Bad ideas travel fast. Britain has a conservative government, and its education minister is looking to the US to find a leader for OFSTED.
The Sunday Times, owned by Rupert Murdoch, says that the chief inspectorate should be a charter leader.
Eva Moskowitz? Chris Barbic? Joel Klein? Kevin Huffman? Michelle Rhee?
Take your pick.
Edward Fiske, former education editor of the New York Times, and Helen Ladd, distinguished professor of economics at Duke University, recently spent a month in London studying two successful low-income districts. Since they live in North Carolina, they were well aware of that state’s recent plunge into charter schools, vouchers, and a district composed of the state’s lowest performing schools.
They drew several lessons from what they saw. First, the schools were well funded.
But what impressed them most was the district-wide approach to school improvement.
They write:
“The power of districtwide strategies. Leaders in both Hackney and Tower Hamlets adopted areawide strategies to improve student outcomes. Rather than focusing on a handful of low-performing schools, they sought to strengthen the overall capacity of the borough to serve all children in the area. They established a culture of cooperation and mutual responsibility in which strong schools helped weaker ones, headteachers (principals) and teachers collaborated across schools and borough leaders were able to deploy resources flexibly and efficiently in order to minimize any systemic inequities.
“The area-wide approaches that we observed in London contrast sharply with school improvement strategies in the U.S. that focus on improving a few isolated schools while ignoring the broader needs of districts as a whole. Likewise, the London approach is antithetical to having charter schools function as independent entities with no stake in the overall success of the districts in which they are embedded.
“The concept of areawide reform strategies is gaining attention in the U.S. in the form of proposals that would put groups of struggling schools under centralized management. Analysis of the London Effect suggests that these will be successful only to the extent that they exist in geographically coherent areas united by a coherent vision shared by all relevant stakeholders. “Innovation zones” set up by local school boards as part of a districtwide strategy could fit this bill. “Achievement districts” consisting of a hodge podge of geographically disparate low-performing schools under state control most certainly would not.”
They were also impressed with the accountability system, which rely more on helpful inspection than on standardized testing. Also, they acknowledged the importance of programs tailored to help the children with the greatest needs.
Is North Carolina willing to learn from the lessons of London? Unfortunately, the North Carolina learns from ALEC, not research.
Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article60118256.html#storylink=cpy
William Doyle is a 2015-2016 Fulbright Scholar and award-winning New York Times bestselling author and TV producer from New York City.
I have seen the School of Tomorrow.
It is a place where children and teachers are safe and happy.
It is a school where children are encouraged to be children, to play, to daydream, to laugh, to struggle and fail, to assess themselves and each other, to question and learn.
It is a school where teachers test their students every day, not with low-quality standardized tests or faceless screens, but with constant face-to-face observations and teacher-designed assessments.
It is a school where teachers are highly trained, treasured and respected, and given the freedom to teach at their best.
It is a school where teachers collaborate and experiment with ways to help their students learn better.
It is a place where technology is the servant, not master.
It is a school where children are prepared for life, not only with the fundamentals of language, math and science, but with play, arts and crafts, drama, music, ethics, home skills, nature, physical activity, social and emotional support, warmth and encouragement.
It is part of a school system that delivers world-class educational results and educational equity to hundreds of thousands of children.
I have worked at this school. I have watched my own child learn and play there.
I have seen the school of tomorrow.
It is here today, on the top of the world, at the edge of Europe’s biggest national forest.
How did I, a lifelong New Yorker, wind up living on the edge of the Western world in Joensuu, Finland, the last, farthest-east major city in the EU before you hit the guard towers of the Russian border?
In 2012, while helping civil rights hero James Meredith write his memoir, we interviewed a panel of America’s greatest education experts and asked them for their ideas on improving America’s public schools.
