May 2011 Archives

Dear Deborah,

May 16, 2011, was a dark day in the history of New York state. On that date, the New York State Board of Regents, once known for careful deliberation and the integrity of its standards, approved a plan to evaluate teachers by their students' test scores. Students' scores will count for as much as 40 percent of teachers' evaluations. This plan has neither research nor evidence to support it. The Regents are making a gamble with the future of educational quality and with the lives of the state's teachers.

To be fair, they did it for the money. New York won a Race to the Top award, so officials obliged themselves to judge teachers by test scores, but their proposal said that the scores would count for only 20 percent when judging a teacher's worth. Now the Regents, allegedly in response to a request by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, raised the percentage to up to 40 percent, to be composed of state and local tests, or state tests only. I say "allegedly" because Gov. Cuomo has heretofore not been known for his interest in technical issues related to teacher evaluation.

Like other states, New York now will operate on the assumption that student scores are a valid measure of teacher quality. They are not. The Regents chose to ignore a letter from 10 of the nation's leading assessment experts, urging them not to go down this path. The testing experts summarized research showing that the measures would be inaccurate and unstable. Many teachers will be mislabeled and their careers ruined because of the Regents' thoughtless decision.

Three of the state's 17 Regents voted against the proposal. Two are experienced educators, Dr. Kathleen Cashin representing Brooklyn and Dr. Betty Rosa representing the Bronx. The third, Roger Tilles, a lawyer (and former member of the Michigan state board of education) represents Long Island. Tilles explained his opposition to the policy in a newspaper article.

Tilles pointed out that: "Our current state tests are not designed to measure growth from year to year, and we are years away from having valid state tests that are." But that didn't stop the Regents. If ratings are made public, he warned: "Districts will have to figure out how to offer professional development for teachers deemed ineffective while leaving them in the classroom—all the while, understandably, parents will be raising the roof if their sons or daughters are assigned to an "ineffective" or "developing" teacher. The stigma attached to a teacher who may be inappropriately labeled based upon an invalid use of inappropriate tests will be a boon for the legal community. Student learning scores should lead to interventions for students and professional development for teachers—but the proposed system isn't designed to lead to improved instruction because it has no diagnostic aspect."

A highly accomplished principal, Carol Burris, wrote to explain that this policy would damage education and incentivize teachers to avoid students who might drag down their "effectiveness" ratings. She wrote:

"The biggest losers of these new evaluation policies, in New York and beyond, will be students. A teacher will look at each student as potential 'value added' or 'value decreased'—that is, as a potential increase or decrease on the score the teacher is ultimately assigned. With his or her job dependent on those students' test scores, this teacher will now have a set of incentives and disincentives very different than in the past. For example, I was a Spanish teacher. If I were still teaching today and faced with evaluation by test scores, I would abandon the annual trip to the Goya exhibit and I would cut out the projects that furthered student growth and enriched their understandings of language and culture. How could I dare spend the time? Everything that I would do from September to June would be preparation for a test of dubious value so that I could keep my job.

"For teachers with young families and college debt to pay, the student who comes late to class or who does not do his homework will become a threat to her job security. The troubled child who transfers in will be nervously welcomed. The student with disruptive behavior will be a threat to the scores of the rest of the class instead of a person to be understood and whose needs should be met. The score, not the well-educated child, will become the focus.

"The pressures will build to engage in exclusionary and non-educative practices designed to improve numbers at the cost of learning. Instead of pushing students to take physics and advanced algebra, schools will discourage weaker students so that the aggregate score for the teacher and principal does not go down.

"This isn't an argument against holding teachers accountable; it's an argument against holding them accountable for the wrong things and in a way that will result in very negative unintended consequences. I wouldn't want to teach in that environment, and I wouldn't want my children or the students at my school to try to learn in that environment; but the incentives for teachers to teach to the test and teach to the best will be unavoidable."

A group of New York state Teachers of the Year wrote the Regents in opposition to the prospect of tying a teacher's fate to one score on one day in children's lives. They warned that: "These changes, while politically popular, will neither improve schools nor increase student learning; rather, they will cause tangible harm to students and teachers alike."

New York City plans to spend about $60 million of its Race to the Top winnings to create many more assessments, not only in reading and math, but in social studies, science, and possibly other subjects as well. At a time when the city is preparing to lay off 4,000 teachers and to let go another 2,000 by attrition, it would seem that more tests are not the best answer to the problems of the district. But never mind, more tests there will be, because New York City for the past nine years has made a fetish of testing. The students will take the tests, said The New York Times, but the purpose of the tests is to grade the teachers.

