March 2012 Archives

Dear Diane,

I'm getting sick of policy talk! I know we have to STOP this corporate take-over of democracy. It's perhaps temporarily futile, but certainly exhausting, and in some ways boring. I hope to get to Occupy DOE next week. At least the Mike Petrilli response to Alfie Kohn is interesting, and I hope we can both dig into it sometime from our separate perspectives.

I miss the kind of collegial discussion that went on all the time when I was working. There were so many things that excited us and that we shared with each other. Whether it was about what we were studying with the kids, or a particular student's dilemma, or a fascinating article we had just read. The kids were a constant source of ideas worth exploring also with adults. So today I spend a few hours a day, probably, at my computer reading e-mails from parents and teachers mostly—but second hand is not like face to face, dealing together with real-world dilemmas. I suspect the best teachers too are overwhelmed by the policy issues that are driving out good teacher-talk and driving out good teachers as well.

There are three subjects that have fascinated me since I began teaching. All three now seem like a luxury to find someone to talk about it with.

One: How much can schools—under the best of circumstances—affect young people's lives and drives? In many ways I've spent 50 years exploring the answer to that. And I've just scratched the surface. I think we are approaching this vital subject all wrong. It's not merely that being "disadvantaged" is a disadvantage. Ho hum. But the way the school interacts with those "disadvantages" is at the root—and can and must be addressed. The way we think about (and talk about) the families of kids we claim to care about—and even respect—betrays our ignorance and, worse, why we are distrusted by some families and communities.

Two: What if kids really trusted us and we really trusted them? The latter probably has to come first. Years ago I saw a wonderful movie on the subject about a school started in Washington D.C. by Kenneth Haskins.** He was a remarkable man, and he taught me not to give up on the power of mutual trust to work miracles. But we've designed schools in such a way that distrust is the default position for all of us. Kids think it's their job, at best, to hide their ignorance from each other and the adults in school. As John Holt taught us, they do it even in the "best" schools, and have made a true art of it, and they keep it up in college and on the job and on and on.

At some point in my career I made it "the curriculum," so to speak, for starting the school year. It's connected, of course, with becoming the kind of community that doesn't poke fun at each other for being ignorant. But the question of "how do we know what we know," which is Mission Hill's first habit of mind, leads to many good discussions and becomes the heart of our studies wherever they take us. And it starts with acknowledging—at least to oneself—what one doesn't understand which is not an easy task. It requires honoring ignorance, and then doing so aloud:"You mean it?" kids ask at first. At some point there comes an "Aha!" Ignorance—not getting it—is as exciting as having the right answers. (It's a little hard given that for 12 years they've been evaluated based on the one right answer.) A must-read: John Holt's How Children Fail.

There are good and sensible reasons why many parents believe that schools and teachers are not really on "their" side, and that teachers have a certain natural inclination to look for deficits. It takes time to earn trust from many young people and their families. Taking this seriously meant changing a lot of the "regularities" about schooling. In Schools We Trust and The Power of Their Ideas offer a glimpse into that process.

Third: What about trust between colleagues? Amazingly enough, what I finally concluded was equally puzzling was building the specific kind of "trust" that enabled colleagues to be honest and critical of each other's practices. I discovered that often personal trust—and affection—can make it even more difficult. I consider that Mission Hill did this best of all the schools I was intimately connected to, but not nearly well enough. I've changed my theory about what blocks us, and how rational our fears are, over the years. It's a big and critical conversation.

There are, of course, other incredible puzzles that I'd like to think aloud about, or on paper, like why should we all go to college, what lies behind the hierarchy of values that make some career paths more honored than others, and how we might totally redesign the patterns we are so accustomed to that we think they are natural: age-grouping, 12 years in a row devoted to the same "stuff," the very notion of "curriculum"? In the practice of designing three quite innovative schools, maybe we never pushed the envelope far enough.

I watch Dennis Littky's work at the MET schools and the Big Picture Company. His tenacious half-century focus on figuring out how to both create a community while also acknowledging that in the end it's one child at a time makes me hungry to connect our work to his insights.

Maybe I'm in the mood for writing another book. (Actually, I wish I had the physical energy to start another school.)

Meanwhile, I go back to policy talk, trying to figure out what obstacles on the "policy" side are most critical. What, if any, help could an ideal system provide to make these issues easier to grapple with, including lack of time, like being responsible for understanding too many kids; and how to open ourselves up for honest intellectual inquiry when we have to spend so much time evaluating and grading our students, and being evaluated and graded ourselves?

Deborah

P.S. My website (deborahmeier.com) can help you get onto the Mission Hill school site, and allows you to download a short film about a 2nd//3rd grade class at Central Park East in 1978.

** I haven't been able yet to locate the Haskins' movie. Anyone who knows, get in touch with me. He had an amazing career, but the movie focuses on his years as principal of the Morgan Community School in Washington, D.C.

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:58 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Deborah,

There comes a time when you look at the rug on the floor, the one you've seen many times, and you see a pattern that you had never noticed before. You may have seen this squiggle or that flower, but you did not see the pattern into which the squiggles and flowers and trails of ivy combined.

In American education, we can now discern the pattern on the rug.

Consider the budget cuts to schools in the past four years. From the budget cuts come layoffs, rising class sizes, less time for the arts and physical education, less time for history, civics, foreign languages, and other non-tested subjects. Add on the mandates of No Child Left Behind, which demands 100 percent proficiency in math and reading and stigmatizes more than half the public schools in the nation as "failing" for not reaching an unattainable goal.

