Dear Diane,

Your California trip sounded wonderful. (I realize I'm a little late in saying this. By now you've probably been to half a dozen other states!) I'm encouraged by your positive experiences and that you can keep up the pace. I'm encouraged also by the shift in the language of politics of late, surely stimulated by the Occupy movement. Inequality now is at the top of list. Perhaps, fingers crossed, there will always be openings for pushing a pro-democracy agenda.

Meanwhile, I've been here and there meeting such wonderful, if often demoralized, colleagues: Baltimore is an interesting place (all charters are unionized, and the number of interesting ones encouraging). And Rochester, N.Y., where I met with the union president and the superintendent. It's an atypical city, too, and full of signs of hope.

We won't always win, and democracy is not a sure bet by any means, but the drive for personal liberty and our insistence that we actually are our "brother's" keeper is hard to kill. (On the same theme of optimism: Reading Steven Pinker's "The Better Angels of Our Nature" has not entirely convinced me, but it has shed a different light on some of my depressing fears. It was once worse.)

The latest issue of Commonweal has a piece by Peggy O'Brien Steinfels on Vaclav Havel which I recommend. Once again, a reminder of what's possible. Remember that many once held it to be impossible to overthrow a totalitarian regime from within. Havel's "The Power of the Powerless" strikes a deep chord. One we need to remember when "they" try to make teachers, parents, and students powerless.

Somewhere inside lurks a reminder that our task is to nourish the better part of our "natures" or, more simply perhaps, to be vigilantly on the side of those who get pushed around and to commit oneself not to push others around! Especially those less powerful than you. I thought about that while in Japan last month—having grown up in a culture filled with stereotypes of the ugliest sort about anything Japanese. The relative success of democracy in Japan cannot be the result merely of American dictates in the post-WWII period. There's something more to Japanese (and human) history that allowed democracy to take hold—some continuity that I know so little about. Something that accounts perhaps for that brief news piece about Osaka that I mentioned earlier. Teachers in Japan are refusing to comply with renewed demands to sing traditional patriotic songs, etc. (Three strikes and you're out is the government's solution.)

Years ago a wise mentor, Ted Chittenden (of Educational Testing Service!), suggested that it would help if we thought of education by imagining an axis, with one arrow standing for student initiative and the other intersecting arrow for teacher initiative. An
education for democracy would lie, he suggested, in the sector where both student and teacher initiative are high, while the current "reforms" lie in the opposite corner—where both student and teacher initiative are zero-to-low. (Traditional education is high on teacher and low on students, and "free schools" are high on student initiative, low on teachers'.) Can you picture this? Try drawing it. And I suspect one could produce a similar diagram with one arrow representing individual liberty and the other communal values. Democracy is the square where both are high! It was useful to me.

Oddly enough we offer a lot of my favored sector in the way we educate preschoolers, and after that we go in the opposite direction! In part because we simply can't control the very little ones as easily as we can pre-teens and teenagers. Besides the adult-student ratio makes it easier to substitute affection for coercion. Little kids don't yet know about shame and despair. But remember that some of the kids who "act out" or "refuse to learn" are exercising that powerful human ability to resist powerlessness! They're just not as lucky as Havel was.

I hope you have followed me enough to respond. It's more fun when there's an audience and an argument, as Parker Palmer notes in Healing the Heart of Democracy, his very recent book. I'll write more about it some other time, but meanwhile read it and tell me what you think.

What troubles me most about the KIPPs of the world are not issues of pedagogy or the public/private issue, but their "no excuses" ideology implemented by a code that rests on humiliating those less powerful than oneself and reinforcing a moral code that suggests that there's a one-to-one connection between being good and not getting caught. It tries to create certainties in a field where it does not belong. (Maybe that's why I enjoy Commonweal's religious essays; they remind me of a good Talmudic dialogue—always probing further.) Life is never so simple that we can award points for "badness" on a fixed numerical scale of bad-to-good. As we once reminded colleagues, Nazi Germany had a successful school system—so what? I'd be fascinated to interview some KIPP graduates to learn how its work plays out in their lives. My friend and former Mission Hill colleague, Emily Gasoi, is finishing her doctoral dissertation looking at the underlying adult culture of Mission Hill and a particularly interesting KIPP school, which intrigue her for their differences and similarities.

So, we come back to my other recurring theme: trade-offs. I'm for making the trade-offs that hold fast to values of democracy, even if inconvenient. But ... it's not easy to sort this out without more long-term argumentation and investigation.