I recently met with the principal of an elementary school in Brooklyn who hates the city's teacher data reports. She told me about an excellent teacher of a gifted class whose students started the year at the very top, near perfect. At the end of the year, their scores had dropped 5/100 of a percentage point. Given the margin of error on all tests, this is a meaningless difference, but the "drop" in the scores caused the teacher to be ranked in the bottom sixth percentile of all teachers.

All of this is outrageous and mean-spirited and harmful to teachers, students, and the quality of education. Educators know it, but our New York State Regents, with only three honorable exceptions, are indifferent to research, evidence, and testimony from highly experienced and successful principals and teachers. Indifferent as well to the harm done to those in their care, both students and teachers: These are not the Regents who were once held in high esteem. I suppose they might say in their defense that everyone else is doing it; or that the federal government thinks it's a good idea; but those are not good reasons to do wrong.

If we see the Regents set numerical goals for the full range of professions that they supervise, then we will know that they are even-handed. The Regents set licensing standards for 48 professions, including acupuncturists, architects, dentists, dieticians, massage therapists, midwives, nurses, pharmacists, podiatrists, social workers, and veterinarians. Will the Regents adopt measures for them too, based on the behavior of their clients? If the Regents intend only to single out teachers, to impose upon teachers a scheme that is fraught with error, then it's just piling on and joining in the national mood of whack-a-teacher.

Diane

Posted by Mary-Ellen Phelps Deily at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Diane,*

"They never had a formal education, and they don't understand the value of
 education," New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently said of the poor. "The old Norman Rockwell family is gone."

Bloomberg got properly chastised for these words, but they get at the heart of the matter. We have a heritage of disrespect for the poor. Either they don't know what they're doing or they deserve what they get. (While we insist on bragging about our rags-to-riches family histories to prove the latter.)

Meanwhile, over the past 100 years we have raised the bar from a few years of schooling to a high school degree and now a bachelor's degree. If you can't do it, well, you had your chance. Its value? It's measurable to dollars and cents in your pocket. Yes, Siena College always knew better, Diane.

At the same time, the gap between the poor and rich has grown exponentially, and the amount that's inheritable has grown apace. And, the odds of running into each other in the grocery store, the post office, or at a local meeting—ala Rockwell—has grown ever more remote.

I have in front of me a beautiful book of photographs called "Pioneers in Education;" It's about National-Louis University where I spoke a few weeks ago. The authors note that the nation's founders valued education from the start. Thus the founding in 1636 of Harvard, then Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Brown, and Columbia—all before the American Revolution. But education for "the masses"? (Or women, or people of color? Almost zilch.)

The idea of educating everyone—universally and freely—is not as ancient as I am. When I was born in 1931 a majority of Americans had not dropped into high school.

It wasn't and isn't the poor who, ala Bloomberg, failed to "value" education. It was those with far more power and resources who made the rules that kept them out. It took an enormous battle, led by labor unions and do-gooders, on behalf of our natural thirst for knowledge and self-respect. How dare the elite question the value others placed on getting a good education for their children? But it is part of our shared history to do so.

Even the "pioneers" honored in the book above cheered the move of the predecessor of National-Louis University (to quote the blurb) "from the dangerous South Side of Chicago to beautiful Evanston."

And it's not a lot better now. Visit Evanston and then Chicago's South Side. Our schools of education have done a lot to try to "convert" teachers to a greater understanding—even empathy—for those they serve. But their work requires uncovering generations of put-downs and deeply entrenched beliefs that are reinforced by the difficulties teachers face in classrooms and schools. The humiliations of being a K-8 teacher or even a K-12 teacher when I entered the field in 1963 were constant. The one hope for self-respect lay behind closed doors in a world of children. We've opened the doors, making teachers more vulnerable, not less.

Organizing unions a half-century ago helped us, but it takes two sides to produce contracts. Contracts adapted themselves to the top-down model in place as often as they fought against it. Insubordination remained the mortal sin. Strikes were illegal, and until the late 1960s few K-6 teachers were militant, accustomed as they were to both "children first" rhetoric and being treated like children.

As the historian of our schools, have I got it wrong, Diane? Do you think we can we overcome this history? Probably only if we have the patience not to expect miracles and the impatient knowledge that schooling's liberating message can resonate inside and outside the classroom.

