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Dear Diane,

I’m in the midst of reading a marvelous book by Danielle Allen called Talking to Strangers. I’d love to discuss it with others. Do read it so we can converse about it soon. Her concept of “political friendships” between strangers intrigues me.

Which relates to my unpleasant encounter between NYC’s Mayor Bloomberg that you refer to in your letter yesterday. The New York Post reported that the mayor’s aides claim: Bloomberg demanded that the Senate’s grant to NYU be redirected it to CUNY, because of … Deborah Meier! My critical stance toward the mayor’s educational policies (the story quoted me as regarding the absence of parent voices in school policy) seemed a sufficient explanation. Why the Senate capitulated, and why The New York Times didn’t report it, and why the mayor’s aides “leaked” this explanation to the media I do not know. What’s more interesting to me is that this public attempt to threaten NYU, by one of the most powerful and richest politicians in America, was apparently seen as uncontroversial. It’s clearly an abridgement of academic freedom, an abuse of his enormous power; and, perhaps above all, so petty. (In fact, I’m “merely” an unpaid—hopefully not un-honored—member of the NYU faculty.)

I’ve always loved NYC’s feistiness, a quality of mind that seems often missing in more laid-back sections of the country. But even New Yorkers can be cowed by the kind of power and intimidation that the Bloomberg oligarchy has exercised for so many years.

Which gets me back to Allen’s argument in favor of bending over backwards to encourage reasoned, thoughtful dialogue between political friends—arguments not crippled by fear of retaliation or retribution by the authority of the State. The habits of a democratic citizenry are precious, and schools are the only institution I know of that might be training grounds for such citizenship. They are both the potential lab and think tank for reasoned discourse—in a climate of friendship and mutual respect. The art of listening to each other requires careful nurturing.

And, of course, reasoning requires judgment—and both require knowledge (including experience).

Which leads me to E.D. Hirsch’s latest book (The Making of Americans). He and I even agree on many matters. But I’m intrigued by the unexamined assumptions we disagree about! He does not even acknowledge any risks inherent in a nationwide imposition of a single year-by-year curriculum. Local school boards, parent organizations, and teachers' unions can be a pain in the ass (and I speak as one who has been at both ends of each). But I see democracy resting on our reviving these institutions, not in abandoning them. The ease with which we seek to “overcome” unwelcome citizen voices by pushing power ever higher—or to more elite experts—has a long history. It’s not “unreasonable,” just dangerous. “It’s too important to get this right’” is a cry I’ve heard over and over as respected friends seek to circumvent democratic procedures. “We dare not let them vote on this” is not the defense of just fools or demagogues. Yes, democratically delegating some decisions to experts, as well as recognizing when decisions are best made in collaboration with other governmental units, are reasonable objections to placing authority in local democracies. But years of such rationales have led me to be hard-pressed to find places left where ordinary citizens experience decision-making processes. Surely not in many schools. Even hearing each other out is not something we often do in our schools, although we do grow accustomed to not talking back to the textbook, teacher, or principal—more out of boredom (or its uselessness) probably than courtesy. (How rarely do we confront any passionate convictions in our lives in school.)

We’re bad at imagining other ways of seeing the world—and probably always have been. But it is our unique human capacity. While I think that if we devoted the 13 years from K-12th grade to nurturing and training such capacity we’d get better at it, probably it will always be hard. It takes, as does science, mathematics, and the arts, hands-on-practice in a good old-fashioned “apprenticeship.”

Ah, too much rhetoric! There are some wonderful books out by practitioners that describe how we can organize schools that serve both the academic disciplines and democracy better than a “standardized one-size-fits-all” curriculum. Next week.

Deb

P.S. The health debate is instructive—reminding us of how difficult it is to engage in serious debate when the stakes are high. But the solution is not to invent a behind-the-scenes, pretend consensus where none exist, as Duncan et al seem to be doing with regard to so-called educational “reform.” For more on meaningful school reform, I highly recommend that readers seek out an excellent opinion piece by Dennis Shirley and Andy Hargreaves that appeared recently in The Boston Globe. Among other things, they write: "Why not choose the bolder paths not yet taken in our educational system’s much-hailed “race to the top’’ and join those schools at the top of the world already?"

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:02 AM | Permalink | 7 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

Editor's Note: Bridging Differences returns today from its summer hiatus. The blog will resume its regular Tuesday-Thursday publishing schedule next week.

