and class. Our funding formulas are often regressive and inadequate. Schools serving mostly poor students don’t have nearly the resources of those serving rich students. But at least at the very outset what we’re trying to do is better than what most of the world takes on. You can’t achieve equity if it isn’t even on the menu.
The important thing to know about the international test scores is that we were never #1. Never. When the first international test of mathematics was offered in the mid-1960s, we came in last.
What holds us back is our high rates of child poverty. If we reduced poverty, we would improve our schools because children would arrive in school ready to learn, and would not lose days of instruction due to illness and lack of medical attention.
The biggest problem in American education, aside from our national indifference to the well-being of students, is that we have a crazy federal law that makes test scores the goal of education. That’s backwards. Test scores are supposed to be a measure, not a goal.
We should aim to be more like Finland, which not only has high test scores without test prep, but has been rated the happiest country in the world. Less testing, more time for the arts and more attention to creativity and divergent thinking. Teachers with autonomy and a love of teaching. Students encouraged to do their best but not measured by standardized tests. You know where Finland got these ideas? They borrowed them from the U.S., and we forgot them and went for standardization. As Albert Einstein said many decades ago, standardization is for automobiles, not for people.
Thanks to Leonie Haimson for sending along this paper. The “academy” concept began under a Conservative government that believed private enterprise was infinitely wiser than public anything. Corporations and wealthy individuals were encouraged to “buy” control of schools by putting up a large sum. Things seem to going swimmingly for the idea. This is a small excerpt. When I was part of the Koret Task Force at the rightwing Hoover Institution, we journeyed to England as a group to learn about this example of privatization in action.
The paper contains a valuable review of “related party transactions,” that is, financial self-dealing in the private entities that receive public funding in the U.S. and Great Britain.
Charter Schools, Academy Schools, and Related-Party Transactions: Same Scams, Different Countries
Preston C. Green III and Chelsea E. Connery
Academies were first introduced in 2000 as the City Academy Program. 34 City academies were to
replace locally run schools in urban areas that were deemed to be failing by the school inspection
body Ofsted, or that were underachieving. The Education Act 2002 permitted academies to open
outside of urban areas.
Eight years later, Parliament enacted the Academies Act 2010. This statute extended the academy
option, until then limited to struggling schools, to include successful schools at both the primary
and secondary levels. The government financed conversion costs and provided considerable
financial incentives to encourage schools to convert. The number of academies increased
dramatically as a result of these policy changes. In 2010, there were 203 academies throughout
England, all of them serving secondary schools with high proportions of disadvantaged students.40
As of September 2018, there were 8,177 academies, constituting 36% of England’s state funded
schools. About 66% of England’s secondary schools and 30% of its primary schools have achieved
academy status.
Diane Ravitch's blog 