Schools can't offer all children a decent living. There aren't enough chairs to go around. But we can argue that making sense of the world, having greater knowledge and skill, and the self-confidence and self-respect to stand up for oneself are worthwhile—regardless. Such faith won't overcome the odds of getting the empty chair when the music stops, but it will make life more interesting and maybe get us thinking together about what must change.

That's what we struggled to provide in the public schools my colleagues and I invented 20 to 40 years ago. We succeeded, and hundreds popped up. But friendly foundations and corporate "allies" were seeking faster solutions. They dismissed us as utopian and small scale. Perhaps they also dismissed us because our definition of "achievement" was both grander and more reliable than test scores.

Maybe it isn't in the stars. But only as schools treat adults—parents and teachers—as respected citizens of the school community can we expect them to turn out kids who see themselves as citizens of the larger society. Only such citizens can protect democracy, much less our planet!

I'm embarrassed to admit—I actually believe this.

Deborah

* Editor's note: This entry was originally published with the headline: "How Dare Elites Question the Values of Others?"

Posted by Deborah Meier at 11:12 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Deborah,

Last week, I had the great pleasure of visiting Siena College, a liberal arts college founded by the Franciscan order near Albany, New York. I was there to receive an honorary degree, but I soon realized that I was there to learn about the remarkable culture of this close-knit community. When I asked students why they chose to attend Siena, each one immediately responded, "because of the sense of community." Faculty members echoed the same sentiment.

The more I learned about Siena, the more I understood its commitment to service, especially to those who are most vulnerable. My fellow honorees were Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health, whose research has been so important in battling AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, and Ralph Perez of CREATE, an agency that assists people in dire need of food, shelter, and medical support in West Harlem. I felt humbled and unworthy to receive the same honors as these two champions of goodness.

Stephen Archer, who gave the commencement address on behalf of his class of 2011, exhorted them to model their lives on St. Francis, "to find and embrace the 'leper in our daily lives.'" He said, "I'm not just talking about working in soup kitchens and volunteering in shelters. While those are tremendous services, they are the obvious ones. We need to see beyond those, see opportunities where others don't and can't because they haven't grown in the Siena culture."

He spoke of teaching others to "care about more than just a positive bottom line ... not seeking the work that brings about the most money, but the work that brings about the most good." He spoke about simple acts of everyday kindness, about reaching out to those who were excluded. He talked about future teachers who would show their students that "school is as much about building a positive community and caring for one's peers as it is about formulas and research papers."

Father Kevin Mullen, the president of the college, who is a Franciscan priest, spoke eloquently about the college's belief that learning must deepen our caring for others.

I was indeed moved by my exposure to Siena. And when I came home, I reflected on a blog I wrote recently about my visit to Rhode Island. In that blog, I wrote harsh words about state Commissioner Deborah Gist. On reflection, I concluded that I had written in anger and that I was unkind. For that, I am deeply sorry.

Like every other human being, I have my frailties; I am far from perfect. I despair of the spirit of meanness that now permeates so much of our public discourse. One sees it on television, hears it on radio talk shows, reads it in comments on blogs, where some attack in personal terms using the cover of anonymity or even their own name, taking some sort of perverse pleasure in maligning or ridiculing others.

I don't want to be part of that spirit. Those of us who truly care about children and the future of our society should find ways to share our ideas, to discuss our differences amicably, and to model the behavior that we want the young to emulate. I want to advance the ideals and values that are so central to the Siena community: compassion, responsibility, integrity, empathy, and standing up against injustice. When Father Mullen presented me with my degree, he said that I am "now and forevermore a daughter of Siena." Although I am Jewish, not Catholic, I will strive to live up to that charge.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 9:06 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Diane,

I'm writing you while you are probably also writing me, on Sunday the 15th because I get up at 6 a.m. tomorrow to go to a board meeting at the Panasonic Foundation and then must drive five hours to Concord, N.H., where I'll spend a few days at the Upper Valley Educators Institute with Rob Fried. The institute runs a program where would-be teachers are placed in school four days a week and take classes one day a week—in order to earn a teaching license. It's the kind of "alternative" system I applaud and is just one of many which immerses interested would-be teachers inside classrooms—day after day. More later.

Yesterday I talked for hours with Dennis Littky whose new MET one-on-one college is coming to the end of its first year. The big turning point, he said, was sending young people to far-away lands largely on their own for a few months. Maybe it's one way of shifting their perspectives, going from seeing-like-a-teenager to seeing-like-an-adult, an American. Dennis is always learning on the job!