Along comes the Obama administration with the Race to the Top, and the pattern on the rug gets clearer. It tells cash-strapped states that they can compete for federal funding, but only if they open more privately managed schools (where few teachers have any job protections), only if they adopt national standards that have never been field-tested, only if they agree to evaluate teachers by student test scores, and only if they are ready to close down low-performing schools, fire the principal and staff, and call it a turnaround.

Race to the Top seems to have catalyzed a national narrative, at least among the mainstream media. The good guys open charter schools and fire bad teachers. The bad guys are lazy teachers who get lifetime tenure just for breathing and showing up. Most evil of all are the unions, who protect the bad teachers and fend off any effort to evaluate them. Anyone who questions the headlong rush to privatization and the blind faith in standardized testing will be smeared as "a defender of the status quo" who has "no solutions." Even if all the "reformers'" solutions are destructive and stale, even though they consistently have failed to produce better education, the reformers never think twice about their palette of "solutions."

Just by happenstance, a major documentary appears in September 2010 ("Waiting for 'Superman'") to recapitulate this narrative to millions. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation puts up the money to ensure that this morality tale of good reformers and bad teachers is shown to state legislatures, to civic groups, to people living in housing projects. The movie itself is financed in part by an evangelical billionaire (Philip Anschutz) who contributes heavily to libertarian and ultra-conservative causes.

At the same time, a small group of high-profile figures, led by Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein, proclaim that low test scores are caused by bad teachers, and if they had their way, they would abolish tenure, seniority, and any other job protections for those greedy, lazy teachers. Freed of those encumbrances, teachers would hold on to their jobs only if their students' test scores went up. Economist Eric Hanushek adds another twist to the emerging scenario: fire 5 to 10 percent of the teachers whose students get the lowest scores, and amazing things are sure to happen: Bad teachers will be replaced by average teachers, test scores will rise to the top of the world, and the nation's gross domestic product will rise by trillions of dollars.

Governors and state legislatures heed these messages. How could they not? In state after state, men with vast personal fortunes invest in campaigns to end teachers' tenure, end seniority (now called Last In, First Out, or LIFO), and clear the way for private takeovers of public schools, where teachers work with no job rights at all. Understandably, the message is embraced by right-wing governors like Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, John Kasich of Ohio, Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania, and Rick Scott of Florida, but also by Democratic governors like Andrew Cuomo of New York and Daniel Malloy of Connecticut, as well as independent Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.

Meanwhile, the richest foundation in the United States, the Gates Foundation, pours hundreds of millions of dollars into a project to find the perfect teacher evaluation system, thus reinforcing the "reform" narrative that the best way to fix what ails public education is to create a foolproof way to find and fire those malingering bad teachers. Where the Gates Foundation leads, many other foundations follow, sure that this philanthropic behemoth is wisest because it has the most money and presumably the best thinking.

Just recently, the fabulously rich foundation, the Walton Family Foundation, released an accounting of its grants in the education sector. This foundation is known for its love of all things private, and its antipathy for unions, government regulation, and public education. This year, Walton handed out $159 million to its favorites. Tidy sums were paid to the KIPP schools (mostly non-union) and to Teach For America, which claims that neither training nor experience is necessary to succeed in the classroom. And along with grants to "right to work" organizations, libertarian think tanks, and promoters of voucher and charters, there were grants for allegedly liberal or nonpartisan organizations like Education Trust, the Brookings Institution, Education Week (the weekly newspaper for K-12 news, which hosts our blog), Bellwether Education Partners (home to Time magazine columnist Andrew Rotherham), the United Negro College Fund (which helps explain, along with over $1 billion from the Gates Foundation, why the president of UNCF recently urged wavering legislators in Georgia to vote for charter legislation), and Stand for Children (whose founder Jonah Edelman, son of civil rights leader Marian Wright Edelman, gets hefty donations from equity investors, promotes charter schools, and led the successful battle to curtail teachers' job protections in Illinois). Walton granted $2.2 million to IFF, an organization that recently drafted a report to redesign the District of Columbia's public schools by increased privatization, and awarded $500,000 to Mind Trust of Indianapolis, whose plan proposes to eliminate the central school district and privatize public schools in that city. Walton gave $1 million to Michelle Rhee's Students First campaign, which works with Republican governors to oppose teachers' unions and job protections for teachers and to advocate for vouchers and charters.

The bitter fruit of the past few years of reform: The latest survey of the attitudes of American teachers shows a deeply demoralized profession. Job satisfaction of our nation's teachers has plummeted since 2009, the period in which attacks on teachers soared while budgets shrunk. Nearly one-third of teachers—1 million teachers—are considering quitting. That's a 70 percent increase since 2009. Who will replace them? The latest survey published by Gates and Scholastic found that: "Only 26 percent of teachers say that the results of standardized tests are an accurate reflection of student achievement."

Our policymakers claim that they are infusing business values into education, but what smart corporation purposefully demoralizes its employees and measures their worth with a metric the employees don't believe to be valid or accurate?

And while the new value-added assessments are supposed to identify the best and worst teachers—those likeliest to get a bonus or a pink slip—the public release of teacher data reports in New York City demonstrated how inaccurate and unreliable these ratings are. While policymakers eagerly await the evidence they need to begin firing the lowest-rated teachers, a new study by the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research, or CALDER, finds that teacher turnover demoralizes the entire staff and lowers achievement, not just for students whose teachers were removed, but for all the students in the school.

Last week, I met a principal from Tennessee at the annual meeting of the National Association of Elementary School Principals. She said her school is one of the highest-performing in the state and has been for many years. Every year, it gets an A for achievement and an F for value-added. She spends most of her time evaluating teachers to meet the demands of Tennessee's Race to the Top award. She reminded me that Tennessee has been doing value-added for 20 years, that it started this process under the auspices of William Sanders. She reminded me that he was trained as an agricultural statistician. She said, he thinks that children are like wheat, and their test scores should be equally predictable. She's retiring in a few months.

The pattern on the rug grows clear. Teaching will become a job, not a profession. Young people will typically spend a year or two as teachers, then move on to other, more rewarding careers. Federal and state policy will promote online learning, and computers will replace teachers. Online class sizes will reach 1:100, even 1:200; the job of monitoring the screens will be outsourced, creating large economies for state budgets. For-profit companies will make large profits. The Common Core standards will create a national marketplace for vendors, as Secretary Arne Duncan's chief of staff, Joanne Weiss, predicted. Entrepreneurs will reap the rewards of the new American style of education. As profits grow, the cost of education will be contained. Public education will increasingly be handed over to businesses designed to maximize economic efficiency and produce dependable profits for investors.

The report last week from the Klein-Rice commission of the Council on Foreign Relations reveals how this manner of thinking about education has become the conventional wisdom. Public schools as we know them, the commission suggests, are a threat to national security. What's needed to protect us from foreign enemies is more competition and choice, more privatization of our public schools, more No Child Left Behind, more Race to the Top. Big commissions tend to reflect the status quo. This one does, for sure.

See the pattern on the rug? It grows clearer every day. It is not about improving education. It is not about helping our society become more literate and better educated. Follow the money. We are indeed a nation at risk.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Diane,

I'm going to borrow an idea from Mike Klonsky's Small Talk blog. I've too much I'm bursting to say! Like ...

Note that the four dissenters on the Council on Foreign Relations' task force are never quoted in the news reports. Their dissent needs to be read. But what struck me, aside from the make-up of the committee, was the sponsor. Would they publish a task force report on Russian/U.S. relations written by people who had no background experience or expertise on the subject? Someone like me—although I suspect I know as much about that subject as their experts do on American public schooling. (I follow it.) But why is it that they think education belongs on their plate? I suppose that it's seen as one of our weapons for defeating our foreign enemies.

Besides, as Jack Jennings of the Center on Education Policy, points out: "Everything the report recommends is already being done ... It's Joel Klein beating the same old drums in a different forum.'" Klein's reported rejoinder: "But it's not happening at the level we're needing ... we need to do it in a much more accelerated way." That sounds like a prescription for dismissing the democratic process—which is deliberative and thoughtful—conducted at the level appropriate to changing the way young people are raised—close to home. Or at least no further away than the Constitution permits. That's bad enough. After all, nearly all of the states adopted the several hundreds of pages of the new Common Core curriculum. How many do you believe read ANY of it?

Teach For America is becoming more open about its agenda. "TFA's new partnership with largest for-profit charter network" is the headline of Valerie Strauss's March 19 blog item in The Washington Post. It's not even a not-for-profit with a good track record for integrity or test scores. (Imagine Schools.) That and their recent work in Seattle—replacing experienced teachers—makes them ... We used to call it scabbing. But what about undermining? Is that a kinder word?

Dick Cavett's latest blog is titled "Schooling Santorum." Santorum is a scary guy, but let's not make his support for home schooling the issue. In terms of the effect of early schooling on young children's "social skills," Cavett needs to read Vivian Paley's You Can't Say You Can't Play. It's a powerful reminder of what's going on "behind our backs." I speak as one who loved teaching those years. But Paley's book convinced me that I might think twice about sending my kids to school even at 5, much less 4. It rang very true and was confirmed by my granddaughter's account of the social hierarchy in her very nice school in Columbia County.

Denver: If you go out that-a-way, visit the Jefferson County Open School. Begun in 1970, it's a precious gem. The "passages" the students take to prepare for "college or career" (read life) are amazing and should be standard practice. The use of mixed-age teaching and learning re-inspires me. The spirit on the staff: Ditto. I saw something similar, if not as solid yet, at the Denver Center for International Studies, which also has a "passages" project. But I also witnessed again (and again) a course on "world history," which literally (using "inquiry" approaches and "critical thinking") studies in one year the entire world since human history began until today. I'd love to see the Common Core on that traditional core course.

I also loved my visit to a new Denver school called Odyssey that is using portfolios of student work as the foundation of their assessments, has multi-age classes, and lots of art. And finally I visited a new high-tech school where I wasn't able to visit any classes (testing day), but spoke with kids. Three out of four of the group I met with liked the silent hallways and Friday Pay Check (based on points). The fourth, naturally, was the kid who sometimes wasn't so good at getting a big pay check. The others felt they were safer with the tight structuring and instant "feedback." These are conversations I'd love to have at more schools.

"Mass Localism for Improving America's Education" by Yong Zhao in the Kappa Delta Pi Record starts with a quote from Justice Louis Brandeis in 1932: "It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous State may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory and try to invent social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."

Of course, segregation was the result of an "experiment" that was chosen by many states. But can't we cure one evil that came with states' rights without assuming we can cure all wrongs that way? Especially since (in fact) a good Supreme Court decision on segregation only very partially succeeded in creating integrated schools. At least, until recently, individual towns and schools could be labs. There are some amazing ones scattered about. Now we accept pronouncements from on high, without any real-life experimental evidence, that dictate an awful lot. Down to if and when your child gets promoted.

Zhao argues that a national system is already half-implemented. Without opposition, its proponents will soon "have succeeded in ruining ... to paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill ... the traditional American education system (which) is the worst form of education except all the others that have been tried." Including Asia's. Zhao is more enthusiastic than I am. But he reminds us, from his Chinese experience, that we will soon realize the need to reinvent what has been lost, unless we carefully construct better ideas. Or as Jeff Nichols reminds his friend on nyceducationnews: "Steve, you probably also wouldn't have believed in 1995 that inside of 15 years we'd have a black president, and a majority of Americans supporting same-sex marriage." Yes, things can get worse. Or better.

Zhao offers a glimpse of "the total disaster that could result from one authoritarian body—no matter how wise that body may seem to be." (Like one put together by the foreign policy experts.)

Finally, if you want to see what else it could look like—the alternative that Zhao proposes—write me. There are places still to visit (although for how long I don't know) like Julia Richman in New York City that houses five different, amazing schools. Like the schools I mention in Denver. Like Mission Hill in Boston—although for a short time Mission Hill will be unvisitable while the school moves next fall from a building built by the Catholic Church in 1926 to one built in the 1970s. The architectural differences remind us that life does not always move in a progressive direction.

Deborah

P.S. Good advice from Renee Dinnerstein: "Check out my new post, Snails on a Ski Lift! A Playground for the Snails, on my blog Investigating Choice Time: Inquiry, Exploration, and Play: www.investigatingchoicetime.com."

Posted by Deborah Meier at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Deborah,

Let us now praise the public school parents of Florida.

They organized to oppose a bill known as the "Parent Trigger" or "Parent Empowerment." Under this proposed law, if 51 percent of the parents in a public school signed a petition, they could take over the school and decide whether to close it or turn it over to a charter management organization. The bill was wrapped in a deceptive and alluring packaging. Who could resist the bold idea of giving parents the power to take control of their public school?

Well, it turned out that Florida parents had become savvy after watching their elected officials endorse one bill after another to advance the interests of charter schools and for-profit entrepreneurs. They figured out that the real beneficiaries of this legislation would be charter management corporations, not parents or children.

Florida is a state with almost 500 charter schools, including many for-profit charters and for-profit cyber charters. Like the charter sector as a whole, charters in Florida vary widely in quality. By now, parent organizations know that they are not a silver bullet, and they have no secret sauce for better education.

One reason that Florida parents wised up was that the local press has been vigilant in reporting the dubious activities of some charter operators and the uneven performance of charters, as well as the exclusion of special education students. Parents realized that charters face the same challenges as public schools, and they did not wish to give the entrepreneurs another avenue to take over the public schools.

When the high-pressure campaign for the legislation began, the big guns were rolled out. The proposal had the strong backing of Gov. Rick Scott, former governor Jeb Bush, and former Washington, D.C., schools chancellor Michelle Rhee. Since the state legislature is dominated by Republicans, parent activists were sure they didn't stand a chance.

But they persisted, and they descended on Tallahassee. There were moms and dads from across the state, PTAs, and parent groups like Testing is not Teaching, Fund Education Now, and 50th No More. Supporters of the bill brought in spokespeople from the California group Parent Revolution, which is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the Walton Foundation. Not a single Florida parent group spoke in favor of the bill.

To almost everyone's surprise, when the Florida Senate voted, it was a tie, 20-20. Eight Republicans and 12 Democrats joined to oppose the legislation. Even one of the sponsors of the bill voted against it.

No one was more surprised and elated than the parents. To their astonishment, they won. Some of the legislators who supported the parents are term limited and will retire. Next year another battle looms as parents struggle to defend public education against corporate interests.

David knocked down Goliath. Democracy lives. The good guys won. The lesson for all of us: What happened in Florida proves that citizens who take action can overcome the power of big money.

Diane

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

Dear Diane,

As the poor get poorer, and college tuitions keep rising, the media declare that no one without a B.A. qualifies for a living wage. Something's rotten in this proposition. It isn't that way in Finland, for example.

Finland didn't do it overnight, but they built their education system around critical democratic habits: competence and trust. They didn't trade off one for the other. Looking for a trust-proof solution is the fragile error. David Remnick says it well in the March 12th New Yorker: Democracy, he writes: "At best, it's an ambition, a state of becoming," and "the fragility of democratic aspiration is a brutal fact of history."

Every time we try an end-run around it we at best distract ourselves from useful next steps, and more often undermine our own aspirations.

Trust and skepticism go fine together—alongside a sense of humor. The leap of faith we make is always somewhat foolish, whether it's a question of when to lock one's car doors, leave things out on the lawn, etc. But leap we must. It's one reason why I like both small classes and small school size. It makes it easier to learn the culture, or what's reasonable to expect. It's also easier to verify things; there's a chance that the school and family can keep in direct touch and build trust on the basis of repeated experiences.

But looking for trust-proof "systems" is penny wise and pound foolish—and an endless task. We substitute the indirect evidence for the "real thing." The more we depend on such data, the more it loses its validity. (That's why test-publishers used to forbid schools from engaging in test prep: It invalidated scores.)

And, yes, yes, yes. Race complicates the creation of trust, and acknowledging that is critical. Socioeconomic class does, too. Some children have good reason to come to school with distrust—passed down from generation to generation. I do not expect that my good intentions will overcome such distrust quickly. But how much easier it is to be successful once family and school trust each other's intentions, at the very least. I think of the kids we "saved" together—when we were able to work together.

In short, we should not be surprised that none of the systems that we are putting in place to "catch" weak teachers and kids work. So nearly 25 years of ever-intensifying use of external—presumably indirect measures—have produced results. Madness. In fact, they have served to increase distrust. OK, some bad guys get caught. Some don't. But, as the testing manual used to remind us, everyone is getting cheated.

Visiting Denver was a reminder of the above. I visited four schools with very different assumptions about trust. I'll report on more next week after I've better absorbed my notes and reflections. But, as I promised, I came back more cheerful. Three of the schools have built in other time-consuming ways to make assessment part of learning. They have developed "systems" similar to those we used at Mission Hill and Central Park East. For example, the habits that were the foundation of CPE and Mission Hill included not only learning to collaborate, but also learning to resist the fast and false solutions. It was, in short, dedicated to learning how to exercise judgment based on as many forms of evidence as we have available. In these schools it was more obvious how means and ends were joined.

My friend from ETS, Ted Chittenden, used to remind us that test scores are indirect evidence—at best! If we have access to the child, why not use direct evidence, he said?

Sometimes we have to "see like the state" (this is a play on the title of a great book by James Scott), but let's not make it a habit!

Ditto for teachers.

Sometimes I get a clue from the language used by a school staff member. "Those kids" is a show-stopper for me. So is "rigor," which, according to my dictionary, means rigid, inflexible, and harsh. But I need to get over that one perhaps? While "accountability" has some positive meanings, it's a poor substitute for "taking responsibility." When talking about actual human beings I hate short cuts, like calling a kid a "SPED," or an "at risk," or, worse yet, a "1," "2," "3," or "4"! I abandoned using "grade level" once I realized no one knew what it meant anymore. I began to share direct hard evidence—and listen carefully to the feedback. I was thrilled to hear so little of this jargon in the schools I visited in Denver.

Which brings me, Diane, to your discourse on tenure. Actually, as you note, it has nothing to do, historically, with unions. But it fit together with insistence by unions on "due process," a fundamental bedrock of a democratic culture. It requires simply more "due process" for senior staff than new staff. That, too, seems reasonable. And it works best in a society which offers substantial security to all its citizens—so that losing one's job is not sudden death. And because security allows us to exert our energies where our curiosity takes us rather than reserving our energies to maintain safety or ward off danger. This goes for students and adults. I presume that very rich people worry about getting ever richer because they want security several generations out ... for their great-great-grandchildren. The scramble for safety is not good for the kind of fraternity that also stimulates creativity and individualism.

While schools have a special obligation to concern themselves with societal needs, democracy, and the economy (how people make a living, if they do), they also have a legitimate concern for the "pursuit of happiness." And we know as a fact that inequality and unfairness undermine all of these. I simply cannot successfully teach children who view me as unfair. That's why due process is so critical for kids and teachers.

Deborah

P.S. I just picked up three books that address timely concerns of yours and mine: "Heterogenius" Classrooms: Detracking Math and Science, by Maika Watanabe, foreword by Michelle Fine; Redeeming Democracy in America, by Wilson Carey McWilliams; and College: What It Was, Is, and Should Be, by Andrew Delbanco. It would be fun to undertake a critique together—of the latter especially. It's likely to take a no-nothing beating in the coming election season.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Deborah,

By now, you have seen the latest Metlife Survey of the American Teacher. It shows that teachers' satisfaction with their job has plummeted since 2009, from 59 percent to 44 percent. It is the lowest it has been in 20 years. The percentage of teachers who are likely to leave the profession has grown from 17 percent to 29 percent since 2009.

The reasons are obvious: The most satisfied teachers feel their jobs are secure, and they are treated as professionals by the community. Compared with dissatisfied teachers, they are more likely to have opportunities for professional development, time to collaborate with other teachers, and greater parental involvement in their schools. These are teachers working in an atmosphere of professionalism and collaboration.

The teachers who are most dissatisfied are in schools that have been hard hit by budget cuts, layoffs, larger classes, fewer resources, and a loss of time for or outright elimination of the arts, foreign languages, or physical education. At the same time that funding has been cut, there has been an upsurge in students' need for health and support services, which are less available to them.

Teachers are feeling the impact of state budget cuts, for sure.

But they are also feeling the chill wind stirred up by Arne Duncan's Race to the Top, which demands that teachers must be evaluated in some degree by the test scores of their students. In many states, those evaluations are as much as 50 percent, and that 50 percent trumps the other 50 percent. Teachers know, almost instinctively, that this is misguided, and Linda Darling-Hammond's recent Commentary in Education Week shows that this is a flawed idea with no support in research. The debacle in New York City, where teachers were ranked according to their value-added rating, showed what a misleading and pernicious tool this is, and how many teachers will be wrongly labeled and publicly humiliated.

It cannot be accidental that the sharp drop in teacher morale coincides with the efforts of people such as Michelle Rhee and organizations such as Education Reform Now and Stand for Children to end teacher tenure and seniority. Millions have been spent to end what is called "LIFO" (last in, first out) and to make the case that teachers should not have job security. Many states led by very conservative governors have responded to this campaign by wiping out any job security for teachers. So, if teachers feel less secure in their jobs, they are reacting quite legitimately to the legislation that is now sweeping the country to remove any and all job protections. Their futures will depend on their students' test scores (thanks to Arne Duncan), even though there is no experience from any district or state in which this strategy has actually improved education. Its main effect, as we see in the survey, is to demoralize teachers and make them feel less professional and less respected. Yes, there will be more teaching to the test: Both NCLB and the Race to the Top demand it. And yes, there will be teachers who are wrongly fired. And yes, teachers will leave for other lines of work that are less stressful.

As the fight against job security for teachers continues to gather steam, I turned to historian Jeffrey Mirel of the University of Michigan for advice. Jeff has been writing about the teaching profession for many years. He is a wise and deeply knowledgeable expert. I understand, as Jeff does, that tenure is mis described these days. University professors have a lifetime guarantee of employment when they win tenure. It is not the same in K-12 education, even though critics confuse the public by saying so. Teachers in K-12 schools do not have a lifetime guarantee; what they have is a guarantee of due process if someone wants to fire them. The right to a hearing, the right to be presented with evidence against them. When did that become un-American?

I asked Jeff Mirel to describe the argument for tenure for K-12 teachers, and this was his reply:

"I think the traditional reasons for tenure (i.e., to keep public schools as free as possible from becoming stages for political manipulation and to enable high-quality, career-minded teachers to stay in the classroom for as long as possible) are still good. What has changed is the context these positions must be argued in.

For example, in the first case—politicization of curriculum—it is impossible to imagine a time when tenure protection is more vital than now. The country is so divided that on any given school day teachers can be denounced, "tried," and fired over an amazingly wide range of issues (e.g., discussing the age of the earth, accuracy of the theory of evolution, the appropriateness of reading Huck Finn, what the Founders meant by the separation of church and state, the effectiveness of the New Deal, or what Shakespeare meant when he wrote in "Romeo and Juliet:" "... the bawdy hand of the dial is now on the prick of noon." (Act II, Scene 4). That last one actually happened when I was teaching the play to 9th graders in the late 1970s—one very sharp kid asked me about it after class—I had tenure so I was not too worried about explaining it to him but I began by saying, "What do you think Shakespeare is saying?" The young man told me what he thought, I told him he was probably right, and he walked away shaking his head in amazement.

Given all that, tenure is a crucial protection for teachers and a crucial part of getting students to be literate, critical thinkers,and engaged citizens.

The second case, tenure helping good teachers stay in field—you're right on this in your review of Wendy Kopp's book. If the goal of getting excellent teachers to stick around for 20 or 30 years, then they need tenure protection in no small part because they are NEVER going to get paid what they are worth financially. Without tenure, teaching school cannot compete in the economic marketplace (e.g., I know people in the business world who have only a B.A. in business and, after 10 years in the field, are making 2.5-3 times what public school teachers are making. Without good job protection we will never have long term, high quality teachers in our classrooms.

So, I think tenure is necessary, but it also must be accompanied by ways to remove bad, tenured teachers—figuring that out is more difficult than why we should have tenure in the first place."

What is happening to teachers now across this nation is a disgrace. The attacks on them are a blot on our nation. Teachers and students are not different interest groups. Anyone who demeans teachers demeans education and hurts children.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 11:32 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Diane,

Yes, Diane. Why? Why? Why are "they" doing it, and why are people buying it? I tend to speak to teachers, who are less inclined to buy into the idea that they are the source of the trouble and must be replaced. But ... the others?

I'm counting on you for some wise advice on how to tackle the larger fear that feeds it.

Like you, I find that the totally uninitiated tend to be surprised when I tell them I'm against the school/teacher/public bashing. That the best schools are those that have not abandoned respect for their teachers, students, and families comes as a welcome surprise to many. Yes, read about Finland, I say. Read Richard Rothstein's "old" The Way We Were?. Read Diane Ravitch. Read me.

Most find it unbelievable that there was no past golden age of schooling, or that our economy didn't tank because of school failure. (Were GM workers less skilled than Japan's in the 60s? Do the Chinese have a more technologically sophisticated workforce than the USA? Be honest Mr. Gates et al—you went to China for cheap labor.)

What makes folks so susceptible to an almost entirely phony story? Aside from widespread ignorance about statistics. I remember how annoyed I was in the '70s to hear reporters note that, alas, after so much effort, half the kids were still reading below grade level—which was statistically how grade level was defined.

It's easier to balance the budget by cutting "extravagant" pensions for middle-class public employees than to question why CEOs of "failing" corporations leave with pensions worth tens of millions. Still, why is there so relatively little uproar about the "unfairness" of it, although the Occupiers have broken through the veneer.

In part, it may simply be that most people hear the same sad story from many different sources, and few hear any other to explain our decline in world power. Whether it be good or bad power—the power to enlighten or the power to bully—neither, we're told, works for the good old USA as well as it once did. We're growing accustomed to the idea that our kids and grandkids may not do as well as we did. It's hard to hear, especially for those who counted on their sacrifices to improve the lot of their kids. But our expectations, we're told, were simply too high.

It's like being a Yankees fan. We lived boastfully for years off the reputation of "our" team. We were "it." If we didn't make it into the final round, someone's job was on the line. We fans demanded nothing less than 100 percent success.

Thought: We didn't go to war to save democracy, but to once again be the Yankees of the world league. Enough—although it was pretty painful working in Boston that terrible fall of 2004! Maybe that's how many Americans are feeling?

What we desperately need is reminders of why democracy is good for us—all of us. Not just as a way to beat out others for the title. What would we be willing to trade off for the sake of democracy? It scares me when I hear fellow Jews in Israel say that abandoning democracy may be a price worth paying. Or when I recall that in World War II citizens of the United States agreed to the imprisonment of Americans of Japanese descent. Probably they saw it as a temporary wartime measure. But wartime is now all the time. Have we accepted the idea that democracy is not an efficient tool for protecting ourselves and what we care about? Is democracy an idea that periodically just comes and goes?

Our fight for public schooling is a fight for democracy, for one-for-all-and-all-for-one solutions to our problems. But what is this democracy idea? Or as the Occupiers say: "What does democracy look like"? We need to use schools to sell democracy—even to explain it! It doesn't just live on neglected and compromised. Even many of our parental allies seem content to view public education as a private concern for their kids' futures. Period. In such a world the only thing that matters is rank order and, as I used to remind colleagues, no matter how fast kids line up, there's always just one in the front all the way back to one at the end. We're fighting each other these days to see if by hook or crook we can get "ours" nearer the front. (And "cutting" the line is allowed.) We live, too many of us, in a climate that makes us all compete for the shortage of private goods rather than tackling the "shortage" issue.

How to overcome the tendency to pull into our private well-armored tanks, fending off enemies everywhere once the barbarian within us all has been set loose? That is the question. Schools that can belong to all of "us" are too few, even among public schools. So we have a dual fight—to prevent privatization and to shore up public ownership.

My colleague, Connie Brady, died recently. I remember when she came to tell me—so many years ago—that she was going to march in the gay pride parade for the first time, because coming to Central Park East helped her be unafraid. She was a fighter to the end; fighting day by day for herself, but always also for others, to stave off the limitations that multiple sclerosis had placed upon her in the last decades of her life. With the limitations only of age, I'm determined not to let her down.

I'm reminded by witnessing a single act of caring, empathy, and kindliness that we have it within us to change priorities—if we can figure out how to act together. So, save the weekend of Aug. 2 for a Washington, D.C., convention on education. S.O.S. (Save our Schools) is planning, along with many allies, to use the occasion to put forth a platform on behalf of all children.

Next week, I'll have returned from Denver with better news.

Deb

P.S. Re. Chicago's Lab School. The good news is that it is still fighting John Dewey's good fight. The bad news is that the school is under pressure, too. It is a reminder that even in a school where 99 percent of student are predetermined winners, parents worry, and schools respond to their fear that their children won't be ahead of the pack—the 1 percent.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 10:19 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Deborah,

I went to Lafayette, La., last week to speak to the Louisiana School Boards Association. These men and women, representing their local schools from across the state, are trying to preserve public education in the face of an unprecedented onslaught by Gov. Bobby Jindal and the state's Republican-dominated legislature. Jindal has the backing of the state's corporate leaders, the nation's biggest foundations, and some powerful out-of-state supporters of privatization for his sweeping attack on public education.

Gov. Jindal has submitted a legislative proposal that would offer vouchers to more than half the students in the state; vastly expand the number of privately managed charter schools by giving the state board of education the power to create up to 40 new charter authorizing agencies; introduce academic standards and letter grades for pre-schoolers; and end seniority and tenure for teachers.

Under his plan, the local superintendent could immediately fire any teacher—tenured or not—who was rated "ineffective" by the state evaluation program. If the teacher re-applied to teach, she would have to be rated "highly effective" for five years in a row to regain tenure. Tenure, needless to say, becomes a meaningless term, since due process no longer is required for termination.

The bill is as punitive as possible with respect to public education and teachers. It says nothing about helping to improve or support them. It's all about enabling students to leave public schools and creating the tools to intimidate and fire teachers. This "reform" is not conservative. I would say it is radical and reactionary. But it is in no way unique to Louisiana.

Gov. Jindal is in a race to the bottom with other Republican governors to see who can move fastest to destroy the underpinnings of public education and to instill fear in the hearts of teachers. It's hard to say which of them is worst: Jindal, Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Mitch Daniels of Indiana, Rick Scott of Florida, John Kasich of Ohio, or .... There are so many contenders for the title, it's hard to name them all. They all seem to be working from the same playbook: Remove any professionalism and sense of security from teachers; expand privatization as rapidly as possible, through charters and vouchers; intensify reliance on high-stakes tests to evaluate teachers and schools; tighten the regulations on public schools while deregulating the privately managed charter schools. Keep up the attack on many fronts, to confuse the supporters of public education.

The governors appear to be working from the ALEC playbook, ALEC (or the American Legislative Exchange Council) being an organization that shapes model legislation for very conservative state legislators.

Using the right coded language is a very important part of the assault on public education: Call it "reform." Say that its critics are "defenders of the status quo," even though the status quo is 10 years of federally mandated high-stakes testing and school closings. If possible, throw mud at the defenders of public education and say that they only have "adult interests" at heart, while the pseudo-reformers—the rich and powerful—are acting only in the interests of children.

Soon after I spoke, Jindal's newly selected State Superintendent John White had a conference call with reporters to challenge what I said, which was odd because he was not present and did not hear what I said. He had no substantive response to my research review showing that charters, vouchers, and merit pay don't produce better education. He had no substantive response to my critique of the vagaries of value-added evaluation of teachers. Instead, he pointed to the New Orleans model as a paradigm of "reform," meaning, I suppose, the benefits of closing down public schools, turning the children over to private management, breaking the teachers' union, and hiring inexperienced, uncertified teachers.

John White was selected by Jindal to lead the state after Jindal took control of the state board of education last fall. John White had led the New Orleans Recovery School District for only a few months when he was chosen to run the state. He is a former Teach for America teacher and a graduate of the Broad Superintendents Academy. Much of his time in New York City was spent closing public schools and replacing them with charter schools, the so-called portfolio approach (like the stock market, where you keep the winners and sell the losers). He had nothing to do with academic matters, with curriculum or instruction. So he is well-suited to what Bobby Jindal is trying to accomplish in Louisiana. By the way, it won't surprise you to learn that Arne Duncan applauded Jindal's appointment of White as state superintendent and called White a "visionary leader." I guess, in Duncan's worldview, a "visionary leader" is someone willing to shut down public schools no matter what the parents and local community say.

The New Orleans' "miracle" is supposed to be evidence for the value of handing public education over to private managers and uncertified teachers. But the state's own website contradicts that "miracle" narrative. The state education department rated 79 percent of the charters in the Recovery School District as D or F.

The state also reported that the New Orleans Recovery School District was next to last in academic performance of all 72 districts in the state. It has made gains, but only in comparison to its own low base line in 2007.

All this data was compiled before the Jindal takeover of the state board of education. Currently, researchers are having trouble getting any data from the state education department.

Why are the elites of both parties so eager to hand children and public dollars over to private corporations? Why are both parties complicit in the dismantling of public education? Why do so many Democrats at the top advocate what used to be known as the right-wing agenda for education? Is it all about campaign contributions? Why does the media let them get away with it? Why does anyone think that this will be good for our society in the short term or the long term? Why have the monied interests decided to privatize large swaths of public education? What happens to our democracy when the public sector is effectively whittled away or purchased by big money?

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 9:41 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Dear Diane,

I've spent the week fighting a cold of some sort, and it has worn me out. But not so badly that I didn't read your Tuesday blast on "How to Demoralize Teachers." I've a lot to add to it, but first I must return to something I touched on in a recent blog entry of my own.

Regarding Diego Rivera: In the late 1930s my father's friend from college days (City College of New York after World War I), Jay Lovestone, had given up being a left-winger and a Communist-of-some-sort and had a dilemma. He had a set of murals that Diego Rivera had painted in 1933 for his Workers School in New York. It had closed and he had managed to give away all but one. The one he couldn't get rid of was Rivera's re-doing of the central mural intended for Rockefeller Center, which the Rockefellers had tried to get him to change! Rivera stuck to his guns, and you won't therefore find it in Rockefeller Center. Would we like it, he asked? A bit naively, my family said yes, and so it came to live in our foyer/living room, facing the Hudson River.

It was huge and consisted of three layers of plaster on wire lathe. At the bottom it read: Workers of the World Unite. It had Lenin in the center, an evil-looking Stalin up in the left corner, and an imposing Trotsky in the right upper corner, plus Engels, Marx, Rosa Luxemburg, and many more European and American Communists. It sat there for the next 15 or so years, causing much comment (including by the FBI). When my parents moved into a smaller apartment they put the mural in storage. Even then, no one wanted it. Until many years later when the city of Nagoya, Japan—a sister city to Mexico City—offered to buy it for its city museum. And so it left us.

I was confronted by those men (and three women) in their fierce poses from the age of about 8 to long after I left home for college. Answering to them may have strengthened my character. Or not.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch we face this absurd takeover of our public life—almost overnight—by a bunch of smart folks who see education much as Willie Sutton did when asked why he robbed banks: "That's where the money is." It has other plusses (ideological biases, generosity, etc., which attract some), but if it were a fiscal loser (as Edison Schools thought when it pulled back 20 or so years ago) it would not have the political allies now driving it. I've been so used to trying to persuade powerful people that we can't base good schooling on simple tools of "measurement" that I forgot that they truly don't care.

I had counted on the real Right Wing to stop national curriculum, national testing, and other such nonsense, but even they seem to have come to terms with the power of the State when it comes to such minor details, which meanwhile help distract us from seeing the charter/voucher movement for what it is.

So when I read that Rick Santorum has come out against college-for-all I couldn't resist writing a piece of half-satire/half-praise for him in The New York Times. Because the trouble is I also think that the college for all idea is absurd! (Thanks, Mike K. for a wise warning about when satire doesn't work.) Santorum sees very different disadvantages in the myth than I do, e.g. post-secondary education as a for-profit industry and creating an even cheaper labor force as we decrease the population of college attendees may both be positives for him.

I doubt if he's trying to close the elite Harvards, Yales, et al. He and his kind have made a serious discussion about the purpose of being "well-educated" and its value for democracy hard to carry on. We're trapped into "responding." Advocates of public schooling are desperately trying to simply prevent the spread of bad ideas, and are left with little time to think about what we can offer as alternatives to a bad status quo. There's no space and place to carry on a healthy debate while our backs are to the wall staving off disaster for our children (or 99 percent of them).

The late Tony Judt, in the New York Review of Books, wrote of his fears that we have come to the end of a very "long cycle of improvement" and that "we are now in a time of growing insecurity ... where our chief task is not to imagine better worlds but rather to think how to prevent worse ones." I hope we have room for more than that, but he had a point.

I just got two books in the mail that offer a bit of both—the possible and the necessary.

Drive by Daniel H. Pink is about our seriously mistaken notions on motivation. "We can cling," says Pink, "to a view of human motivation that is grounded more in old habits than in modern science. Or we can listen to the research, and draw our business and personal practices into the 21st century." He presents the evidence from science and touts seven business thinkers who "get it." One was Douglas McGregor, an MIT professor of management (and one-time president of "my" Antioch College!) who "got it" in a book written in 1960. He includes W. Edwards Deming, who put Japan's industry on the map with his conversion 20 years later. And more. Not a left-winger among the seven he cites.

The second, Classroom Discourse and Democracy, is a book I wish we had more of, and we might have, had not so many of us been distracted by fighting off reform from corporate leaders who don't even read their own best thinkers. Susan Jean Mayer has put together an easy to read, but far from simplistic account of what learning looks like when it's not based on carrots and sticks, when it lives up to Pink's and Deming's and McGregor's research. She even uses that bad word—accountability—in a wonderful way.

She calls for "Accountable Talk," which rests on classrooms holding themselves accountable in three areas: to community, to reason, and to knowledge. She spells it out in ways that helped me think about the role of authority, which is what's at stake in today's assault on teacher authority.

I'll say more about these later because by then (naturally) you'll all have gone out and read these books and you'll be ready to agree/disagree with me.

Not even George Orwell could have made up a story as frightening and absurd as we are living through in terms of education. Double-speak was his field of expertise, but none of the animals in Animal Farm had the chutzpah to produce what we faced this week in the name of "accountability:" the publishing of teacher rankings on the basis of student test scores! And one can also better understand why it is that I fume over a math curriculum that ties kids up in knots trying to make sense of calculus, but doesn't bother much with statistics. Statistics remain the best of all tools for liars.

Deborah

P.S. Re., the Lab School. I'll have to come back to that in a week or so.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:29 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend