The Liberian government is close to signing an agreement with private, for-profit corporations to provide education.
The teachers’ union called on the government to consult with all concerned parties before agreeing to privatize and outsource the nation’s schools.
As we have seen in earlier communiques (see here and here), Western corporations are focused on Africa as fertile territory for low-cost, for-profit education, using ill-trained teachers who read from a script.
Last week, NPR had a story about how “dumb” our students are, compared to those in other countries. The story title said that our high school graduates are on par with high school dropouts elsewhere on international tests.
For myself, I always wonder how critics can say in one breath that we live in the greatest nation in the world, and in the next breath say that we have the worst schools and dumbest students in the world. This bizarre logic then leads to the rephormer claim that we must cut the budget for public schools and push for the transfer of funds to religious schools (not known for teaching STEM simubjects) or to brand-new charters run by corporations or amateurs. You might think that only a knucklehead could believe in such truly foolish ideas but our major foundations–Gates, Walton, Broad, Arnold, Helmsley, and others–relentlessly push this line of baloney.
One reader referred to the story and blamed “bad” teachers. Another reader who is both teacher and parent, responded here:
“Let me give you a different perspective, assuming you are willing to listen.
“All schools are not “failing.” I worked years in industry (high tech) and can assure you, on a aggregate level, America’s graduates far exceed the capability of most other countries. I can’t count the number of H1bs I hired that, while good employees, lacked the adaptability and critical thinking required to solve problems. In those countries that ARE on par with us, they support their schools, respect and value teachers, and believe in both a strong college OR vocational pathway. Are some schools “failing”? Sure, but the reasons rarely have to do with teacher competence.
“Now I teach math. So you are free to blame us evil math teachers for your child’s struggle. I’ve heard it all before. Here’s the reality. I teach students who are “high risk” in math. Often, I battle a accumulation of years of external issues – poverty, health problems, learning challenges, disinterested parents, violence, drugs, mental health – the list goes on. I have never abandoned a student, but many parents have. Politicians blame teachers, but then cut social programs, employment opportunities, and health programs. Business complains, but then wiggles out of financially supporting schools, ships good jobs overseas, and pushes job training onto schools. Keep in mind, too, that k-12 works to retain and teach ALL students. Post secondary operates by screening out and eliminating students. Very different missions.
“The students do lack various math skills. I see seniors unable to add fractions trying to solve trig problems. One common thread in math illiteracy is these students are reluctant learners and avoid math. Math is not sesame street. It takes careful study and practice. I can make it “entertaining” and I’ll try my best with a 150+ student roster to “differentiate” and individually reach out to each student, but America does not want great teachers, only inexpensive ones.
“I am also a parent of a struggling student. Unlike you, I took responsibility from kindergarten for his learning. I followed his progress and alphabet soup of diagnoses. I didn’t just sit back and blame teachers, I actively worked with teachers. I learned about new subjects to help him through school. I reached out and showed interest. I even lost a job focusing on my kids’ well being. Were all teachers perfect? No, they are human. But I made it work. My kid is going to college. He still struggles, but the journey doesn’t end with some kids when they become adults. Think before unfairly indicting a profession.
California BATS are calling for an investigation of the Gulen charter chain. They invite people to sign their petition. Their post includes a list of Gulen schools, which have different names in different states but are allied with a reclusive Turkish imam who lives in the Poconos. Fethullah Gulen is a controversial leader of a political movement in Turkey, which is opposed by the Turkish government.
There are 155 Gulen schools, which makes the chain either the largest or second to the largest charter chain (after KIPP) in the nation. Gulen schools in certain states have been investigated by the FBI. They have paid for legislators to take trips to Turkey. The boards of their charters typically consist of Turkish nationals.
Some people hesitate to criticize Gulen schools for fear of appearing anti-Muslim.
But this makes impossible to have a rational discussion of the wisdom of turning over public schools to a chain controlled by foreign nationals. Would it make sense if Russian citizens began operating tax-supported charter schools in the US? Or Ecuadorians? Or Cambodians? Or any other nation?
It seems we are outsourcing public education to citizens of another nation, with no public debate about it.
Why does it matter? The primary purpose of public education is not college-and-career readiness. It is not getting high test scores. It is not global competitiveness. The primary purpose of public education is to prepare young people for citizenship in American society. That’s why taxpayers are responsible for them. Can schools operated by foreign nationals teach the essentials of American citizenship?