How we take in the world is so critical to what we can understand about it. James Scott's Seeing Like a State is a must read. It gets to the heart of our problem. Aside from those who truly believe that public enterprises are themselves evil, inefficient, and/or tyrannical, and those whose self-interests are tied into privatization, or testing, etc., I think the reforms also are the outcome of the vast number of people who see the world from their bird's-eye view. Libertarian critics are right, in part, that such ambitions are not unnatural perhaps in young, well-intended, but ambitious, people—especially young idealists. They are attracted to being "change agents" (changing others), vanguards, "policymakers." Scott gives examples of this from friend and foe alike.

In fact, every time I prepared for class the next day I was doing something similar—although it must seem an odd comparison. My scale is so different. And, consistently, I was—unlike today's reformers—brought down to earth the next day when I tried to implement my grand plans. Some things worked, some fell absolutely flat, and some went nowhere so fast that I had no back-up plan. The same thing happened to some of my best ideas for the school reforms I had in mind and brought before the staff or parents, only to discover that even as I laid them out to this real-life audience I could see flaws I hadn't noticed the night before.

That's true of many of one's own favorite ideas. [Text revised per author.] In the real world, of course, the reformers and the schools and the teachers (who carry the weight of many of the reformers' grand schemes) may or may not even agree with each other about something as fundamental as "the purpose" of it all.

We may not agree, either, on the kind of evidence that we need to use as we revise our schemes, as they go from inside our heads, to paper and pencil to actual implementation. For example, I just don't believe, based on 45 years of experience, that most poor and black children enter kindergarten without strong language skills, loving families, and strong and lively minds. But I've been told otherwise since the 1950s when the "culture of poverty" hit the academic/policy world.

Given where I was situated I saw and heard something very different. In the classroom, "those children" were often silent, children of few words, confused by complexity, and fidgety and looking for clues. But on the playground, at home with their families or at home with mine they were chatterers, filled with questions and as much fun to talk with as the children of my middle-class friends. And in time they were openly full of powerful ideas. But only once they were convinced I and my classroom were "family," trusted members of their world. They had thoroughly imbibed one message that their families and most schools repeated over and over: Do not act in school the way you would in your far-from-ideal families. Shut up, watch the teacher carefully, and avoid getting into trouble. Some succeeded at this; others gave up and became the "bad kids." We didn't use their strengths—including their talent at figuring things out for themselves, creating strong social bonds, and reading adults.

We rarely picked up on some of the worldly experiences they had. Instead, we saw only their limitations. We treated their language as non-language/deviant/slang/"black English," etc.

They brought the same "disadvantage" to the tests. Their strengths were precisely those that the tests intended to punish, to expose. They could not thus fall back, in the classroom or in the test sessions, on their intuitive knowledge, as I had been able to do and as the middle-class kids in my school did. They had to ask themselves: "What do 'they' want me to say?" As did idiosyncratic middle-class kids like my son, Nick—kids who have a harder time "thinking and seeing like a State."

This idea—which was so much part of the incipient pedagogy and curriculum "revolution" of the 1970s and early 1980s, often in distorted and half-thought-through ways—has disappeared. Those entering the profession today know nothing of that literature: John Holt (How Children Fail), or Sylvia Ashton-Warner (Teacher), or Herb Kohl (36 Children), et al.

Yes, it's true that children come to us with some of the handicaps that poverty and oppression create. But even worse perhaps is that we drive a wedge between their "natural" selves and their school selves. We offer an appallingly dull alternative to the rich lives they live, the families they love, the world as they know it.

That much we can and did undo. That's what we discovered by watching and hearing from our graduates. They took away from school a self-confidence in their own judgment based on the knowledge and experience which the school helped them hone and expand upon.

Practice, practice, practice is an extraordinary teacher once one can tell the difference between dutiful practice and practice that one owns.

More on these different ways of "seeing" in future letters—maybe a book! Enough, I have to get my seven hours of sleep.

Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:47 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Deborah,

Your last column reminded me of fruitless debates that I have had with education "reformers" who are extremely certain about their views. They are convinced that they have exactly the right solutions for fixing schools—firing teachers and closing schools—and that anyone who disagrees with them is a "defender of the status quo." I have heard exactly this charge, again and again.