I look at curriculum the same way. There is no perfect curriculum, but I base my preferences on precisely the principles underlying democracy. It's our teacherly obligation to consider what students will "need" to join fully into the life of a democratic community. But one of those qualities is celebrating self-initiative, personal passion, the power of the heart, as Parker Palmer uses that tricky word. Ditto for society and teachers! There's an essay in the latest Dissent magazine by mathematician Joi A. Spencer. He reminds me that what to "cover" lightly vs. what to "uncover" deeply even in a math class rests on judgments we need to make explicit between mathematical understanding and democracy.

More on this another time. But test preparation of the kind we now call math teaching won't help. I like that Occupy rests its case on a mathematical model: 99 percent vs. 1% rather than on slogans about equity.

And one more last thought! Everyone must read Michael Winerip's marvelously funny/sad piece entitled: "In Race for the Top, the Dirty Work Is Left to Those on the Bottom" in The New York Times.

Best,
Deborah

P.S. Sometimes what I remember most about other countries are oddities. For instance, I miss the warmed toilet seats in Japan! Imagine bus and subway schedules that are accurate to the second. People actually bowing to each other. No tipping ALLOWED.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:44 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Deborah,

I don't know about you, but I am growing convinced that President Barack Obama doesn't know what Race to the Top is. I don't think he really understands what his own administration is doing to education. In his State of the Union address last week, he said that he wanted teachers to "stop teaching to the test." He also said that teachers should teach with "creativity and passion." And he said that schools should reward the best teachers and replace those who weren't doing a good job. To "reward the best" and "fire the worst," states and districts are relying on test scores. The Race to the Top says they must.

Deconstruct this. Teachers would love to "stop teaching to the test," but Race to the Top makes test scores the measure of every teacher. If teachers take the President's advice (and they would love to!), their students might not get higher test scores every year, and teachers might be fired, and their schools might be closed.

Why does President Obama think that teachers can "stop teaching to the test" when their livelihood, their reputation, and the survival of their school depends on the outcome of those all-important standardized tests?

Funnily enough, President Obama said something similar last year during a town hall meeting. He said that his daughters, who attend the elite Sidwell Friends school, took a standardized test, and they didn't have any preparation for it. He said:

"Malia and Sasha, my two daughters, they just recently took a standardized test. But it wasn't a high-stakes test. It wasn't a test where they had to panic. I mean, they didn't even really know that they were going to take it ahead of time. They didn't study for it, they just went ahead and took it. And it was a tool to diagnose where they were strong, where they were weak, and what the teachers needed to emphasize.

"Too often, what we've been doing is using these tests to punish students or to, in some cases, punish schools. And so what we've said is let's find a test that everybody agrees makes sense; let's apply it in a less pressure-packed atmosphere; let's figure out whether we have to do it every year or whether we can do it maybe every several years; and let's make sure that that's not the only way we're judging whether a school is doing well."

Teachers must have been excited when they heard what the President said then because he showed that he really understood the dangers of high-stakes testing. He said:

"So what I want to do is—one thing I never want to see happen is schools that are just teaching to the test. Because then you're not learning about the world; you're not learning about different cultures, you're not learning about science, you're not learning about math. All you're learning about is how to fill out a little bubble on an exam and the little tricks that you need to do in order to take a test. And that's not going to make education interesting to you. And young people do well in stuff that they're interested in. They're not going to do as well if it's boring."

Teachers must have been jumping for joy when they heard this, because they know that states and districts have been reducing the time available for the arts, history, civics, physical education, everything other than the tests of reading and mathematics. That excellent teacher-blogger Anthony Cody pointed out in his review of his speech that the President was "blasting his own education policies."

Do you think that President Obama just doesn't understand that Race to the Top has encouraged states to double down on high-stakes testing? Maybe he doesn't realize that the strategies of his administration rely totally on test scores. Do you think no one from the U.S. Department of Education has explained that merit pay has been tried again and again and has never succeeded? Did anyone tell him about the Vanderbilt study of 2010, in which Nashville teachers were offered bonuses of $15,000? Did anyone tell him that those big bonuses didn't lead to higher test scores? Did anyone tell him about the New York City plan for school-wide bonuses, which cost the city $56 million, and produced no difference in test scores? Has anyone told him or First Lady Michelle Obama about the districts and states (like Florida) that may eliminate (or have eliminated) their requirement for physical education because more time is needed for test prep?

Do you think he understands that his Race to the Top program is demoralizing teachers across the nation? Does he know that teachers are not allowed to teach with creativity and passion because they might be fired for not following their district-mandated script?