One expert, the famed Professor Howard Gardner of the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, told us, “Learn from Finland, which has the most effective schools and which does just about the opposite of what we are doing in the United States.” After researching this unusual idea, I eventually decided I had to give my own now-eight-year old child a public school experience in what may be the most child-centered, most evidence-based, and most effective primary school system in the world.
As a Fulbright Scholar, I “embedded” myself in the Finnish public school system, and taught university courses on media and education at the University of Eastern Finland as a lecturer. And I observed classes at my son’s elementary school, the teacher training school at the university.
Now, after watching Finnish educators in action for five months, I have come to realize that Finland’s historic achievements in delivering educational excellence and equity to its children are the result of a national love of childhood, a profound respect for teachers as trusted professionals, and a deep understanding of how children learn best.
Children at Finnish public schools are given not only basic subject instruction, but learning-through-play-based preschools and kindergartens, training in second languages, arts, crafts, music, physical education, ethics, and, amazingly, as many as four 15 minute outdoor free-play breaks per day, 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, including test scores.
Some of my favorite Finnish sayings on education are: “Let children be children,” and “Children must play,” and “The work of a child is to play.”
With a “whole child” approach, by highly training and trusting teachers, keeping a strong focus on educational equity and collaboration, and not wasting time and money on mass standardized testing and other ideas with little evidence to support them, Finland has flown to the stratosphere of global performance. When you factor in the fact that Finland’s children spend less time in school and less time doing homework than most other developed nations, one could argue that Finland has the world’s most efficient school system.
American politicians and philanthropists are spending, or are about to spend, vast fortunes on trying to develop “scalable” education reforms that can transform and improve American public schools.
I have a suggestion for anyone who wants to improve children’s education. Start by coming to Finland. Spend some time in Finnish schools, talking to Finnish educators, students and parents.
If you look closely, you may see the School of Tomorrow.
William Doyle is a 2015-2016 Fulbright Scholar and award-winning New York Times bestselling author and TV producer from New York City.
He co-produced the hit 2014 PBS documentary film special NAVY SEALS: THEIR UNTOLD STORY, and earlier served as Director of Original Programming and producer and writer for HBO and A&E networks. He has written 12 non-fiction books.
As a political commentator and expert on the American presidency and American history, he is a frequent guest on CNN, National Public Radio and Fox News.
Last year he was awarded a prestigious Fulbright Scholar grant and traveled to Finland with his family to study its world-renowned school system and joined the faculty of the University of Eastern Finland in Joensuu to lecture on “The Schools of Tomorrow” and the future of global media.
William Doyle’s article in the Helsinki Times:
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), which oversees the Program in International Student Assessment (PISA), has released a lengthy study comparing the nations that take the PISA test.
The conclusions of the report confirm what almost everyone knows: the students with the lowest test scores are those who live in poverty, those who have an immigrant background, and those who live in a single-parent home (which is usually a female parent, who usually lacks the income to support the family). These findings are not surprising.
How does the US compare? Apparently there have been no changes in reading scores since 2003—despite No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top and their heavy emphasis on reading and math. There were some gains in science, which is surprising since science was not a priority subject for either of the big federal programs.
So how does the U.S. stack up when it comes to low-performing students? Here are the results from the 2012 PISA exam – the most recent date it was administered:
In math, 26 percent of students were low performers compared with the OECD average of 23 percent.
In reading, 17 percent were low performers compared with the OECD average of 18 percent.
In science, 18 percent were low performers compared with the OECD average of 18 percent.
And 12 percent were low performers in all three subjects compared with the OECD average of 12 percent.
Notably, the share of low performers in math and in reading in the U.S. has not changed since the 2003 PISA test, but the share of low performers in science decreased by about 6 percentage points between 2000 and 2012….
Internationally, the study found that:
The probability of low performance in math, for example, is higher for students if they are socioeconomically disadvantaged, female, have an immigrant background, speak a different language at home from the language of instruction, live in a single-parent family, attend school in a rural area, have not attended preschool, have repeated a grade or have enrolled in a vocational program.
What conclusions does Andreas Schleicher, the director of PISA, reach?
One facet could be increasing access to early childhood education, through which “countries have been able to really make a big difference,” Schleicher said. Other policies that have had a big impact on student achievement include improving training and professional development for teachers and boosting the rigor of academic standards.
“The U.S. recently adopted the Common Core,” Schleicher said of the academic benchmarks being used in more than 40 states and the District of Columbia. “That has happened in many countries, and we can actually see a big impact on this.”
In what way will the increased “rigor of academic standards” help low-income students who are already far behind? How will it help students who live in single-parent homes, or homes where no one speaks the local language? Will Common Core reduce poverty or change the circumstances of children’s lives? I wish he would explain his logic.
The new Minister of Education in Liberia made a deal with the for-profit Bridge International Academies to supply elementary education. The company’s investors include Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg. (NEA is an investment company, not the teachers’ union.)
“The Minister who has been serving the position for less than a year instead of helping to fix has turned to outsourcing reform in the sector to a private institution with negotiations ongoing for the private entity to manage the primary and early childhood education for a period of five years. Bridge Academies which runs education projects in Kenya and Uganda has record of using android mobile phones in providing classroom lessons to pupils.
“Under the Bridge Academies project, the notes and other lectures materials are stored on an android mobile phone and the teachers use the phones to teach, a method where the teacher does not have to be sophisticated to teach. The institution charges US$6 per student per month in Uganda and Kenya as part of its project and also charges other fees for feeding and others. Some in Kenya and Uganda believe that $6 plus other charges by Bridge Academies is a lot of money for the millions in the two countries. In Uganda, many say the amount requires poor Ugandan families with many children to borrow in order to keep all their children in school or to choose which child goes to school.
“Despite charging fees, the World Bank through its sector investment arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC) invested US$10 million in Bridge Academies in 2014 in order to increase the number of Bridge schools in the country and expand to three countries including Uganda. The IFC also approved a loan of US$4.1 million to Merryland High School, a private, fee-charging secondary school in Entebbe, Uganda in December 2014.
“Bridge continues to get criticisms from the Governments of both Kenya and Uganda for its method of using Android mobile phones to teach students where most of the teachers used only use what is placed on the phone as Bridge resulted to using teachers who are not qualified to teach since the teaching materials are placed on a phone and the teacher only needs to teach what is available. The entity teaching method is seen in the two countries as discouraging the employment of qualified teachers who will interact with the students while teaching instead of using fixed materials downloaded on a mobile phone.
“Current Education Minister Werner whom many described as reformer, instead of working to revamp the education sector, took off time visiting East Africa mainly Kenya and Uganda where he started negotiations for Bridge to come to Liberia and manage the primary education sector on a private-public partnership program. FrontPageAfrica has gathered that Bridge officials are in Liberia to conclude arrangement for a pilot project of the first 50 schools to begin using the Bridge project beginning school year 2016-17.
“As part of the project the PPP providers will design their programmes (curriculum materials, etc., from April to September 2017 while phase two will rollout contracting out the remaining schools over 5 years, with government exit possible each year dependent on provided performance- September 2017 onwards. Eventually the Ministry of Education is aiming to contract out all primary and early childhood education schools to private providers who meet the required standards over 5 year period. According to the tentative timeline the by February/March 2016 the memorandum of Understanding for the pilot 50 schools will be signed and by September 2016, the first 50 schools launch, with baselines and performance measures.”
The following statement was written and released by a group of non-governmental organizations concerned about the growing movement to privatize education in Kenya. They call here for resistance to the introduction of for-profit organizations and for the building of a genuine free public education for all children. Pearson is one of the prime movers behind for-profit Bridge International Academy and Omega.
Joint Statement
Students before profit: Teacher unions and civil society unite to condemn the commercialisation of education in Kenya
Tuesday 26th January, 2016 (Nairobi)
According to Article 53 of the Constitution of Kenya 2010 every child has the immediate right to free and compulsory basic education. This is emphasised in Section 28 of the Basic Education Act 2013 and Section 7 of the Children’s Act 200.
The 2009 Policy for Alternative Provision of Basic Education and Training (APBET), recognises alternative or ‘non formal’ schools. Under this policy, non-formal schools have fewer requirements in terms of curriculum, infrastructure and teacher qualification.
The original intention of APBET recognition and support for non-formal schools was to provide access to education to children who would have otherwise been unable to attend the formal education system do to the unavailability of an adequate number of public schools. However, this policy has allowed big corporations and edu-businesses to benefit from these lower legal requirements and profit from the delivery of non-formal education in areas of the country that remain largely under-served by public schools.
These unintended consequences have drawn the attention of the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child and the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights all of which have expressed concern over the growing privatisation of education and fee charging for-profit schools in Kenya such as Bridge International Academies.
Most recently, on 21st January 2016, the 71st session of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child asked the Kenyan government to respond to the growing privatisation of education, specifically the impact of Bridge on the quality of education in Kenya. Olga Khazova, UN Committee member and Rapporteur for Kenya stated: “There are regulations on the quality of education children should receive but when it comes to Bridge, these regulations seem not to be enforced. What is the government doing about this?”
This follows from concerns expressed in November 2015 by the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (UNCESCR). Specifically, it asked “how the State party has regulated and monitored informal private schools, or low-cost private schools, to ensure quality education.”
Similarly, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights questioned the definition of “non-formal schools” by the Kenyan Government. It asked: “Why are private school chains, such as Bridge International Academies, registered as non-formal schools, whereas they appear to offer formal education?”
In May 2015, 116 organisations across the world expressed their deep concerns about the World Bank’s support for Bridge International Academies.
Bridge is a multinational chain of low-fee profit-making private primary schools targeting poor families in Kenya, Uganda, Nigeria. It has over 400 schools in Kenya. In Kenya, it is exploiting a loophole in regulations allowing it to register as ‘non formal’ schools instead of private schools.
The school chain has recently come under scrutiny over its opposition to new guidelines by the Kenya Cabinet Secretary for Education aimed at ensuring basic standards in non-formal schools such as the recruitment of qualified teachers.
The expansion of Bridge is a manifestation of the growing commercialisation and privatisation of education in Kenya. This commercialisation and privatisation of education represents one of the greatest threats to the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals adopted in September 2015.
This threat has also been recognised by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to Education, Kishore Singh, who warned that “soon, it may not be an exaggeration to say that privatization is supplanting public education instead of supplementing it”, where “inequalities in opportunities for education will be exacerbated by the growth of unregulated private providers of education, with economic condition, wealth or property becoming the most important criterion for gaining access to education”.
Teacher unions and civil society therefore, call on the government to
Signed,
Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT)
East African Centre for Human Rights (EACHRights)
Economic and Social Rights Centre – (Hakijamii)
Action Aid-Kenya
Kenya Union of Post Primary Teachers (KUPPET)
Universities Academic Staff Union
International Commission of Jurists – Kenya Chapter
Katiba Institute
The Cradle
Transparency International – Kenya
Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
Education International
Now that the titans of the tech industry, in alliance with the U.S. Department of Education, are committed to increasing the use of technology and ignoring the loss and shortage of teachers, they would be well-advised to read this OECD study.
It found that students who use computers in school moderately perform better than those who use computers rarely. Those who use computers heavily perform worse than both of the other groups, even after demographics and social background are taken into account. A heavy investment in technology has no appreciable effect on academic performance.
Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates should read this study. They both promote “personalized education,” which means every child using a computer with his/her own adaptive testing. This is machine-testing, not personalized education.
At the very least, this study should give pause as entrepreneurs push harder to invest in technology and discount the importance of teachers and human interaction between students and teachers.
Personalized education should involve interactions between two persons,not interaction between a student and a computer. That’s impersonated education.
There will be a press conference today at the National Press Club to announce that the Republic of Turkey has hired an American law firm “to conduct a global investigation” of the organization led by Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, who lives in seclusion in the Poconos in Pennsylvania. The Gulen organization has a charter network of nearly 150 schools in the United States. The F.B.I. is investigating some of them now, but no reports have been released.
Investigation into Gülen Movement
December 9, 2015 10:00 AM
Location: National Press Club Zenger Room
Press Conference to Announce New Legal Action, Widening Investigation into Gülen Movement and Its Nationwide Charter School Network
WASHINGTON, Oct. 26, 2015 /PRNewswire/ — The Republic of Turkey has retained international law firm Amsterdam & Partners LLP to conduct a global investigation into the activities of the organization led by the Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen.
“We have been retained by the Republic to expose allegedly unlawful conduct by the Gulen network worldwide,” said Robert Amsterdam, founding partner of Amsterdam & Partners LLP, during a press conference held today at the National Press Club in Washington DC. “The activities of the Gulen network, including its penetration of the Turkish judiciary and police, as well as its political lobbying abroad, should concern everyone who cares about the future of democracy in Turkey.”
The Gulen network, which operates more than 100 charter schools in the U.S., has become the subject of federal and local law enforcement and regulatory investigation in the United States, said Amsterdam. According to separate cases filed against Gulen affiliated schools, the group has allegedly engaged in systemic abuse of the American visa system, Amsterdam says.
Because the government of the Phillipines has not invested in public education, multinational corporations are moving in to supply private education for the poor. Pearson and another corporation called the Ayala Group have moved in to fill the vacuum.
Curtis Riep, a doctoral student at the University of Alberta in Canada writes:
Corporate-led privatisations in Philippine education are taking shape in the form of a for-profit chain of low-cost private schools – known as APEC (Affordable Private Education Centers). APEC is a new corporate entity established through a joint venture between two major multinational corporations: Pearson Plc and the Ayala Group. APEC, and its corporate shareholders, intend to capitalise on an overburdened and under-resourced system by selling for-profit education services at nominally low-fees -more than $500 per year- on a massive scale. The vast number of ‘economically disadvantaged’ Filipino youth underserved by public and other private schools represents the target market for APEC.
Low-cost, low quality
Profits accumulated by APEC are the difference in price paid by consumers in the form of user fees and the cost to produce those services, or the cost to educate each student. In an effort to minimise production costs, while increasing profit margins, APEC has implemented a number of cost-cutting techniques. These include a low-cost rent model that involves short-term leases in unused commercial buildings that lack adequate space for libraries, gymnasiums, science and/or computer laboratories.
Although this low-cost rent scheme is drastically cheaper than purchasing land and constructing proper school facilities, quality learning environments are sacrificed. Teachers hired by APEC are also typically unlicensed and, therefore, paid severely low wages. These cost-cutting techniques are intended to minimise operational costs so the corporation can remain financially sustainable and profitable. Therefore, in the business of low-cost private schooling, as one APEC school manger remarked: “sometimes quality is compromised because of the companies’ concern for making a profit.”
Further problematic is the Department of Education’s complicity in this for-profit arrangement, since it has relaxed a number of regulations that govern the provision of basic education so that APEC can implement its low-cost, for-profit schooling experiment with limited governmental restriction.
Students: cogs in the corporate machine
APEC also represents a corporate strategy designed to manufacture cheap and flexible labour required by Ayala and other multinational companies through its provision of privatised basic education that aligns with the labour needs of industry. By reverse-engineering its curriculum, APEC intends to produce graduates of a particular disposition with specific skills, values, and knowledge that can be employed in the global labour market.
In particular, APEC aims to address the skill shortage in the business process outsourcing and call center industry in the Philippines by focusing on English communication skills. In turn, APEC schools involve two forms of privatisation: de facto privatisation, in the form of user fees paid for by students in exchange for basic education, and privatisation that exists because of the increasing private control and influence in the social relations of production. This is demonstrated by the joint venture between Ayala and Pearson that aims to produce a repository of labour with the skills, knowledge and values in demand by industry.
Education corporations increasingly participate in various aspects of educational governance and provision, including the sale and provision of for-profit education services, which undermines the right to free quality education, (re)produces social inequalities, undercuts the working conditions of teachers, and erodes democratic decision-making and public accountability in education.
I knew Mike Petrilli well, back when I was a trustee of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation and Institute in D.C. But after I became disillusioned with testing and school choice, I didn’t see much of him anymore. We occasionally trade emails. I have a certain residual fondness for him. But I nonetheless think he is wrong and hold out hope that he will one day realize it.
But he is not ready.
He sent me this note recently:
Joanne gets it exactly right. Ready to concede a few points?
—-
Mediocre U.S. scores: Don’t blame poverty
// Joanne Jacobs — Thinking and Linking by Joanne Jacobs
When U.S. students post mediocre scores on international tests, poverty is “the elephant in the room,” says American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten. Others point to a “poverty crisis” rather than an “education crisis.”
The elephant is not in the room, write Michael Petrilli and Brandon Wright in Education Next. U.S. schools do as well — or poorly — educating low-income students as other countries. Furthermore, U.S. children aren’t more likely to be poor: Those sky-high child poverty rates really are measuring inequality rather than absolute poverty.
Overall, the U.S. rates 28th in math proficiency for advantaged students among the 34 countries in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). Disadvantaged U.S. students rank 20th compared to similar students in other PISA countries.
Our advantaged students may do better than poor kids here, but they don’t outperform similar students in developed countries.
While income inequality is high in the U.S., absolute poverty is not especially high, Petrilli and Wright argue. Including all forms of income, including welfare benefits, the U.S. poverty rate is lower than Britain’s, the same as Germany’s and “barely higher than Finland’s.”
Poverty drags down performance here — and everywhere, they conclude. The U.S. is not an outlier.
My response:
Except that the international scores predict nothing about the future. We were dead last in 1964. By now, we should be a Third World country. Except we are the biggest economy in the world with the most powerful military. How did all those dumb 15-year-olds manage that?
This is something I find hard to understand about the “reformers.” Why do they want the world to believe that we have the worst education system in the developed world? Why are they always eager to discredit our country? Who do they think created the goods and services, the technology and culture that has changed the world? It wasn’t just graduates of Andover, Exeter, and Deerfield Academy, or Lakeside and Sidwell Friends. It wasn’t graduates of charter schools. I remember the disgusting commercials that StudentsFirst produced and ran during the 2012 Olympics, portraying an American athlete as an overweight man in a tutu falling down; this was supposed to represent our flabby, effete, faltering education system. It struck me as crass anti-Americanism, as well as a few other ugly attributes.
The worst thing about our country is our tolerance for poverty, extreme income inequality, extreme wealth inequality, and segregation. The reformers scoff at such concerns and twist into pretzels trying to deny what is obvious. They are right that our education system must change, but not in the direction they seek. Our education system needs drastic change to get away from the soul-deadening conformity imposed by corporate reform. The status quo is stultifying, boring, and harmful to children and teachers.
How can I say more clearly that I don’t think the international test scores mean anything about the future? If destroying the joy of learning and the passion of discovery is the price of raising test scores, it is too high a price to pay.
Mike, please read Yong Zhao’s “Why China Has the Best and the Worst School System in the World?” Please watch the spectacular speech that he gave to the annual meeting of the Network for Public Education last April in Chicago. Please read Ted Dintersmith and Tony Wagner’s new book, “Most Likely to Succeed.” Open your mind. Create the world you want your children to live in, not a world where parents like you have to find private alternatives to escape what you and your rightwing friends are doing to our public schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 