A friend and former student, Kevin Kosar, created a fascinating graph in which he traced the historical usage of the term "failing schools." The term was seldom used until the mid-1990s, when it appeared with frequency. After 2000, it became a common term. Now we hear public officials use the label often and unquestioningly. There are many ways to interpret Kosar's chart. Perhaps there was an explosion of "failing schools," beginning in the late 1990s; or, perhaps federal policy created the terminology, preferring to blame the schools for low performance rather than to look at other possible causes, such as poverty, language, or resources. So are the schools failing because the staff is incompetent, or do the schools have low scores because they serve many children with high needs? I tend to think it is the latter, but the corporate reformers are quite certain that schools with low scores are "failing schools" and should close. They say that such schools can't be fixed and must close as soon as possible; anything less would mean putting adult interests over those of children. As time goes by, we learn that many of the new schools eventually become "failing schools" if they enroll the same children; many "succeed" by removing or avoiding low-performing students.

A few months ago, I spoke at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California. It is a Catholic university, located on a beautiful campus. After my talk, a member of the faculty gave me a ride back to my hotel in San Francisco. He spoke about his long career in parochial education and why he had become a college professor, mentoring many Catholic schools in the region. At one point he had been the principal of an elementary school. I asked what he did about teachers who were not doing a good job, and he described the help and support he and others would provide. I asked what he thought of the current zeal to fire "bad teachers." He said something I will never forget. He said that we must remember that one has a moral obligation not to terminate someone's livelihood and career without long and hard deliberation; to do so, he said, required taking responsibility for ruining someone's life. We talked about the "reformers" who are almost gleeful in their zeal to fire teachers. He thought that they failed to recognize the moral dimensions of leadership.

I thought, too, about a panel I was on in New Orleans last fall. One of my fellow panelists was John Jackson of the Schott Foundation for Public Education. He said that he had recently visited some high-performing nations, and at each stop he would ask someone from the ministry of education: "What do you do about bad teachers?" The answer invariably was, "We help them." And he asked, "What if you help them and they are still bad teachers?" And the response was, "We help them more."

What do I conclude from these disparate thoughts? I think we are dealing with two very different mind-sets. One sees the school as a community, a place of learning where there is an ethical obligation to support both staff and students, helping both to succeed. The other sees schools as one part of a free-market economy, where quality may be judged by data; if the results aren't good enough, then fire part or all of the people and close the store, I mean, the school and pick a new location. The former looks to teamwork and mutual support as guiding principles; the other prizes competition, leading either to rewards or punishments.

What's scary is that we now see the advance of the free-market ideology across many states—Indiana, Ohio, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, for example. We see strong support for the market basis of schooling in both No Child Left Behind and in Race to the Top. We see it with the advance of charters, for-profit online corporations, virtual charters, merit pay, and the proliferation of charters as a panacea. We see a continuing campaign to dismantle public education, privatize it, and turn it over to entrepreneurs of various stripes.

So, I come back to where I started: Do I defend the status quo? Absolutely not. The status quo is firmly tied to test-based accountability, to punishing the people who work in schools instead of giving them the support they need to succeed. The status quo is indefensible. The defenders of the status quo are the corporate reformers, who want to tighten the grip of No Child Left Behind, who cannot imagine schools that can function effectively without competition for rewards and punishments for low scores.

The debates don't seem to change their views. Neither does evidence that their "solutions" don't work. Neither does the fact that the top nations in the world are not pursuing privatization and de-professionalization as cures for education. Perhaps someday they will recognize that their ideas don't work. Or they will get bored and move on to some other pastime.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 9:56 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Diane,

You ask: "Why don't they listen?"

They, the "billionaire boys club," have a different agenda, and the issues we raise are truly not important to them. Or at least to most of those in the public eye these days.

Some see the chance to destroy another public stronghold—our schools—as a lifelong dream come true. They are 100 percent convinced that market competition is always the best. Period. Probably the only institution they believe should remain public is the military, and they are already nibbling away at some of what we used to consider a soldier's job.

Second are those that see the great advantage of using the moment to destroy the one and only organized body contesting over the "proper" distribution of wages and profits—the American trade unions. This includes many non-billionaires. Having destroyed most of the formerly powerful unions in the private sector, they are coming after the Johnny-come-latelies, the public-sector workers.