He's a smart man. I can't believe that he really doesn't know that Race to the Top is no better, and in some ways is even worse, than No Child Left Behind. NCLB holds schools accountable; Race to the Top holds individual teachers accountable. Does he know that almost one of every three principals in the state of New York has signed a letter of protest against the test-based evaluations that Race to the Top imposes?

He wants the teacher-bashing to end, but I wonder if he knows that the worst teacher-bashing started because of his and Arne Duncan's rhetoric about firing teachers if their students got low test scores?

When I saw Linda Darling-Hammond last week in California, she gave me charts from the U.S. Department of Education's Schools and Staffing Survey which show that the modal years of teaching experience in 1987-88 was 15 (meaning that there were more teachers with 15 years of experience than any other group); in the latest published survey, 2007-08, the modal years of experience was one. That means that in 2008 there were more teachers in their first year of teaching than any other group. This is frightening. What sane nation would want to lose its experienced teachers and rely increasingly on newcomers?

Of course, teachers should be evaluated, but they should be evaluated by knowledgeable professionals—their supervisors and peers. Of course, incompetent teachers should be fired, but first they should have a chance to improve. If they can't improve, they don't belong in the classroom.

The irony of all this is that President Obama opposes high-stakes testing. He has now said so twice. Why does he endorse policies that require what he personally opposes?

The President also said that states could reduce the dropout rate by requiring students to stay in school until they are 18. Do you think students drop out because they aren't required by law to stay in school? I think the President should learn more about the reasons students leave before he proposes a law to force them to stay against their will. If he did, he might have better suggestions for lowering the dropout rate.

And one other thing. President Obama referred approvingly to the Chetty-Friedman-Rockoff study of value-added assessment and said that "good teachers" would produce lifetime gains of $250,000 per classroom. Did anyone tell him that if there are 25 students in a class and each of them works for 40 years, then each one will gain $250 a year? Now, I'm not putting down a gain of $250 a year (that's four or five times to fill your gas tank), and I certainly believe in the importance of good teachers. I don't think that doubling down even more on standardized tests in reading and math is the right way to identify good or great teachers. If we push more on that line of thinking, teaching to the test is a necessity, not a choice.

I just wish that the president would change course on Race to the Top. It's even more demoralizing for teachers and principals than NCLB. It emphasizes testing at every turn, and it will not allow anyone to "stop teaching to the test."

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Diane,

I've had an epiphany so I'm tossing the piece I wrote for this week to "spread the word."

"Can America Make It?" is the headline on the cover of the December issue of The American Prospect. The lead article is written by an old friend, Harold Meyerson, who argues that, "with the right trade and industrial policies," we can be a nation with a strong middle-class majority.

It's a fascinating piece and makes me think that the debates we're having about school reform have so distracted us that we forget that a good education system depends on a strong society. There's no point in scaring 5-year-olds into thinking if you don't work hard, you won't get a good job—when in fact virtually no one (well-educated or not) is going to have a good job in the future. Except the 1 percent—or maybe it's 5 to 10 percent?

Meyerson's vision is not going to be realized through reforming our schools, although they have a role to play. But it depends on whether we think having such an America is what we want to do—for all sorts of reasons. So our own grandchildren will earn decent livings, for example. So that we can sustain democracy, which in turn rests on a certain level of economic wellbeing and security.

Meyerson convinces me anew of what I already suspected. Most American companies that are thriving hire more people abroad than here at home. Think about Apple, for example. Hurrah! It's an American company. But it doesn't employ many American citizens. And the industries that have maintained a domestic workforce are increasingly doing it by paying somewhere between minimum wage and $15 an hour—more or less, without pensions and minimal benefits. In short, by paying wages BELOW the poverty line.

Patriotism, nationalism, or whatever you call it, isn't a motivator for American companies. Let's accept that as a fact about capitalism, unless it's the Chinese sort in which industrial policy ultimately rests with the Communist Party's best interests.

We need to be having serious and public discourse—frank and open—about where our economy is going. We need leadership that educates the public from kindergarten through old age. We need to face the truth ... or else.

We can look abroad not to everyone else's education systems, but to the way they're tackling this worldwide problem. We used to have lots of "look at German education" articles way back when—the '70s? Now it's Singapore. And China.

Instead, we might even go back to looking at Germany, which has nowhere near the industrial crisis, the job crisis that we do. Why not? Maybe because it's a semi-socialistic society in which the government is not afraid to come to the aid of workers and management? Or, are we so afraid of "socialism" that we'd rather look for our future to a nation controlled by the Communist Party?

I like the Finnish school system. I think we can learn a lot from it. But the Finnish political and economic system is also not in a crisis. Ours is. And if we allow ourselves to get bent into pretzels arguing about education as though it held the key to our future, we're wasting our energy.

I care about our schools because our children spend 12 or more years in them—school is at the heart of their lives. And, children deserve good lives, even if school doesn't lead to a better job. They deserve to be respected and treated with dignity so they get accustomed to that as the norm. They need to be safe so their parents can go about their adult working lives without fear.

I'm not regretting having spent 50 years trying to reform American public education, and I think it's more imperative today than ever. But the future doesn't depend on it the way it does on our economic crisis, our political system crisis, and our planetary self-destruction.

There, I've gotten that off my chest. That's why the Occupy movement has made such a difference. It has collapsed a complicated message into an easy-to-remember slogan: We're the 99 percent. Oligarchies create educational systems that don't threaten them. It's just the way it is unless we dismantle the oligarch's power to dictate national policy.

Deb

P.S. In addition to Harold Meyerson's piece, I recommend you read Linda Darling-Hammond's current article in The Nation.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Deborah,

Your trip to Japan sounds exciting and exhausting. Your summary reminded me that you must protect your energy and continue to share your wisdom about children for many years.

While you were traveling in Japan, I was barnstorming across California. I spoke to several hundred teachers in Los Angeles, then to nearly 1,000 in San Francisco, on to Berkeley to speak to a packed house. My tour, punctuated by interviews on NPR stations, concluded in Sacramento, where the local teachers' unions, principals, district leaders, school board members, parent groups, and universities hired the Sacramento Convention Center for the most stupendous event I have ever seen: Some 3,500 people showed up in a driving rain on a Friday night to hear state Superintendent Tom Torlakson, our fellow Education Week blogger Anthony Cody, the great Linda Darling-Hammond, and me. (The event, by the way, was organized by the remarkable Erik Knudson of the Sacramento City teachers' union.)

The highlight of the week was Gov. Jerry Brown's State of the State message, in which he announced his intention to reduce the amount of testing across the state. Standardized testing in California has spun out of control. Children in 2nd grade spend five hours on mandated state tests, for no reason at all. And it is no better, even worse, in other grades! He also made this remarkable statement: "My hunch is that principals and teachers know the most ..." Can you believe it? He acknowledges that the people who do the work may know more than those who sit on the sidelines taking pot shots at them.

Governor Brown is a visionary. I met with him and his top staff for over an hour and, unlike the policymakers in Washington, D.C., and other state capitals, he understands that over-testing distorts the purpose of education. He understands that Washington has gotten arrogant and has no idea about how its mandates are warping education. He has a deep understanding that education must liberate the minds of students, not chain them to a format that demeans thoughtfulness and punishes independence and divergent thinking.

California's Tom Torlakson is the wisest and most experienced state superintendent that I have met in my travels.

I was inspired by my visit. First, because there are so many thousands of teachers who have absorbed budget cut after budget cut, yet continue to do their best despite rising class sizes and lack of basic resources and the public obloquy heaped on them daily by the media and pundits. Second, because the state has leaders like Cody and Darling-Hammond, who insist on telling the truth about children, learning, and the needs of the schools.

But I was inspired above all because California has courageous, wise, and bold leadership that is prepared to stop the insanity that has undermined education across the nation.

Governor Brown and state Superintendent Torlakson are on the side of children and teachers. They are on the side of learning, not testing. They are on the side of thinking, not parroting. They are on the side of supporting educators, not punishing them for daring to choose a low-wage profession that serves the needs of children and society. They have taken a stand against the ruinous, heavy-handed mandates from Washington that will stamp out the creativity of children and the idealism of teachers.

Not only in his State of the State address, but in his much earlier broadside against Race to the Top, Governor Brown made clear that the great state of California will not bow to those who know only carrots and sticks and know nothing of learning and education. The state has asked for waivers without preconditions or mandates from Washington. This makes sense. Education is a state and local function, not a federal one.

California gives me hope. Its current leadership may provide the spark that ignites a national revolt against the current tide of bad ideas.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Diane,

I survived, thanks to my two sons and granddaughter. And we had a great time. People in Japan were extraordinarily kind and gracious to us. The sights were amazing—from ancient to futuristic standing side by side. At our hotel room in Tokyo we looked out of our room onto Mount Fuji. At sunset it was like a fairy tale. We ate and ate and ate—wonderful food.

We stopped at the City Museum in Nagoya to see my family's WWll mural by Diego Rivera from the controversial Rockefeller Center fiasco. It's Diego's redoing of the central and most controversial panel—with Lenin, Marx, and Engels leading the way, alongside of lots of warring communists. Stalin, with bloody eyes, looks down at a smiling Bukharin (whom he subsequently murdered), and across from a stalwart-looking Trotsky (who met the same fate); there are two women (Rosa Luxemburg and Clara Zetkin), and more. We went to museums, pagodas, temples, shrines, markets, and ... three speaking engagements and one school visit.

Our trip coincided with school holidays so we just squeezed in a visit to the national vs. local public secondary school connected to Tokyo University. I visited one school that was in session, on the first day back from vacation, and watched one marvelous "lesson study" by an experienced teacher of English at a conference. But I will have to visit again to see with my own eyes what is going on in classrooms in Japan.

I spent two days at a biannual conference arranged by Professor Manabu Sato in Ito City where I spoke (in English, and translated) to 400 principals, teachers, and university faculty about schooling and democracy. I spoke also at Tokyo University and at Kyoto—the latter with my son, Nick.

My son reminded them that it wasn't so long ago when teachers and politicians in America were told that Japanese schools were the future. Why can't we do as they do? Before that it was Russian schools. And since then it's been Singapore and now Finland. We were told Japanese children were obedient and hard-working, although listening to them talk it was clear that they were having virtually all the same problems we were and are moving in the same direction we are.

There's a lot of educational turmoil as two "factions" battle for the future: those wanting a more rigid, centralized, exam-driven, top-down approach, and those who believe the Japanese have to move in a progressive direction if they are to become innovators as well as followers, economically and politically.

The one school I visited was hard to judge since it was both a special school, and it was the first day back from vacation! The most impressive thing was how quickly kids moved desks around to match their various pedagogical styles. Class sizes are large—as high as 40 in one of the two classes we visited. There is a very weak teachers' union, and it is getting weaker.

And, does this sound familiar: "Osaka education board opposes governor's intervention in school, Sept 15, 2011" from Japan Press Weekly. " 'The proposed ordinance is outrageous,' says one university professor and board member." Another board member condemned the governor's plan to dismiss teaches who refuse to follow the same order three times, or receive a low evaluation twice.

A good many U.S. books on education are translated into Japanese, but not many Japanese books make it into English. I'm hoping someone will undertake changing this. I'd love to read my host's, Manabu Sato's, books, for example. His followers here in Japan view him as their Dewey, Sizer, Perrone, and Weber. In short, much as I do toward those people's roles in my life as a teacher.

Before closing—and going back to sleep for a few more hours—I want to make a few short comments on a wide range of things. Thanks, Paul Hoss, for taking me to task re. my Russia/U.S. comparison. I think we both have a point. (See Comments.) Patience and impatience are both dangerous—and can be excuses for many things. Patient impatience, or impatient patience? It's something of that sort we need. Just as continuity is critical to human learning, so it is for society's learning. When we try to cut off the past, we do ourselves damage and are at the mercy of "change agents." Exercising judgment lies at the heart of democracy, and judgment comes from years and years of reflecting on our own history and the history of others.

I've a small bone to pick with you, Diane, re. the frequent use of the phrase "ready to learn" by age 5 or kindergarten, etc. Humans are born "ready to learn" and do a remarkable job of doing so before they reach school age. That's one reason the Finns delay formal schooling until age 7. They do so regardless of class, race, or language of origin. They can't stop themselves from learning even if, at times, they may learn some things that are not useful in school. They learn very complex matters that are amazingly nuanced and sophisticated—about language itself, other people, space, etc. We "teach" colors in many schools even though I've never heard of children who don't know the names of colors by 6 or 7 whether they are taught them or not (unless they are color blind). We rarely observe closely enough to realize how much they have learned before they start school compared with what they learn in school. This is not entirely the fault of schooling, but it's important to keep it in mind. We are designed as efficient learners.

Another note: Yes, there have been and will continue to be "turnarounds" that work. But if we see the turnaround as a method of getting "rid" of people—teachers or kids—we'll misuse its potential.

Visiting New York City's Julia Richman school complex is a case in point. It serves the same demographic population via five schools (one K-8 and four 9-12s), plus a program for autistic youngsters and an infant program. There is no dissension between these various organizations, although they deliberately collaborate to make life and learning better for one and all. They share some space, but also have their own very discreet turf. It's a joyous place to visit. And the outcomes, as studied by Columbia University over many years and attested to by a body of experts appointed by the former state schools superintendent, are excellent. (Almost all use an alternate form of assessment developed by a consortium of more than 30 New York state schools.) This building is truly an example of what "democracy looks like" on a K-12 level.

Best,
Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend