Bridging Differences

Dear Deborah,

I think we are in a very strange and disquieting time for public education. "Reforms" are being implemented that will have unforeseen consequences. I was one of the early supporters of charter schools, as a means of establishing more choice within the public system, but as they proliferate I wonder what the end game is, where are we heading? I have not had any beef with those who said that private managers could step in and do a better job with the lowest-performing schools—after all, when schools are not managing to educate the kids, why not try a different strategy?

Both ideas ran into considerable resistance for a long time, but the resistance seems to have eroded. Now as I see these ideas that made sense as limited outlets being turned into basic strategies of an entire school district, it worries me. Maybe I wasn't smart enough to see that this was the road we were heading down.

We keep alluding to the "Tough Choices or Tough Times" report. It is time to discuss it directly. In my view, the most radical proposal of that commission was that every public school should be operated by an "independent contractor." Maybe they meant groups of teachers, but I rather think they meant the big chains of charter school operators that have been growing by leaps and bounds. Whether those operators are non-profit (like New Visions for Public Schools in New York City) or for-profit (like Edison and Victory), the result is the same: to privatize the operations of public schools.

Some educators think all this is just so much hot air, that it will never happen. But it is starting to happen here in New York City, where I write. Under mayoral control, the system is setting up three alternative pathways that principals may choose. One involves becoming an "empowerment" school, quasi-autonomous from any district regulation; another involves signing up with a private manager, the names of which have not yet been announced; a third permits principals to join some amorpous thing called a Learning Support Organization, headed by someone who used to be a superintendent but has no power to supervise.

It is hard to say what the endgame is in this situation, though insiders believe that our Chancellor Joel Klein is trying to follow the "Tough Choices" recommendations (he was a member of the commission that drafted the report and he signed it).

It does seem to be an effort to dissolve the New York City school district, to remove from central officials all responsibility for curriculum and instruction, and to put in place an elaborate system of accountability. That's what I suspect the endgame is: to put the schools into a marketplace situation, where it's "every prinicipal for him/herself," and "every school for itself" in a struggle to compete for high-performing students, to exclude low-performing students without getting caught, and to be judged above all by test scores.

Unlike you, I have never been opposed to testing, though I would like to believe I have been a steadfast advocate for better tests, not just multiple-choice, bubble-tests.

I admit, however, that I am appalled by the idea of a school system that has a mandated method of instruction (balanced literacy and the workshop model) but no curriculum. I think that is exactly backwards; if we learn from other countries that have a successful education system, they have a strong curriculum and leave teachers free to teach in the ways they think best.

I am also appalled by the idea that a school system would care not at all whether students were learning the essential elements of education, such as the arts and history and geography. And I am appalled that testing and accountability have somehow become the only strategies to "reform" schools. Such a strategy, I predict, will not reform schools. It will only turn them into testing factories. Principals, knowing that their job hinges on test scores, will find ways to exclude low performing students, and if that doesn't work, find other means to get the scores to save their job.

I find all of this not only appalling but abhorrent. And this is where I think we are heading. And it is frightening.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

There are trade-offs. I'm more worried about privatization than I am about bad science teaching—although, and perhaps because, I care a lot about science. So we agree on the ends, if not the means.

The reason I care so much about science education is that science is not only a tool for improving our technological capacities, but it's a way of thinking that is essential for all modern day citizens of the world. It's not dogma, even good dogma, although as too often taught today it is hard to distinguish it from dogma or a magic show.

What you and I like about it, I'm sure, is that it rests on is an approach to seeking the truth about a great many questions (but not all) that helps us live together despite very great differences on matters of great importance. And that "approach"—the habits of mind underlying its approach—holds value for all our academic disciplines, as well as those we live by daily. We tried to systematize them at the schools I was associated with in East Harlem and Boston. Those 'habits" are what we need to be arguing about, because "habits" take years to develop, and are hard to slough off. From my standpoint that's what we set aside those K-12 years for, because the ones I had in mind are the habits of democracy and won't just appear because we send kids to school. They are my "ends," by which I set my "means." Such "ends" do not have to be the same for us all, but they sure need to be publicly acceptable.

Creating school's "trusted" by the families who send their children to them, responsible to democratically chosen public bodies, accountable to make their work open and public—and to serve all the children and their families equally is not easy to design. We haven't done it, at least not in our urban centers. They are balkanized, distrusted, without public input, and don't serve all children equally.

Once we give up the "public" part we've given up the whole ballgame—so it's the last thing I'm willing to compromise with. It's shocking to realize that even my favorite foundations are in a position to put in a few cents for every $100 of public funds and in return get to dictate educational policy, while the citizens who pay the other $99.90 have increasingly little sway. In NYC the only voice they have is in the selection of the mayor—there are no go-betweens to moderate public policy.

When I was born there were 200,000 school boards in America—mostly elected by their local citizens. Today, in a school system more than twice as large, we have about 10,000, and with increasingly little power to make important decisions. In the case of NYC we have 1.2 million kids in schools with no, absolutely no, school board whatsoever.

Before our public officials hand them over to private organizations—for profit or not-for-profit—I want to see us put up a fight for making them public again.

Our schools ought to not only be where we teach about democracy, but they ought to belong to our democracy. So, maybe we have to fight about these other matters, Diane, but I'm glad we are united on this one.

More about Tough Choices another time. They have it right—choices are tough—but alas they've made all the wrong ones.

Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Deb,

Where we agree, where we disagree. I think that public choice is a good idea. I have even explored ideas to help Catholic schools survive, perhaps by giving some sort of scholarship for needy kids that may be used at any nonpublic school. I am no constitutional lawyer, but that seems to me not very different from Pell grants.

But I do worry about the risk of Balkanization. We used to use that phrase and no one knew what it referred to. The ethnic rivalries and tensions in the Balkans seemed to be ancient history. For decades, the Balkans were forgotten, unified under dictatorship. Then came the upheavals of the post-Communist era and we discovered all over again how ethnic groups can nurture hatreds that become murderous, as they did once again in the Balkans.

There is a splendid quality about America's common culture. It really does reflect the many ethnic groups and races that made contributions and changed what we sing, how we dance, our poetry, our view of each other and the world. I see no reason for public schools to abandon their historic role as the great equalizer, the great assimilator of the nation's cultures, and the great teacher of masses and classes. Yes, it may be more ideal than reality, but I see no reason to abandon that ideal and turn over the schools to ethnic cheerleaders and cultural braggadocio. I have gotten into trouble more than once for defending the historic tradition—the late great historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and I once drafted a statement defending the public schools against efforts to turn them into cauldrons of ethnic passions, and it was signed by a score of the nation's greatest living historians (Arthur, of course, knew them all).

Yes, I worry about whether public schools teach evolution as science or as religious ideology. I cannot shrug it off as you do. The fact that science has been poorly taught is no reason to say that we should give it up and teach creationism. If too many graduates believe that astrology rules their lives, then we need to teach science better, not abandon it to the quacks.

It is strange, isn't it, Deborah, that the control and future of public education seems to be up for grabs in ways that it never has been in the past. The "Tough Choices or Tough Times" report suggests that all public schools should be independently managed (e.g., by non-public organizations, be they for-profit or non-profit). Some of the biggest names in public education today signed the report and are promoting its conclusions. This makes me profoundly uneasy. Is it "conservative" of me to worry that we are placing public education at risk with such proposals? Is it "liberal" to dismantle public education and see it if gets better? I have lost all understanding of what such labels mean.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 7:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

"We have no final answers. We keep negotiating." I may put it on my bumper-sticker.

RDT expressed a similar concern to yours on our Blog: the risk of Balkanization that comes with choice. But that's where we are now. Schools are more than ever segregated by race and class, and even religiosity and ethnicity. Largely by geography plus private and selective school choice. Even when parents send their kids to diverse schools, there is segregation within the schools. Kids today are largely educated only in the company of others like themselves.

Do I like this? No. I think diversity on the basis of class, race and schooling-smarts is enormously important. But how to get there? Step one: Choice should not be confused with vouchers or privatization. Step two: think public choice under public scrutiny.

The default position I hold is that decisions should be as close as possible to those who know the child and family and school best. I start there and then….. move up the ladder.

Who should do the scrutinizing? Each school constituency for starters, local taxpayers (especially if they are paying the bill), state judiciaries and legislatures and their delegated educational bodies, and finally Federal legislatures and the Federal judiciary.

What should be scrutinized? Should it include what is taught or not taught and how, school rules and provisioning, and who goes to school with whom?

Re content and pedagogy. I am less worried about whether they teach evolution than you are Diane. At present we teach Science so poorly that I suspect more graduates of our schools believe in astrology than astronomy. I'm for continuing to use the courts to defend the religion/state divide—sometimes successfully and sometimes not. Given the Supreme Court we have now…… But more mandates won't solve it—about which we disagree whether we are talking about science or history. Actually, Diane, I fear there will be too much uniformity even without a single mandate or national test. As for pedagogical freedom, as the Blog responses we got on Reading First remind me, there will be those who in the name of Science or Morality will want to mandate the one-best-way. I hope we can derail the purveyors of final truths in the name of Proven Best Practice of all sorts by lowering the temptation that centralized power offers them.

Re rules and provisioning. I am concerned about racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, free speech…as they effect schooling decisions. These require constant surveillance—with or without choice. If schools were ever to become centers for practicing and studying democracy we might have less trouble over time with such issues. Until then (and after), I'm for public scrutiny. E.g. I'm for immediately passing a bill that ties federal aid to closing the funding gaps within each state.

Who should we go to school with? In many rural and suburban communities choice is not feasible and promoting diversity remains illusive. But where choice is feasible it can be used to promote integration. I regret that we cannot control for race, but we could ensure that the families are the choosers not the schools, and we could ensure that other forms of diversity are honored. It will be hard to convince powerful subgroups who like schools that are selective on the basis of testing or audition skill to let such advantages go. Meantime we can use every tool available to increase diversity through choice.

How will we hold folks accountable under such chaos and anarchy? Tune in later. It may be that acknowledging the "chaos" is the first step toward building democratic forms of accountability and that democracy starts with an uncomfortable reliance on human judgment.

Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 7:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

I love democracy too. Can’t imagine any other system under which I would want to live. I too grew up in the era when Communism and fascism were horrible realities, not theories.

Even in a democracy, there are mandates that we must all accept. When you write “mandates,” I think “laws.” The laws are passed by democratically elected bodies, and like them or not, we live with them.

Thinking about the power of self-governance and schools leads me to think about some situations where I am glad that there are democratic checks and balances on local preferences. I think, for example, of the segregated schools that I attended as a child in Texas. I have no doubt that if the issue had been put to a vote, it would have been overwhelmingly approved by the local populace. Unquestionably, racial segregation satisfied the white majority. Parents in the schools I attended would never have willingly opened the school doors to black children.

Or I think of the perennial debates about evolution and school prayer. I am willing to bet that you would be uncomfortable to find your views embraced by religious fundamentalists who want to see their children learning their own views about how the universe originated and want them to start the day with a prayer.

We could solve all these problems if every group had its own schools that reflected its own culture and preferences. But the courts do not look favorably on this libertarian interpretation of local governance. There are some activities—especially those of a religious nature—that the courts have ruled cannot take place in public schools. Sometimes I worry that the First Amendment rights of people with strong religious views have been jettisoned (my friend Joseph Viteritti has a new book about to be published on this subject, called The Last Freedom).

I worry too about public schools that teach only one culture and do so uncritically. I think that schools should equip students with the ability to examine their own culture and others with a critical eye.

But ultimately negotiating the boundaries between what is and is not permissible in the public square is what democracy is about. We have no final answers. We keep negotiating.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

Ah, mandates. My flirtation with libertarianism is deep-seated and may be related to having grown up at a time when two absolutes—fascism and communism—were at their heights. Both dismissed the sloppy bourgeois democracies with their tepid ideals. I knew the Left-side of this better than the Fascist one, and found myself on occasion uneasy about claims that one had to sacrifice democracy for higher ends—albeit temporarily. You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs. The masses have been brain-washed and until we can clear their heads of foolishness "we" must rule in their place.

But in the end, I think it explains why my "religion" became democracy itself. (P.S. It may have been unwise—but not undemocratic—for unions to have fought for the check off.)

Naturally I was often tempted to abandon democracy, because "the people" seemed so often wrong. But who would I choose in their place? Thus my love of that Churchillian quotation: Democracy is a thoroughly flawed idea until one considers the alternatives (or words to that effect).

So I'm always glad for the existence of good alternatives—sometimes I prefer local rights, sometimes state rights, sometimes private rights, and other times federal rights. Just not all in one place. I know I'm inconsistent. So then is the Constitution. I admit, to start with, I'm both an uncertainty AND an inconsistency fan.

But when it comes to how we "raise" our children, when it comes to whose History is True, I fall back stubbornly on being as close as I can to viewing localism as my bottom line, with a few exceptions.

There are, I realize, some Friedmanite libertarians who agree with me and suggest a private free-market solution—competition solves all! They would be hard put, of course, to argue that such measures raise test-scores. So far the evidence is clear: privatization does not raise scores. But, mostly they argue for it based on their belief in the market place as the highest form of democracy. That's where I disagree.

My experience in the 70s, 80s and 90s in NYC's East Harlem community however sold me on public choice as a fitting response to public accountability! Families and teachers values re schooling are sufficiently varied that they cannot always be "compromised" without compromising a decent and coherent educational setting. Perhaps we will discover that the important thinking—about means and ends—must rest with the constituents of each and every school: the familiar idea of self-governance. Not only is self-governance efficient, but it's educational.

While management experts search for "the best system", we've abandoned the common ingredient that "beat the odds" share, the power of self-governance (even when no one officially gave it to them). Schools that connect with their immediate public, not pull away from it, serve kids best.

What are the limits of such localism? What kind of loving lay public stewardship is needed? In the name of the larger public good what must we have consensus on? What trade-offs could we live with? It might be useful, Diane, if you and I—committed as we both are to public education—discussed what such limits might be like in the public sphere?

Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

One of the great things about this ongoing conversation called blogging is that you never cease to surprise me. I told our blogmaster Mary-Ellen Deily at Education Week that the blog should be retitled "Never the Last Word." It is that love of intellectual mano-a-mano that keeps us energized. I hope we never lose it.

In your last post, you restate your objection to mandates, then shift into a defense of teachers' unions. I expect that the anti-union people will jump all over the opening that you created for them to rant against mandatory dues payments by teachers who are forced to pay to unions that they never chose to join. But I'll leave that rant to them.

I am sure that our readers expect that we will engage in the grown-up version of Mortal Kombat (that's a beat-em-up video game series). But this is an area where we agree.

I continually am amazed by the anti-union sentiment in the media (and it seems to be growing). Politicians get great press coverage when they thunder on against the teachers' union, about ending tenure, getting rid of bad apples, etc. The public apparently likes this swaggering tough guy approach. I think this is so stupid! A few weeks ago, Steve Jobs—the CEO of Apple Computers—said to a big convention that the biggest problem in American education is the teachers' unions. Al Shanker (one of my personal heroes) would have said to him, "Let's make a list of the highest performing states and a list of the lowest-performing states. Which list has strong teachers' unions? Which list has weak ones?" If Steve Jobs were right, the South would have the highest academic achievement, but it does not. Shanker would win this one easily.

Al Shanker also used to point out that the kids do a great job of weeding out incompetent teachers; within their first five years of teaching, somewhere between 40-50% of all new teachers leave for greener pastures, either another district or another line of work. Teaching has always been a hard job; today it is harder than ever, now that the public expects all children to become proficient (I agree, by the way, that the goal of 100% proficiency by 2014 is absurd).

You are quite right about the paternalism that became deeply embedded in public education from its earliest days. The supervisors were men, most of the teachers were women. For many years, teachers (mainly women) were not allowed to marry; in some districts, they were not allowed to become pregnant (if they did, they had to retire at once).

Today, unions remain important for teachers because of the huge imbalance in power between administrators and teachers. Many administrators, especially the non-traditional ones, think they should emulate the corporate model; they would like to be able to hire and fire at will, without just cause, hoping to intimidate the people who do the actual work of educating children. Authoritarian leaders remind us why teachers need the protection of a professional union.

Many years ago, a friend and labor leader, Victor Gotbaum, said to me that politicians should stop knocking the unions; as he put it, "We are the furniture that comes with the building." Some leaders of our time would rather burn down the building than live with that furniture. But when the current crop of would-be CEOs are long gone, the unions will still be here—because they meet real needs.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

Perhaps it's time to change the subject. Moving on does not mean we both won't have another "last word" to get in on Reading First and literacy. (It's hard for me to resist just one or two more rejoinders.) Also the disagreement re what international tests do and don't tell us—as well as testing itself—we can pass over for the moment, but must get back to. But your comments about "mandates" suggest a place to take off in another direction, even before we get to the "Tough Choices, Tough Times" report as you suggest in your last post.

While none of us like to be told what to do, we begrudgingly accept the need for rules and mandates. But each of them need to be treated with care and caution because they are always pressed on us under the claims of crisis and emergency; and once approved they rarely are reconsidered. Every bad experience leads to a new rule, and none lead to removing them.

For every mandate there is a trade-off; an unintended consequence. When we're talking about something as fragile as the "minds" of our youngsters and the future of a democratic "mindset" we need to be wary. I'm getting to sound like the critics from the libertarian right at times! Yes, even the idea of mandatory schooling should occasionally be revisited—and reaffirmed.

Unionism is an issue that resonates back to my early childhood when they were just beginning to be a serious force. John Dewey, whose name you and I refer to re educational issues, was a staunch founder and defender of teacher's unions. He was my family's hero however for his defense of democracy—I barely knew about him as an educator. His reasons, like ours, probably related both to the need for a counterpart to the power of corporations as well as to his and our thoughts about how schooling relates to democracy.

There has historically been something paternalistic about how adults as well as children are treated in our public schools. Teachers (mostly women) have for more than a century been seen as, at best, dedicated public servants with a love of children, but with limited intellectual power. When I visited St Louis to get married in the early 50s I discovered that women had just won the right to marry and remain teachers. From Day One when I started working in Chicago schools I was struck by the downright condescending tone taken toward teachers and parents (both mostly women). I was over 30, but I had never felt as humiliated.

I thanked my forebears who had built the Chicago AFT local and allowed me to remember that "their" whims did not rule my life. The rules protected me, allowed me to "talk back to power." The task of preparing kids for a democratic society, I believed then as now, required kids to keep company with strong-minded, feisty, and collaborative adults. Nothing we "taught" was more important than how they witnessed the ways in which adulthood was conducted. The dilemma was that too many teachers entered the field still seeing themselves as not quite fullgrown adults. Unions gave them a chance, not always taken, to grow up.

Deb

Posted by Deborah Meier at 1:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

I am glad to see that our discussion of Reading First is getting a lot of reaction, and quite a number of interesting and well-informed responses.

I don't like mandates any more than you do, but I also think it is important to learn from experience and even, when it is cumulative, to learn from research. I think it would be irresponsible, perhaps anti-intellectual, to wave away the very extensive research that has been conducted over many years about reading. The research in "Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children," for example, should not be lightly dismissed.

Surely there are appropriate mandates: for example, the mandate not to discriminate against people because of their race, ethnicity, gender, religion, or disability status; the mandate to provide compulsory schooling; the mandate to vaccinate all children against disease; the mandate to pay taxes, even for government activities we don't like; and various other legislated mandates that we accept without question.

I don't agree with you that American schools are "at the top" in reading. International surveys of reading—unlike those in math and science—are suspect because reading—unlike math and science—tends to be culture-bound and therefore difficult to compare across cultures. We don't see "at the top" performance on NAEP tests of reading in 4th grade or 8th grade. Government surveys of adult literacy report that the ability to read well is declining, even among college graduates. A report last year from the National Endowment for the Arts documented that young people are reading less than 10 years ago. Yes, there is a problem.

I have been appalled (as I know you are) by the mandated imposition of "balanced literacy," Everyday Math, and Lucy Calkins' "workshop model" in the NYC schools since September 2004, when Mayor Bloomberg's program began. Literacy coaches and math coaches were detailed to every school to make sure that every teacher was doing exactly the same thing in every classroom. Every hour, every minute of the literacy and math class was tightly scripted. Teachers were disciplined if they went "off point." I heard similar stories in San Diego about professional development sessions that seemed to be akin to Chinese re-education camps. Behind this lockstep approach is the belief that there is only one correct way to teach and that those who dare to think otherwise are troublemakers. The results of this mandate that forced balanced literacy and the workshop model on every teacher, whether they liked it or not, have been unimpressive to date. The system can compel compliance, but it can't compel enthusiasm.

I suggest that here on the ground in NYC, the mandated balanced literacy/workshop model has been far more consequential than Reading First, about which so many fulminate. Forty-five elementary schools in NYC have received Reading First funds. But over 1,300 have been subject to the lockstep, inflexible mandates imposed by Chancellor Joel Klein.

I join you as a charter member of the tolerance-for-uncertainty club. One of my favorite quotations comes from Robert Hutchins. He said that you must always keep listening to the other person because they may be right.

So let's keep talking. May I suggest that we move on to a discussion of the "Tough Choices, Tough Times" report? I see that Education Week had a discussion with two of its signatories on March 14, so this is timely.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 7:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

You're right, Reading First is not mandatory. I just visited a school in Oakland that turned down being part of a Reading First initiative because they thought it wrong-headed. I wish others were as professionally responsible. But the published correspondence between the leaders of Reading First demonstrates with what glee and persistence they went about the task of twisting arms—especially in Districts with needy kids under threat of NCLB sanctions. Diane, if the next administration chose to use the same pressure on behalf of Balanced Literacy (as California once did re whole-language—to my dismay at the time), I think we might agree it was abusive. Still you are right to remind me that the fault lies both with those who tried to bribe districts into using their favorite methods and those who took the bribe.

I'll accept the idea that the bribe was offered with good intent, by people who think there is only one best method. It scares me since at this point research into learning proves only one thing: that there is more than one right method. Other examples: research shows that holding kids over does not—usually—help. I still believe that school people and parents are in the best position to make such decisions based on their firsthand knowledge about how it might impact on a particular child in a particular school. Ditto for spelling research, etc.

There is a strong tendency to want to remove controversy from school life and base our decisions on Science. We too often assume Science removes uncertainty. Untrue. The ground between Infallible Certainty and Infallible Faith is above all what schools need to prepare our future citizens for. Democracy requires us to act "as if" we could be wrong. Tolerance for uncertainty is a critical quality of being a well-educated person—for teachers also. It's in our ability to negotiate in this vast in-between that democracy rests. We're not seeking to remove fallible judgment, but to better inform it.

Since, as I mentioned before, American schools rank near the top in teaching kids "how-to read"—based on international test score data of 4th graders—the panic and passion on this narrow subject is curious. I'd like us to explore instead why this edge disappears in later years. It may relate to how we formally introduced reading to 5 year olds—or may not.

I'm back to what first amazed me when I subbed in Chicago schools: how is it that kids who seemed so lively and smart on the playground in front of my house seemed so passive and "dumb" in school?

Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 8:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deb,

I don’t think you understand how the Reading First program works. No state or district is compelled by federal mandates to use the reading methods specified by the Reading First program. No state is required to apply for RF funding. No district is required to accept RF funding. The Reading First dollars are available only to states and districts that apply for them. Reading First is a competitive grant program.

For example, in New York State, the RF money went only to districts that sought the money and then only for a limited number of schools that were prepared to follow the law’s guidelines. The districts had to fill out an application saying that the schools would accept the requirements of the program to use only methods based on “scientifically based reading research.”

New York City, which has about 800 or so elementary schools requested RF funding for 46 public elementary schools and 36 nonpublic (mainly Catholic) schools. The State Education Department reviewed all the proposals and the city received $107 million for three years. (A few months ago, the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Education said that New York state should refund the $107 million to the feds because NYC’s application didn’t receive enough points from reviewers, and the state had arbitrarily awarded bonus points to the city. This matter is still in dispute.)

The point is that states are not required to accept Reading First funds, nor are districts. The states do not lose ESEA funding if they do not apply for Reading First funding. You are confusing Reading First with No Child Left Behind. States do have to comply with NCLB requirements if they want to continue to receive federal funding. But again, Reading First money goes only to districts that request the funding, and even then not to all schools in a district.

Some newspapers (such as The New York Times) have frequently attacked Reading First, but I don’t think the reporters realize that states and districts get the money only if they ask for it. Nor have they reported the success stories associated with Reading First. Consider the contrast between inner-city Richmond, Virginia, which sought Reading First money, and Fairfax County, Virginia, which did not. Richmond’s schools, 95% black and more than 70% free lunch, have been among Virginia’s lowest performing; Fairfax County is an affluent, high performing district. Richmond implemented RF programs in its lowest performing schools. Since adopting RF methods, African American third-graders in inner-city Richmond have surpassed African American third-graders in rich Fairfax County on state tests, by 74% to 59%. (For more on this story, see Sol Stern, “This Bush Education Reform Really Works,” City Journal, Winter 2007 .

I agree with you that different methods work with different kids who have different needs. The problem is that for many years, whole language—or some variant of whole language—was the only method found in most schools. Kids who were not learning to read were called “learning disabled” or promoted from grade to grade not knowing how to read. Few schools of education even taught reading methods that relied on phonics for beginning readers, except for special education. If you truly believe, as you say, that “teachers need to understand how to instruct in various ways,” then you should agree that teachers need to know how to teach phonics and the correspondence between letters and sounds as one of those “various ways.”

We agree that, beginning in the earliest grades, children should have lots of time devoted to science, the arts, stories about historical persons, and classic children’s literature. Knowledge about the world and immersion in literature and science builds vocabulary and background knowledge. Jeanne Chall knew this; her wise and wonderful book "Learning to Read: The Great Debate" should be required (oops, sorry) reading for everyone who cares about these issues, as we all should.

Unlike you, I don’t think that a knowledge-rich curriculum is inconsistent with learning to crack the code that unlocks the English language. Many kids learn to crack the code at home, because their parents read to them and teach them the code. Many more need help to do it.

That’s the purpose of Reading First, and given that no state or district gets RF funds unless they put in an application, I don’t see why this is a problem for you.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 7:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (31) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

We were both irritated by Chancellor Klein's effort to mandate that all teachers in NYC use the Lucy Calkins Writing Workshop Method. So it surprised me that you were sympathetic to the Federal government for doing the same re Reading First. I sometimes think it may stem from where we see ourselves in the pecking order of power—with me always imagining myself in the position of the receiver not deliverer of orders. But the many unexpected ways intelligent people—including 5 year olds—make sense of the same world is why I love being a teacher! So let's explore this difference.

Re: your argument that it's not a mandate, but strictly voluntary. Well…yes, the states can turn down ESEA funds. But at a fairly heavy price and one that would fall on the most vulnerable kids.

Secondly, we need a longer discussion about the Reading Panel report upon which Reading First's claims are based. Of course if kids are not instructed in certain pre-reading activities they will do worse on measures of these activities. But whether such prereading skills are necessary for reading comprehension is a different question. Yes, for some kids. No, for others. That's a fact. (Even the study was far more nuanced than Reading First's interpretation.)

Thirdly, the Panelists definition of successful readers and mine are not the same. By 4th grade US kids are right behind the top scoring Finns who don't teach reading at all until kids are 7 years old. What matters after 4th grade is not whether they can but whether they are "in the habit" of picking up books. I think certain forms of learning to read are obstacles to developing the habit and love of reading. See the minority report by panelist Elaine Garan, Resisting Reading Mandates, Heineman Press.

Fourth, one-size no more fits learning how to read than learning how to do anything else. Doctors know that sometimes only trial and error can tell which medicine will work. Ditto for reading. ETS researchers Chittenden, Amarel, and Bussis, ( Inquiry Into Meaning, Teachers College Press) followed fairly typical kids learning to read and concluded that teachers need to understand how to instruct in various ways if they were to create classrooms that served all kids.

Finally, there are those unintended consequences of different approaches to teaching reading. As a teacher I started with the easiest and most natural approach first because it saved a lot of time. It's all most kids needed. When we spend time on one thing, we have less for others. So I had time to devote to science, social studies, the arts, and the sheer love of the language, written and spoken. Lucky are the Finnish children who are allowed to "read the world", not just "the word" in their early years of schooling. Given the complexity of what we lately assume all children need to be explicitly taught it's no wonder that our elementary schools teach almost nothing but literacy any more.

My friend George Wood has taken to reading to audiences Story 117—A Girl in a Cave—from the approved Reading First system produced by SRA/Macmillan/McGraw Hill. It makes one long for Dick and Jane. That's the fix I'd be in today were I still teaching Kindergarten.

Sure, our judgment is fallible, but it's at the heart of the democratic ideal—which is also fallible.

As a friend wrote me: The phaenmenl pweor of the hmuan mind azmaes me. Aoccdrnig to a rsaeerch taem at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy it doenost mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olnyu iprmoatnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit a porbelm, Amzanig huh?

Deb

p.s. I'm avoiding for the moment the Inspector General's report on how Reading First created its list of Approved vendors.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

So much is happening and I am afraid that I jumped ahead and wrote a blog entry on the upheavals in NYC before I saw your post about teaching reading.

Here is the bottom line on the federal Reading First program.

No one in the federal government, not the Department of Education, not the Congress, tells teachers how to teach reading. Any teacher can use any program or method they prefer without federal dictates or interference. Nothing in the law says otherwise.

The Reading First program is a part of No Child Left Behind that got bipartisan support. It provides an extra billion dollars a year to districts that agree to use methods based on the research funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development over the past 15 years. That research was conducted during the eight years of the Clinton administration as well as the tail end of the first Bush administration (I was there, working in the US Department of Education and was not aware of the NICHD research, which was still new at the time).

You may not like the findings of this research, even though it was reflected in the report compiled by Catherine Snow's panel ("Preventing Reading Difficulties in Young Children," 1997) and the National Reading Panel (2000), but if not, then you or your school or your district should not apply for Reading First dollars. NYC got a big chunk of Reading First dollars ($107 million), even though only a tiny proportion of its schools intended to abide by the law's requirements.

The betting in DC is that the Democratic Congress will reauthorize Reading First. They don't see it as partisan.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 7:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

Glad to hear you are of two minds about this “scientifically-proven” stuff that the Bush administration is so fond of touting when it comes to K-12 schooling. To pursue the point a bit.

Why do I think the Bush Administration claim to stand for science when it comes to teaching reading to be nonsense? Since being well educated rests, I’d argue, on respect for credible evidence and learning from the past it would seem I’d count Bush as an ally. (I would perhaps chuckle at the irony that the Bushites require obedience to "scientific evidence" when it comes to prescribing how Johnny learns to read but not the scientific consensus on global warming, or the origins of the species.)

So why do I cringe every time I hear that phrase? Because there is nothing comparable in the science or consensus behind the research on learning to read that should allow the Federal government to dictate particular publisher products to the nation's schools, nor ever likely to be. It’s dumbing down Science. Even in the field of medicine or related fields like nutrition we are more humble about the role of science. When I showed three highly regarded doctors my x-rays, described my symptoms and underwent an examination not long ago, I got more than one opinion. In the end, despite my enormous respect for the profession, I had to exercise my judgment. Good doctors are, furthermore, aware that individuals differ and what’s best for x may not for y. Unlike the Fed’s understanding of reading research.

Fortunately Big Brother doesn't dictate that overweight people buy specific brand-named diet cures, or that we outlaw coffee one year and then require it the next based on the latest Science research. Yet defining and measuring good reading is more, not less complex than losing weight, or testing the impact of coffee. For some odd reason when it comes to the teaching of reading we have allowed the Department of Education to exercise the power of the purse to dictate which reading methods we buy, in the name of Science!

Deborah

(p.s. It would help if teachers had the professional time to be the wisest professionals they could be, still I’m not prepared to substitute the wisdom of those who do not know my kids at all for the school’s judgment and mine.)

Posted by Deborah Meier at 1:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

You suggest at the end of your Feb. 28 entry that there may be no such thing as "scientifically-based" reading methods. I am of two minds about this. I would like to think that education research has value; that if a large number of studies consistently validate that one approach gets better results than another, then this is a finding that has some utility to others. That's the way research works in other fields, so why not education? So is education research capable of reaching "scientific" conclusions or not?

The case of education may be special, in that it is hard to get "scientific" validity that most scientists would recognize as they do laboratory studies. Human beings have a habit of being extremely variable, and experiments—such as class size studies—tend to be plagued by the inconvenient fact that students move from school to school. In addition, it is often difficult to know whether teaching methods were consistently, faithfully applied in the actual classroom.

I recall that Jeanne Chall investigated the question in the 1960s for the Carnegie Corporation and reviewed the entire corpus of research that then existed. Jeanne, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, wrote a book about her research called "Learning to Read: The Great Debate." She chastised the extremes but concluded that knowledge of letters and sounds was critical for the beginning reader. Also that students who knew how to decode would ultimately be enabled to read better with comprehension than those who did not know how. However, she warned that if phonics were taken to an extreme, then the pendulum would swing back again and the debate would start all over.

It has been my experience that almost any method works when children come from homes where their parents read to them (and are in effect teaching them all the time). However, when kids lack those advantages, it is best to have teachers who have a full kitbag of strategies, including knowledge of letter-sound combinations.

I attended the Core Knowledge annual conference recently, and Don Hirsch spoke eloquently about why we don't seem to get unstuck from our national "reading crisis." He said that so much time was spent on processes of reading (e.g., previewing, reviewing, predicting, summarizing, identifying the main idea) and so much time was wasted on trivial little stories, and that this formal approach to reading is actually a barrier to learning to read. His view is that schools should start early on teaching kids about amazing and wonderful ideas—life in ancient Egypt, how Indians lived in early America, the story of the American Revolution, etc.—and that kids should both learn to decode (early and soon, as Chall wrote) and quickly become involved in oral reading (listening and speaking), vocabulary building in context, and learning about stuff that is new and intriguing.

Does that sound all that different from your own experience?

I want to get past this issue quickly, as I am eager to get back to our real theme—which is who has the power to make decisions about the future of our schools, what decisions are they making, and what is the future of public education.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 7:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

I wish I had been there at the rally for Public Education. But I did hear on my way to Boston, that Klein/Bloomberg had appointed a Parent Engagement person as a response. They miss the point. This isn’t a PR problem. And, as you aptly note, hiring the opposition doesn’t always work to one’s advantage. I’ve got my fingers crossed.

We’re inclined to forget that democracy was invented as a response to the demand for accountability. For, of and by “the people” is a statement about accountability.

It’s a radical idea—that we have definitely forgotten. At best we think testing more often with ever direr rewards and punishments equals being more accountable. In the name of accountability we’re designing a system of schooling ever more tightly aligned and controlled by those at the top. If you want something else you’ve got to pay for it—go “private”.

The rally’s slogan—“where’s the public in public education” is right on.

The reader from Newark—if I understood his comment to this blog rightly—thinks that bad unions and collective bargaining are the culprit.

How did the idea of workplace democracy—which unions represent—become passé? We used to argue—in my youth—that you could quickly spot a despotic regime by the fact that it didn’t allow powerful unions of working people! Today we in the USA are almost union free.

Folks forget that union-management contracts are the work of unions and management. If “management” doesn’t take advantage of due process to tackle the quality of teachers, the answer is not to give the same managers more power to hire and fire based on their whims. We’re back to the question of whether “due process”—at root a basic tenet of democracy—is a luxury or a necessity? If it’s a necessity we need to design schools so that it doesn’t seem impossible to exercise due process for kids, teachers, families and principals.

When kids say, “but it isn’t fair!” they are expressing a fundamental human trait that schools ought to be designed to help its students understand, not dismiss it as childish whining. It probably requires twelve years or more to do the idea justice, when, in fact, at best we devote a few months in a Civics 101 course to “covering”—vs uncovering—it.

It’s what’s so endlessly interesting in playing with the design of a classroom and school. But it’s a form of play that can’t take place only in the abstract by smart business consultants, absent the back and forth of those effected by it.

If we don’t watch out Diane, we won’t find things to disagree with! So, let’s get back to some of those cans of worms—like the role of Scientific Evidence in schooling.

Deborah

p.s. Thanks for the corrected data, Diane. Lying with statistics is not new—and anyone whose been a principal is probably an expert at doing it. Not just superintendents. It's why I advocate a math education that spends more time on statistics and less on calculus.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 8:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Deb,

I must add an important footnote about my last blog (The Power Struggle in New York City). I mentioned how hard it is to find achievement data on the New York State Education Department website. I must explain how I found the data and give credit where it is due.

I spent hours—literally hours—going to every part of the website associated with assessments and accountability, with English language arts and mathematics, with K-12 education, and I could not find the achievement data. In my utter frustration, I began emailing people that I thought should know. No one could help me. Then I sent an email to Elizabeth Carson, who for years has selflessly run a group called NYC-HOLD (which advocates for math reform) and received a prompt reply.

Elizabeth explained that I had to find the archived press releases and told me how to navigate the site to find them. There I was able to discover that the Commissioner of Education had held press conferences at which he presented Power Point explanations of the scores. The presentations contained everything I was looking for. Most important for me was the longitudinal data, which showed that NYC had experienced a big test-score increase in 2003. I called administrators, who told me that the state tests are given in January and March. Chancellor Klein announced his reform package in January 2003 (on Martin Luther King Jr. day), at the very time that the first batch of tests were being taken by students. It was obvious that he could not justly claim credit for the jump in scores on tests that were given at the very time he was announcing what he planned to do the following September!

Anyway, I do want to thank Elizabeth Carson, who is a tireless, unpaid worker in the vineyard of education reform, without whom I may never have discovered the crucial data that I needed.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Deborah,

In your introduction, you referred to your history of engagement in political action. Unlike you, I have not been involved in political organizing or protest movements. I do what I can with my pen but generally stay arms-length from political action. So it was a departure for me when I attended a protest rally on February 28 in New York City, called "Put the Public Back into Public Education." This was an extraordinary microcosm of the groups that are outraged by the takeover of public education in the city by the mayor, lawyers, and business groups. It was the first such public event since the mayor took complete control of the public schools in 2002.

This is a big deal, because few people outside New York City really understand what mayoral control means. For that matter, not many people inside NYC do either. Few people realize that it means that there are no public boards, no central board, no local boards, no public voice whatever. The mayor controls everything. Decisions are made behind closed doors by a cadre of lawyers, with no public discussion or public review. Today, there are no educators included among the decision-makers, only lawyers. The discussion comes only after the decision is made and there is no changing the decision. With this crowd, public discussion means telling the public what was already decided.

Not knowing any of this, or perhaps not knowing why it matters that all democratic governance has been eliminated from public education in NYC, reporters and mayors come to NYC, get the Potemkin Village tour, hear the Department's claims, and go home to talk of the "miracle" in New York City.

Unfortunately there is no such miracle. The people at the protest rally—well over 1,000 parents, teachers, and students—know it. The editorial writers in NYC don't. The business community doesn't. The mayors and their helpers in Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and elsewhere don't.

So the rally was important, because it was the first time that the simmering public rebellion had a face. Speaker after speaker got up to talk about overcrowded classrooms; about schools that were bursting at the seams because the Department, without consultation, dumped a new small school or a charter school into an already full building; about teachers and parents who felt disrespected, excluded, marginalized by the powers that be.

Interesting how the Mayor and Chancellor Joel Klein reacted to the rally. First, they scheduled a press conference on the day of the rally at which they announced the appointment of a director in charge of family engagement. She will earn $150,000 a year. The woman they chose has apparently a good reputation among parents, but at the rally it was clear that the parent leaders saw this as a blatant attempt to buy off their discontent and they were not selling. Too many other parent leaders have been hired and silenced. Second, the Mayor said before the rally that most parents were happy with his reforms, and only "a handful" were not. This statement attracted much hooting and derision at the rally. Even his new "family engagement" person respectfully disagreed with him. Third, the New York Post wrote two vicious editorials denouncing the rally and saying that anyone who turned out was a "shill" for Randi Weingarten and the teachers' union, having been bought and paid for by them. Apparently any elected official who dares to challenge mayoral control is a shill for the teachers' union.

When the New York Post editorialized that the rally was a showcase for Randi's puppets, it insisted that the reforms have been incredibly successful. As proof, the editorial included these statements by Chancellor Klein. "Our fourth-graders have gained almost 19 percentage points in math over the past four years," he said. "In English, our fourth-graders have gained almost 12.5 points, compared to only 3.5 points by students in the rest of the state." The Post, the Daily News, and the New York Sun dutifully report such claims in their editorials without bothering to look at the website of the New York State Education Department. How hard would it be for them to check their facts? (Let it be noted that the reporters for New York City's newspapers, unlike the editorial writers, tend to have a more skeptical frame of mind.) *

I know you are opposed to testing, but here is an example where it is useful to say, "Let's look at the facts." The facts are on the state website. (You have to dig to find them, listed under archived press releases—see the bottom of this entry for links and how to access them).

Klein began work as Chancellor in mid-2002 and spent months designing his reforms. The Children First agenda was announced in January 2003 and launched in September 2003. Thus it is appropriate to compare the test scores for 2003 (the last tests before implementation of the reforms) to the scores in 2006 (the latest available).

Have our fourth-graders gained almost 19 percentage points in math? No, they gained 4.2 percentage points over those three years of testing. In 2003, 66.7% of fourth graders met state standards, and in 2006, the percentage was up to 70.9. How did he come up with the idea that the scores jumped by almost 19 points? He is using 2002 as his start date, when the scores were only 52.0%. But he cannot fairly use that date as his starting point, because his program was not launched until September 2003. In fact, the biggest one-year jump in fourth-grade math scores—14.7%—occurred between 2002 and 2003, the year before his program was installed. Since then, in three years, the scores have gone up only 4.2%.

In English, did our fourth-grade scores go up by 12.5%? No. The proportion of fourth-graders who met state standards increased by 6.4% from 2003 to 2006. The figure was 52.5% in 2003 and is now 58.9%. Once again, the chancellor is taking the data from 2002 and adding it to his gains; the rate in 2002 was 46.5%. But this is just plain wrong, because he can't take credit for the 6-point jump that occurred from 2002-2003. That was before he started his programs in the schools.

Note that he does not mention the eighth-grade scores. That is because in both math and English, 60% of students don't meet state standards. Despite small upticks and downticks. the eighth grade scores have remained flat over the past three years. So the Department doesn't mention them. And this, despite the fact that the Department allegedly ended social promotion in grades 3, 5, and 7. One must wonder why scores in eighth grade remain so abysmal if social promotion was eliminated.

Why does the media allow the Mayor and the Chancellor to claim credit for the phenomenal gains that occurred the year before the Mayor's program was implemented? I don't know, but I have long believed that in the end, as the saying goes, you can't fool all the people all the time.

Diane

*For anyone wanting to check the NY State Education Department website for themselves, here is some guidance. For some reason it is not easy to find the scores. They are archived with press releases and contained in a Power Point presentation by the Commissioner of Education when he released the scores. Here are the URLs (it took me hours to find them!):

For Grade 4 English: http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/irts/ela-math/ela-06/grade3-8ELA-2006_files/800x600/slide15.html

For Grade 8 English: http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/irts/ela-math/ela-06/grade3-8ELA-2006_files/800x600/slide16.html

Grade 4 mathematics: http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/irts/ela-math/math-06/math3-8_files/800x600/slide16.html

Grade 8 mathematics: http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/irts/ela-math/math-06/math3-8_files/800x600/slide17.html

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 10:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)