Third are those who, perhaps unconsciously, need to divert attention from the faults of Wall Street et al and insist that schools are the source of all that goes wrong. It's a view that many a pro-education advocate easily falls for because it goes along with being the cause of all that's right, too—and puts our work at the center of the stage. If we had more people with a good education, the line goes, we'd have more jobs. It's a myth (based on a nugget of truth) that my well-educated children and grandchildren are hanging onto. It at least increases the odds in their favor.

Plus those who have a financial stake in this project, and to whom money is a form of popularity. These people can pay public relations experts to sell their goods. The group includes, of course, some who will directly benefit like employees and stockholders of Pearson.

And then there are those who are so accustomed to "seeing like a state" that they use their fine educations to make grand plans for refashioning the lives of others.

But there's something else, too. It came to me in an odd way on my latest trip to Chicago.

National-Louis University put on an event in the glorious Shakespeare Theater on the Navy Pier. There were nine panelists! They had apparently tried to get people of different ages and with different backgrounds in terms of reform experience. The moderator greeted us during the hour-long "rehearsal"—as representatives of the new "consensus for reform" and hoped we'd each provide our particular take on it. There were four young school people: a charter school founder from KIPP and several others preparing for careers "reforming" public schooling; plus, Sonia Nieto, Bill Ayers, and Harold Levy. (Levy was the New York City schools chancellor before Joel Klein.) It turned into a love fest—mostly—of critiques of the current so-called reform "consensus." The audience was clearly friendly to the critique, and it was a lively session despite the considerable agreement. In short, it was fun for my side. (By the way, I'm going to D.C. on June 8th to disagree with Rick Hess, at the invitation of the American Enterprise Institute; that event will clearly not be such an unqualified joy.)

After the panel last Monday, with drinks and tasty tidbits in hand, a wealthy supporter of the current wave of reforms and I got into a tiff of the sort we probably both try to avoid. It began by his telling me that he funds and directs school turn-arounds. A turn-around school was one in which you first fire everyone who works there, he explained, with zest and enthusiasm. He was surprised that I recoiled from his words with an expression of horror. How can you enjoy what you've done to the people who work in that place, I asked? He said he got his pleasure in doing right by children. Why are you so sure the children will do better with different adults, I probed? He essentially told me he considered the former teachers worthless human beings, products of low-status state schools, the dregs. No wonder children didn't learn much from them. When they are replaced with higher-caliber humans—products of our top universities—scores naturally will go up.

What stood between us was probably not resolvable and "listening to each other" was not going to help. His cheery distancing from a "kind" of people scares me. First, you turn them into lesser humans and then you can do your worst to them with moral impunity. (And their unions; If they were really any good they wouldn't need unions, I was told by people like him when I first started teaching.) If he has disdain for my colleagues, what must he think of the children and families of our students? Still he and I have mutual friends who tell me he's a great guy.

I was struck by his passionate certainty. Maybe he just had a hard time sitting still and listening to all the panelists. Maybe I'd have burst out similarly had I spent the past two hours unrelentingly listening to "the other side." Maybe I will be in just his position on June 8. I'll let you know. (Any advice, Diane?)

Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Deborah,

We have had fun as a traveling team, debating the issues and engaging in free-flowing conversation about the current state of school reform. People call it "live blogging" and seem to enjoy our discussions. Sometimes we agree, sometimes we don't. That's a healthy thing in a democracy.

These days, there seems to be little tolerance for debate and discussion.

Last week, I went to Providence, R.I., to give a lecture. Before my arrival, I was invited by Gov. Lincoln Chafee to meet privately with him. Thirty minutes before my hour with Gov. Chafee, I learned that state Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education Deborah Gist would join our meeting. As it turned out, I had 10 minutes of private time with the governor, then 50 minutes with Gist and leaders of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers.

I mention all this because of what happened during the 50 minutes. Gist is clearly a very smart, articulate woman. But she dominated the conversation, interrupted me whenever I spoke, and filibustered to use up the limited time. Whenever I raised an issue, she would interrupt to say, "That isn't happening here." She came to talk, not to listen. It became so difficult for me to complete a sentence that at one point, I said, "Hey, guys, you live here all the time, I'm only here for a few hours. Please let me speak." But Gist continued to cut me off. In many years of meeting with public officials, I have never encountered such rudeness and incivility. I am waiting for an apology.

That afternoon, I spoke to some 500 teachers, parents, and community activists from many of the state's districts. Teachers in Rhode Island are angry and disheartened in the aftermath of the pink slips that went out to every teacher in the Providence schools. But no one other than teachers seems to know or care. My view: indiscriminate, mass layoffs—with no individual evaluations—demoralize everyone and sunder the bonds of trust that are so necessary for school improvement.

I worry about the one-sided treatment of education issues, not only in Rhode Island, but in the national media. The corporate reformers seem shocked when anyone questions their narrative. They see no downside to their dogmatic belief in closing schools and firing principals and teachers, nor to their dogmatic faith that higher test scores are the goal of education. They accuse critics of "defending the status quo," even though it is they who are the status quo, the champions of get-tough accountability. They don't understand that they might be wrong, that their critics deserve a hearing, and that disagreement is healthy.

I remember that you went to the University of Chicago, where Robert Maynard Hutchins was president and a great defender of academic freedom and freedom of thought. For many years, I kept a clipping in my wallet, something that Hutchins said. It was the last line of his obituary in The New York Times (May 16, 1977). He said: "The only political dogma in America is that discussion leads to progress, that every man is entitled to his own opinions, and that we have to learn to live with those whose opinions differ from our own. After all, they may turn out to be right."

I don't know how we will convince the policymakers, the foundation leaders, and the media that education issues are complex and that all sides should be heard. Of course, there is a need for action, but not all actions make sense. And driving a train as fast as you can to the edge of a precipice is never a good idea. It pays to listen.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 9:03 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Diane,

The alternative to getting mad for me is getting sad. The latter immobilizes me, but the former gives me the energy to keep finding it sufficiently interesting to keep at it. (I do occasionally get bored with it all and think about thinking about something entirely different.)

It was wonderful seeing and speaking with you twice in one week; especially at the University of Indiana where we stayed at the same old-fashioned inn and had a chance for informal chatting.

My grandson's graduation was an eye-opener, too, but I try hard not to mix business with pleasure. So the focus was on the latter, and it was a great deal of fun. Imagine 10,000 students graduating in that amazing football stadium.

So many amazing "fact-lets" that need exploring. Examples:

• According to New York state and New York City official data, the United Federation of Teachers' 2010 report "Separate and Unequal" validates my theory that charters attract the "reduced-" vs. the "free-" lunch crowd. (Ditto data on special education and English-language learners).

  
  When I taught at P.S. 144 in Central Harlem, I noticed that two Harlem schools just a few blocks away—both serving largely poor, black students—served students whose families were often quite different. "Poor" covers a lot of territory. In Bloomington, Ind., and Ann Arbor, Mich., of course, it includes children of college students! The temporarily poor. Given this, charters should be doing much better on test scores.

  Years ago, someone did a study that demonstrated that if one kept income, gender, and race constant kids did every bit as well at the worst of high schools as they did at the best of them. It was reassuring. But, of course, I forget the source. But I realized we were only talking test scores! I'm not at all sure that private school students didn't write better, engage in deeper discussions, etc., even if they didn't have higher SAT scores.

• It's amazing to realize that even I did not know that tenure goes back so very far. But thanks for bringing me the data, Diane. You noted that it was instituted more than 100 years ago to avoid nepotism and corruption. Isn't it wonderful that we've eliminated such concerns and can now safely get rid of it? (Sarcasm.) Of course, in fact the issue is due-process—and, in fact, it applies to colleges, too, but the general power of the faculty in colleges is probably more to be honored than in K-12. I know quite a few people who've been fired with tenure in K-12, although technically they may have resigned.
• That Finland has consciously engaged in systematic reform now for less than 10 years, with amazing results. That suggests you can make rapid "revolutionary" change given ... what? A smaller geographic and more homogeneous population? For another—as you noted the other day—if a nation has a 2 percent child-poverty rate compared with the more than 20 percent we face. And I think that latter figure, Diane, is low.
• The changes the Finns made, however, are exactly the opposite as those we are engaged in. Bizarrely so. Still I doubt if the presentation by Pasi Sahlberg of Finland's Ministry of Education at the Education Week conference this week converted many of the audience. Why not? What do you think?

  The Finns start formal schooling later (at age 7) while we keep starting younger. They have no standardized tests; we keep adding more. They rely on teachers and local schools to design curriculum and assessment. They depend on getting teachers out of education schools and manage to recruit highly qualified teachers that way. They are 100 percent unionized. They have both a shorter instructional day and fewer school days a year. For students, that is. Teachers have lots of time, therefore, when they are "at work" for planning learning, preparing, reviewing, and meeting together and with families. Interesting point: so do doctors and lawyers. They charge per hour, based on assumptions about how many hours go into contact with patients or clients.

• Another interesting fact I learned recently: that teaching is one of the few professions that does not certify its own. I'm not sure of the source of this, but I'll supply it sometime.
• Even after the last few weeks of travel and speaking, I'm still amazed at how rarely anyone really wants to discuss the purpose of this all—other than "employment." Even though there is data showing that college is not a cure-all for unemployment, or underemployment. (Wages are probably higher, although many between 22-25 are working for free!)

Will we have to become a low-wage economy with powerless organized workers before we seriously reduce our unemployment rate? Is that the trade-off: more years of schooling for fewer and fewer financial returns?

The power of democracy—and its benefits—may require a new consciousness, one that our schools have not helped us encourage, before a pro-democracy movement powerful enough to turn the tide comes into being.

I'm worried because democracy is one of those subjects that produce ho-hums; we may be willing to die to support it overseas, but what about at home? It lies behind my distrust of "common core standards," too, Diane, regardless of whether it goes hand in hand with high-stakes testing.

Deb

Posted by Deborah Meier at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Deborah,

It is way past time to get mad. Each week, it is hard to know which of the latest outrages against American public education is the worst.

Perhaps it was the agreement between the Gates Foundation and the Pearson Foundation to write the nation's curriculum. When did we vote to hand over American education to them? Why would we outsource the nation's curriculum to a for-profit publishing and test-making corporation based in London? Does Bill Gates get to write the national curriculum because he is the richest man in America? We know that his foundation is investing heavily in promoting the Common Core standards. Now his foundation will write a K-12 curriculum that will promote online learning and video gaming. That's good for the tech sector, but is it good for our nation's schools? Oh, and one more outrage: The Gates Foundation and the Eli Broad Foundation, both of which maintain the pretense of being Democrats and/or liberals, have given millions to former Florida governor Jeb Bush's foundation, which is promoting vouchers, charters, online learning, test-based accountability, and the whole panoply of corporate reform strategies intended to weaken public education and remove teachers' job protections.

Yes, indeed, the education reform business is booming. A recent article in Idaho details the campaign contributions of online learning companies to the state superintendent of instruction, who recently decided—surprise!—to mandate online learning and laptops for every student. This is the new face of corporate reform. It offers entree to the vast riches of the nation's education industry, a sector that spends about $800 billion of public money at the local, state, and federal levels. Some refer to the No Child Left Behind Act as "no consultant left behind." It has been and continues to be a bonanza for the testing, test preparation, and tutoring industries. Race to the Top has opened the door to many more consultants, charter operators, and turn-around strategists. The gold rush is on!

The scariest thought is that the Obama administration welcomes the corporatization of public education. Not only welcomes the rise of educational entrepreneurialism, but encourages it. U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan's chief of staff Joanne Weiss, who has experience as an education entrepreneur, wrote the following in a blog for the Harvard Business Review:

"The development of common standards and shared assessments radically alters the market for innovation in curriculum development, professional development, and formative assessments. Previously, these markets operated on a state-by-state basis, and often on a district-by-district basis. But the adoption of common standards and shared assessments means that education entrepreneurs will enjoy national markets where the best products can be taken to scale."

Yes, indeed, lots of opportunities for new businesses, smart investors, and a national marketplace for entrepreneurs. I would expect to read this sort of thing from the public relations department of Pearson or McGraw-Hill or one of the other industry leaders. But the chief of staff to the U.S. secretary of education?

This is what I don't understand. The free market nearly collapsed our economy in September 2008. Why would anyone now think that our public schools should be turned over to the privatizers, entrepreneurs, and go-getters who have figured out how to market their wares, brand their products, and turn education into a lucrative business? I don't mean to cast aspersion on American business. I like free markets, I like the range of goods and services they provide. I have no objection to people making a profit on their goods and services, but I also think that a decent society needs a vibrant public sector. Frankly, the handing over of public education to the free market makes me profoundly uneasy.

I Googled "education entrepreneur" and got nearly 1 million hits.

Profound changes are under way, Deborah. Our federal government, the big foundations, and many state governments are allied in their determination to impose radical change on the public schools. Big money is at stake. And the lives of millions of children. What happens when the interests of the investors and the interests of children are not the same? Which will take precedence?

Diane

P.S: I recommend a few recent documentaries that influenced my thinking. They are not about schools. They are about the last sentence of my blog: Inside Job, Food Inc., and Gasland.

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