If foreign nationals want to open private schools in the US, that’s fine. If parents want their children to attend those schools or schools in other nations, that’s their right. They will pay for it, because it is not a public responsibility to send children to a lycee or a gesampschule.
But it is strange indeed to see a chain of schools operated by foreign nationals replacing a community’s public schools and paid for with taxpayer dollars. Public schools should be integrally connected to the society and communities they serve. The Gulen phenomenon is puzzling.
The schools in England are experiencing a “brain drain,” not unlike schools in the United States, and the reasons are not all that different. It is not just the pay, although low pay compared to other professions doesn’t help. It is the degradation of the profession by the government and the media. More teachers are leaving the schools than are graduating from teacher preparation institutions.
Francis Gilbert, a lecturer in secondary English at Goldsmiths, University of London, writes that:
Over the past decade, teachers have had to endure constant, chaotic policy change. These have included changes to school structures, through the introduction of academies and free schools, changes to the curriculum and exams, changes to the inspection framework, changes to policies for children with special needs, and much more.
Central government has put unprecedented pressure on schools to attain “top” exam results, with those schools failing to achieve certain benchmarks threatened with takeover or closure.
The issue here is that even the government itself has pointed out that many of these exams are “not fit for purpose”: they do not lead to productive learning in the classroom, but rather mean that teachers are forced to teach to the test.
The high-stakes nature of England’s current testing system means that teachers I’ve worked with and interviewed feel oppressed by the mechanistic ways in which they are obliged to assess students. The bureaucracy involved in creating the data needed for assessment can be very time-consuming.
This pressure comes to a head with visits from the schools inspectorate Ofsted. Teachers often work in fear that they will be judged as failing by the inspectorate or even by someone acting out the role of inspector – school senior leadership teams frequently run “Mocksteds” whereby teachers have to undergo a “mock” Ofsted, usually run by senior staff.
Government policies have encouraged candidates to see the profession as a short-term career option. Teach First is a classic example of this: the very name “Teach First” suggests that its graduate trainees should try teaching “first” and then move on to something better.
“Teach First” is the British version of TFA. Its recruits are likelier to leave the classroom more often than a traditionally trained teacher, who is in teaching as a career.
He adds:
There are other pressures too, and the expectations of parents and students have become increasingly unrealistic. Education has become marketised: teachers are expected by the government, parents and many students to be more like “customer service agents” delivering a product – a good grade for a student – rather than entering into a meaningful dialogue with learners and their carers about the best ways to learn.
Parents and students have come to expect “results on a plate” and can become very angry with teachers who “don’t deliver”. Over the last few years, pedagogues have endured rising numbers of unwarranted complaints from parents and students. I know of a brilliant, experienced teacher who was verbally abused and threatened at a recent parents’ evening by an angry mother who felt that this teacher should have “got” a better result for her child. The onus has shifted away from students to work for themselves and instead has been placed on the teacher to do the work for the student.
The pundits have taken to referring to teachers as “lazy” and “incompetent.”
It all sounds sadly familiar.
This is the work of GERM, the Global Education Reform Movement, the oligarch’s effort to turn schooling into a free market and to reduce the status of teaching so that costs may be cut by pushing out experienced teachers.
This is foolish, stupid, mad. The corporate reformers have bamboozled the public, and they are destroying education. No teachers, no education. A parade of new teachers, inferior education.
William Doyle recently returned from a Fulbright year in Finland, and he spent his year studying education. His own child attended a Finnish school.
He wrote about some of the lessons he learned in this article that appeared in the Hechinger Report.
Here is the big takeaway:
If you want results, try doing the opposite of what American “education reformers” think we should do in classrooms.
Instead of control, competition, stress, standardized testing, screen-based schools and loosened teacher qualifications, try warmth, collaboration, and highly professionalized, teacher-led encouragement and assessment.
When American reformers refer to “personalized learning,” they mean that every child should have his/her own laptop. Finnish teachers use the concept of “personalized learning,” but they mean person-to-person learning:
While the school has the latest technology, there isn’t a tablet or smartphone in sight, just a smart board and a teacher’s desktop.
Screens can only deliver simulations of personalized learning, this is the real thing, pushed to the absolute limit.
Instead of walking in lines, remaining silent, blowing a bubble instead of speaking, and maintaining perfect order, as our reformers prefer:
Children are allowed to slouch, wiggle and giggle from time to time if they want to, since that’s what children are biologically engineered to do, in Finland, America, Asia and everywhere else.
Teachers in Finland have the freedom to teach and are encouraged to innovate:
Here, as in any other Finnish school, teachers are not strait-jacketed by bureaucrats, scripts or excessive regulations, but have the freedom to innovate and experiment as teams of trusted professionals….
Children at this and other Finnish public schools are given not only basic subject instruction in math, language and science, but learning-through-play-based preschools and kindergartens, training in second languages, arts, crafts, music, physical education, ethics, and, amazingly, as many as four outdoor free-play breaks per day, each lasting 15 minutes between classes, no matter how cold or wet the weather is. Educators and parents here believe that these breaks are a powerful engine of learning that improves almost all the “metrics” that matter most for children in school – executive function, concentration and cognitive focus, behavior, well-being, attendance, physical health, and yes, test scores, too.
But is there something about Finland that makes it inappropriate as a point of comparison? Does it succeed because of a homogeneous population? Doyle says no:
There are also those who would argue that this kind of approach wouldn’t work in America’s inner city schools, which instead need “no excuses,” boot-camp drilling-and-discipline, relentless standardized test prep, Stakhanovian workloads and stress-and-fear-based “rigor.”
But what if the opposite is true?
What if many of Finland’s educational practices are not cultural quirks or non-replicable national idiosyncrasies — but are instead bare-minimum global best practices that all our children urgently need, especially those children in high-poverty schools?
The BBC reports that growing numbers of Chinese children enroll in private schools to escape the testing pressures and to experience creative learning.
Sixty Chinese students studied for three weeks in Tacoma public schools. They practiced their English, but they had an unusual experience: they learned independence and creativity.
“In America, the classes are very open, and every person has a different idea,” noted 15-year-old Liu Hui Yu, who adopted an American name, Jennifer, for her visit. “It’s free. I like it.”
“I think the greatest thing I learned in America is their way of studying,” added her friend Jiao Xiao Yuan, also known as Caroline.
“They are not studying for a test, all the way around. They really read books, and they write what they feel about the book.”
Read more here: http://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/education/article61799182.html#emlnl=Afternoon_Newsletter#storylink=cpy
Chris Tienkin, a professor at Seton Hall University, analyzed the data from the PISA international tests and concludes that they say more about American society than about American schools.
“Reform” policy makers like Arne Duncan and rightwing pundits like Michelle Rhee have used international scores to criticize and demean public schools and teachers. This tactic began with “A Nation at Risk,” which used the scores to predict the imminent decline of the American economy. It didn’t happen, of course, but the naysayers never stopped blaming the schools for their threat to our future, even as our economy boomed.
The biggest problem for our society is poverty, which affects test scores. But the test scores are the least of what matters. Inequality and poverty threaten our future and blight the lives of millions of Americans. The lucky few live in splendor; the desperate poor live in squalor. Public schools are not responsible for the disparity. At this point in history, the blame lies with the politics of greed.
Andy Hargreaves is a professor at Boston College whose work has won wide recognition, including the 2015 Grawemeyer Award.
In this article, he contrasts the schools of Scotland–which value teacher professionalism and collaboration–with the schools of England, where conservative ideologues have imposed the “business capital model.”
He writes:
Scotland values a strong state educational system run by 32 local authorities that is staffed by well-trained and highly valued professionals who stay and grow in a secure and rewarding job. Teachers serve others, for most or all of their working life, in a cooperative profession that supports them to do this to the best of their abilities.
England no longer values these things. About half of its schools are now outside local authority control. England offers a business capital model that invests in education to yield short-term profits and keep down costs through shorter training, weakened security and tenure, and keeping salaries low by letting people go before they cost too much.
By comparison, Scotland models what is called professional capital: bringing in skilled as well as smart people; training them rigorously in university settings connected to practical environments; giving them time and support to collaborate on curriculum and other matters; and paying them to develop their leadership and their careers so that they can make effective decisions together and deliver better outcomes for young people.
Hargreaves writes that the business model is in retreat: The evidence of high-performing nations such as Canada, Singapore and Finland hasn’t been on its side, and countries like Sweden that followed the free-school business model, and saw their results collapse, are reversing course.
The business model works on three assumptions, none of which improves education or teaching:
First: Teachers are already paid too much. When given the chance, cut their salaries.
Second: Professional development is a waste of time. Better to rely on incentives and sanctions that professional growth.
Third: (Echoing our own Michelle Rhee) Collaboration is greatly overrated. Better to have teachers compete.
Hargreaves asks:
So what is it to be for England: the vanguard or the guard’s van of teacher change? With or without free schools, academies and chains, where does England want its teaching profession to go next – to be one that can make high-quality judgments in an increasingly complex environment, or to be a standardised occupation that is flexible and cheap?
Sounds familiar to American readers, who have seen the same failed and noxious policies imposed here by corporate “reformers,” who don’t give a hoot about teacher morale.
Robin Alexander, head of the Cambridge Primary Review and prominent British educator, learned that the conservative Education Minister wants to bring a US charter leader to run the British school inspectorate, called Ofsted. He was not happy. He knows what corporate reform is, and he doesn’t want their leaders in Britain.
Alexander writes:
“A check on the touted names makes it clear that the search is less about talent than ideology. The reputation of every US candidate in which the Secretary of State is said to be interested rests on their messianic zeal for the universalisation of charter schools (the US model for England’s academies), against public schools (the equivalent of our LA-maintained schools), and against the teaching unions. This, then, is the mission that the government wants the new Chief Inspector to serve.
“Too bad that the majority of England’s primary schools are not, or not yet, academies. Too bad that Ofsted, according to its website, is supposed to be ‘independent and impartial’; and that Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Education, Children’s Services and Skills is required to report to Parliament, not to the political party in power; and that he/she must do so without fear or favour, judging the performance of all schools, whether maintained or academies, not by their legal status or political allegiance but by the standards they achieve and the way they are run. Too bad that on the question of the relative efficacy of academies and maintained schools the jury is still out, though Ofsted reports that while some truly outstanding schools are academies, many are not. And too bad that the teaching unions are legally-constituted organisations that every teacher has a right to join and that, by the way, they have an excellent track record in assembling reliable evidence on what works and what does not.
“When we consider the paragons across the pond who are reportedly being considered or wooed in Morgan’s search for Michael Wilshaw’s successor, mere ideology descends into dangerous folly. One of them runs a charter school chain in which the brutal treatment of young children in the name of standards has been captured on a video that has gone viral. Another leads a business, recently sold by the Murdoch empire (yes, he’s there too), that having failed to generate profits in digital education is now trying to make money from core curriculum and testing. A third is the union-bashing founder of a charter school chain that has received millions of dollars from right-wing foundations and individuals but whose dubious classroom practices have been exposed not just as morally unacceptable but, in terms of standards, educationally ineffective. A fourth, yet again a charter chain leader, has published a proselytising set text for the chain’s teachers tagged ‘the Bible of pedagogy for no-excuses charter schools’ that, according to critics, makes teaching uniform, shallow, simplistic and test-obsessed. Finally, the most prominent member of the group has been feted by American and British politicians alike for ostensibly turning round one of America’s biggest urban school systems by closing schools in the teeth of parental protest, imposing a narrow curriculum and high stakes tests, and making teacher tenure dependent on student scores; yet after eight years, fewer than a quarter of the system’s students have reached the ‘expected standard’ in literacy and numeracy.
“As head of Ofsted, every one of these would be a disaster. As for the US charter school movement for which such heroic individuals serve as models and cheerleaders, we would do well to pay less attention to ministerial hype and more to the evidence. In England we are familiar with occasional tales of financial irregularity and faltering accountability, and of DfE using Ofsted inspections to bludgeon academy-light communities into submission. But this is as nothing compared with the widely-documented American experience of lies, fraud, corruption, rigged student enrolment, random teacher hiring and firing and student misery in some US school districts and charters, all of which is generating growing parental and community opposition. Witness the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools and this week’s nationwide ‘walk-in’ in defence of public education. Yet the culture that American parents, teachers, children and communities are combining to resist is the one the UK government wishes, through Ofsted, to impose. Ministers believe in homework: have they done their own?”
Diane Ravitch's blog 