Dear Deborah,

School is open, and it is time to talk! What a busy summer for all of us who care about education.

I had a good summer, finished editing my new book, and got it off to the publisher. I also managed to finish George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda, my main summer reading. It took 140 pages before I became fully engaged, but then the plot and the characters grabbed me.

The big education events of the summer were huge. Starting locally, the New York legislature renewed Mayor Bloomberg's one-man control of the New York City public schools. No surprise there. What was surprising and really shocking was a debate about whether to create a $1.6 million parent training center, a tiny bone tossed to critics of the mayor's high-handed rule. The legislators wanted to place the new center at New York University. Then the New York Post ran a scare headline warning that someone who had criticized the mayor's education reforms—Deborah Meier—would run the parent training center. This was laughable, since you are an adjunct and would have had nothing to do with the program. Nonetheless, the terrified legislators promptly shifted the appropriation (a grain of sand in our city's $21 billion education budget) to City University of New York, where the mayor can keep it under his thumb and where it will be harmlessly divided into five separate centers.

Nationally, the most important event was the release of the federal government’s regulations for the “Race to the Top.” Those regulations made clear that the Obama administration has fully aligned itself with the edu-entrepreneurs who favor market-based reforms. As I predicted on this blog, President Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan are now the spear carriers for the GOP's education policies of choice and accountability. An odd development, don’t you think? The Department of Education dangles nearly $5 billion before the states, but only if they agree to remove the caps on charter schools and any restrictions on using student test scores to evaluate teachers.

What is extraordinary about these regulations is that they have no credible basis in research. They just happen to be the programs and approaches favored by the people in power. Under normal circumstances, the Department of Education would need congressional hearings and authorization to launch a program so sweeping and so sharply defined. Instead, they are using the "stimulus" money to impose their preferences, with no hearings and no congressional authorization.

Is any charter school better than any public school? As we learned from the Stanford CREDO study of charters a few months ago, only 17 percent of charter schools are superior to comparable public schools; the rest were either no better or worse. Yet the Obama administration wants to open up the nation’s public schools—especially in urban districts—to massive privatization.

And with the encouragement of Secretary Duncan (and the support of the Gates Foundation and the Broad Foundation), privatization is taking root. Just last week, the Los Angeles board of education voted to turn over nearly one third of its schools to private management; this despite the fact that in the same week it was reported that the Green Dot takeover of Locke High School produced no gains. At Locke, 2 percent of the students met state standards in math; after a year of massive publicity about the Green Dot miracle at Locke, the scores came out, and 2 percent of the students met state standards in math. The excuses came thick and fast: the dropout rate was down, more students came to school, but…the scores were flat.

There is also no research that justifies the Obama administration’s belief that tying teacher evaluations to student scores will improve schools. I commend to our readers the response to the RTTT regulations by Professor Helen Ladd, an economist who has studied teacher evaluation for many years, as well as the one by Paul Barton, who has studied education issues for many years. What both of these responses clearly demonstrate is that there is no research basis for the priorities favored by Secretary Duncan.

This will be an interesting year. But also a very dangerous year for American public education.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 10:14 AM | Permalink | 89 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

Yes, it seems so obvious to you and me. Using their metrics, the boosters of mayoral control can hardly point to any trend that supports their claims. On NAEP data, the two biggie mayoral control cities show no change, and on graduation data, NYC shows some improvement, but Chicago shows none, even if we go by the city's data. If we look at the data in the recent RAND study, it confirms many others—charter schools do no better re. test scores than their comparable neighborhood schools—some better, some worse. The data on merit pay don’t exist, of course—and it’s already a national priority. But that most comparable jobs use “performance-based” pay just isn’t a fact. The Economic Policy Institute has published a report on the subject that hardly is conclusive, but the logic suggests serious trade-offs that none of the folks in D.C. seem to be even aware of. If you do X, there are “unintended” but inevitable consequences—especially if you’re not even aware of them. (As for the charge that local control leads to more corruption? Having the right friends in the right place may lead to millions under mayoral control vs. hundreds under local control.)

School reformers perhaps should be required to publish “cautions” the way drugs do—if you do this, watch out because….(In bigger print, however.) In fact, it’s an essential “habit of mind” of a well-educated person—paying attention to trade-offs.

Regarding the kind of national standards being proposed is really a national curriculum. One of the arguments for it is a give-away: with national standards, if a kid moves from school x to y, he’ll barely miss a heartbeat. Again, no concerns over unintended consequences—teacher burn-out at the very least. There are forms of standards that could avoid this—if we feel the need for them—such as those CPESS modeled (“habits of mind”) alongside some broad sweeping propositions in each field. More like the Advanced Placement English test (at least the way it used to be). It didn’t require everyone to read the same books or spout the same answers. It directed “attention” to certain themes and ideas so that students could use what they had read and studied to come up with their own responses to timeless issues in literature. Ditto for history or science. These wouldn’t be “specs” for test producers, but specs for schools to consider in designing curriculum and assessments.

The class-size debate isn’t on the “reform” agenda. But it has been assisted by two excellent books. An EPI (Economic Policy Institute) book in the form of a debate and a wonderful study and brief in favor of smaller classes by Garrett Delavan, "The Teacher’s Attention."

NAEP then could do the deeper and broader job of seeing how these play out over time, including a look eight years down the line—in college, on the job, as a voter.

I had a fascinating conversation with a teacher who has been teaching physics for 15 years in L.A. and the surrounding area. She teaches 200 students on most days (in groups of 40 or so), at least three of the classes have the same test-prep curriculum. She feels bored. Ready to “move on”—but to what? I asked her to describe what she wishes she could do—even if it were unrealistic. Her wishes? Small classes so she could explore science more deeply with kids, the opportunity to do some interdisciplinary teaching with colleagues, to be able to approach physics from directions that might not match the state exam, to expand her own intellectual horizons alongside of and separate from her students. What kid wouldn’t say, “amen”?

In such settings, a teacher with 15 years of experience wouldn’t be at the end of her career (and wits) in the classroom. Imagine schools, in collaboration with universities, as the site for teacher-training—prolonged apprenticeships. My friend would then also be teaching other colleagues and would-be colleagues and learning from some interesting scientists on campus.

This was the “reform” idea of the late '80s. But it’s getting harder, not easier, to imagine this happening today. But, you ask—how did we move so far from this vision in such a short time, so that we now have a bipartisan plan for schools that make the old factory-model look innovative? Partial answer: We left practitioners like me and educational scholars like you out of the loop and instead turned to financiers and lawyers!

Deb

Posted by Deborah Meier at 10:05 AM | Permalink | 26 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

You raise important questions about the role of trust and community in schooling. Those issues should be front and center as part of the discussion of the future of public education. We should discuss further whether trust and community are advanced by preserving and strengthening neighborhood schools or by encouraging the growth of choice schools, by charters and vouchers. Certainly, a case can be made for both routes.

The neighborhood school has always been an important center of community. It brings together people from disparate walks of life who are neighbors and gives them a place in which to work together and debate their common concerns as a community. In some cities, the neighborhood school is the only effective community organization. For many people, it is their introduction to the give-and-take of democratic civic life.

Some of the same arguments have been made on behalf of choice schools; after all, if all the families are in a school that they have chosen, then they, too, are a community and they are there because of their active choice, rather than an accident of geography.

Maybe I shouldn’t, but I worry about the kids who are left behind, and also about the implications of the business model imposed on schools.

I just finished reading two books that shed some light on these questions. One is Anthony S. Bryk and Barbara Schneider’s "Trust in Schools." Bryk and Schneider document how important it is for teachers, principals, parents, students, and administrators to trust one another. Because each person or group is in some way dependent on the actions of the others, trust is a necessary component of school improvement. They do not account for the possibility of a political structure in which almost all power is concentrated in the hands of the mayor or his chancellor. They could not even imagine a school district in which the political leader unilaterally declares that 5-year-olds must take standardized tests, regardless of the views of parents, teachers, or administrators. The lesson to be taken away from this important book, it seems clear to me, is that schools function best when there is a high degree of trust among all those involved in the educational process.

The other book, which I finished just last night, is Paul Tough’s "Whatever It Takes." Tough is an accomplished journalist who writes for The New York Times Magazine; you may have seen his articles, one last year about successful charter schools like KIPP and Achievement First, the most recent about school reforms in New Orleans.

Tough’s new book is about Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children’s Zone. The book takes on added significance because Barack Obama has said that he wants to replicate the Harlem Children’s Zone in 20 cities. As Tough describes it, Canada has attempted to create an all-encompassing, interlinked set of programs that will deeply affect the lives of many people in Harlem and break the cycle of poverty and disadvantage. His programs include a “Baby College,” where pregnant women (and their partners) learn important skills and information about prenatal care and baby care. Then there is a program for infants and a prekindergarten program, an elementary charter school, and a variety of programs for teens and adults. Much of the book focuses on the travails of the middle school, where educators struggled to raise test scores, in many cases unsuccessfully. The lesson that Canada drew from the poor results of the middle school was that he had to start with kids before they fell so far behind; in some cases, 6th grade students were reading at a 2nd grade level and that was a challenge that he and his school were unable to master.

Tough’s book is very hopeful. He cites a large body of evidence to argue that children will never fall behind cognitively if their parents and their environment provide them with enough stimulation and support from the beginning of their lives. This is the case, he says, no matter how poor their parents are, no matter how disadvantaged their circumstances. If we as a society do “whatever it takes,” we can close the achievement gaps and get every student ready for college or a good career.

However, and there is always a however, there is a depressing aspect to Tough’s book. As the author describes the situation, Canada is in complete sympathy with his powerful, wealthy board of directors, which includes hedge-fund billionaires. Not surprising. These directors care only for the numbers, and they don’t care how the schools get them. “The overall goal of the Zone might be liberal and idealistic—to educate and otherwise improve the lives of poor black children—but Canada believed the best way to achieve that goal was to act not like a bighearted altruist but like a ruthless capitalist, devoted to the bottom line.” (p.135).

The first principal of the middle school sounds like you, Deborah; she must have been reading your books. She is a progressive educator who worries about the whole child, about their social and emotional problems, and who wants the children to have a rounded education. But her school doesn’t get the test scores gains that the hedge-fund managers and the New York City Department of Education demand. She is removed and replaced by a KIPP-style principal. The wealthy men who run the board of the Zone are impressed by the KIPP model, which is described by one of them as “more of a military-style, real rote-learning, rote-behavior discipline thing,” because this model “delivered results.”

The new principal begins a regimen of test-prep, test-prep, test-prep, no-nonsense discipline. Drill, drill, drill. I won’t spoil the book for you by giving away the outcome, but I can only say that the school part of the book’s message was startling. Do poor black and Hispanic kids really need to be in “no excuses” schools that insist on rote learning and rote behavior? That take control of their lives and change their culture? Should this be the model for education for children of color in big cities? This was the message of Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom’s book "No Excuses," and it was echoed by a recent book by David Whitman, "Sweating the Small Stuff: Inner-City Schools and the New Paternalism."

I think this is becoming the new conventional wisdom. What do you think?

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:55 AM | Permalink | 16 Comments | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

I read your “advice to the next president” with interest. It would be wonderful if our next president could figure out how to ensure that “schools for the poor…look and feel like the schools the wealthiest send their kids to”? Let’s see, first he would propose a school construction fund to modernize school facilities. Then he might propose class-size reduction to the level that is typical at schools like Phillips Andover or Exeter (12 students per class?). And then there is the list of social programs, like good health care and nutrition.

This tracks fairly well with the recommendations of the manifesto that we both signed, called the “Bolder, Broader Approach.”

But I think you ducked the question I put to you about the rise of a competing ideology within the Democratic party. Customarily, one would associate the BBA with the Democratic party (school improvement, plus more resources), and the Education Equality Project with the Republican party (choice, accountability, and incentives). But EEP's members are now well-represented within the Democratic party as the “reformers.”

As I write, I notice an article in USA Today that makes the point. The Democratic platform this fall will “stake out a few positions that unions have long opposed.” These include “paying teachers more if they raise test scores, teach in ‘underserved areas’ or take on new responsibilities such as mentoring new teachers.” Actually, I don’t think that unions oppose paying teachers for taking on new responsibilities, but I know that they have usually fought the idea that teacher pay should rise or fall with student test scores. The article cited two mayors—Cory Booker of Newark and Adrian Fenty of Washington, D.C.—who criticized unions for blocking their plans for choice (charters and vouchers) and for their “insane work rules.”

So the politics are changing. Is this the future? Is this the new face of the Democratic party? Will it be a future in which schools are run like businesses, in which unions are ousted from the workplace (as they have been in most of the private sector), and in which pay-for-performance is the rule for teachers, principals, and students?

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:10 AM | Permalink | 12 Comments | TrackBacks (0)