Bridging Differences

Dear Diane,

Let's explore, one by one, the separate elements of the federal education agenda, Diane. Are they based on reason and evidence or ignorance and irrationality? (I could have asked myself the same thing about our differences regarding the trade-offs and risks involved in a national curriculum.)

Merit pay is high on the list of the new business-oriented reformers and naturally difficult for unions to swallow. For unions, the big issues are above all aimed at providing employees with a fair system that won't place them at the mercy of their bosses when it comes to the basics of the job. It's obviously of less concern to people entering the field for a short period. (Ditto for retirement, seniority, maternity leave, etc.—all of which are safeguards of concern, mostly, for those in for a lifetime career.)

Merit pay involves a set of related issues of concern to me. I speak to this as a former teacher, trade unionist, parent activist, and principal. On most of these we agree, Diane, even though they have never been directly connected, as they have for me, to "self-interest."

In each of these roles, I was glad that teachers' pay benefits and seniority rights were not at stake in the disagreements we might have. I could always see how dangerous it might be if powerful parents, principals, community members, or union "bosses" were in a position to annually decide how much my own child's teacher was worth paying. Oddly enough—am I right, Diane?—most of the reforms being threatened preceded unionization of schools and exist in states in which there are no labor-management contracts. They came into existence to protect teachers from the political pressures that affected their jobs and their profession. They mirror the protections of most public employment. Union power helped to make these safeguards and benefits more secure, but their history—as you have documented, Diane—has other roots.

I'm reinforced in my attachment to these by my own personal experience and that of two of my teaching offspring! Two out of two have at some point in their teaching lives been fired, and one was blackballed. And, in both cases it was related to out-of-class behaviors: remarks made at public meetings and union activity.

But my critique of merit pay rests also on other prejudices of mine. First of all, I think schools need to be highly collegial settings and any system of financial (or other) rewards creates a setting that makes this harder, not easier to achieve. And, believe me, it's hard enough as it is. That's one reason that in NYC, the United Federation of Teachers agreed to an experiment only if the staff had the right to decide on how to spread the resulting bonus money.

Secondly, I believe that schools work best when we can help young people see that the highest goal of learning is not some external reward, but the enormous satisfaction of learning, the "power of their ideas" (the title of my first book), backed by knowledge. They come to us largely untainted by a system of rewards for the most complex learning they will encounter—the knowledge and reasoning that leads them to language competence, an enormous vocabulary even under the worst of circumstances, the names and faces of thousands of objects and people, the "rules" of the game for any number of ordinary situations. They can "read" people's moods and make sensible predictions based on their theories, as they can with hundreds upon hundreds of other theories that apply to their daily lives. Learning is unstoppable—the trick is how to turn it to some "subject matter" that they don't encounter naturally, or which they don't uncover in its fuller complexity naturally. The aims of school—whatever they may be—depend on our keeping that drive alive, nourishing it, and deliberately doing as little as possible to undermine it. Ditto for teaching.

Thirdly, there is simply NO evidence on its behalf in public or private employment, and most previous attempts at this have been abandoned for that reason. The "evidence" falls on the other side. In fact, there is evidence of a lot of danger. It corrupts. Whatever is used to decide who "merits more" will—as most high-stakes indicators do—undermine the indicator(s) chosen: Campbell's law.

No better example of this has hit the headlines lately than what is known as the "C.E.O. compensation" problem. David Owen has written a startling and chock-full-of-lessons essay in the Oct. 12 New Yorker, "The Pay Problem." I'll be quoting from it in future weeks, so I hope our blogees get a copy of it. Have you read it, Diane?

To those reading us, I hope you will help me think about which of the above arguments are best or worst, and why you disagree—if you do.

Thanks,
Deborah

P.S. Beware old-timers. I've just realized that the term "performance" assessment now refers to the paper-and-pencil test. As in a driver's test—who would imagine calling the paper-and-pencil test a performance test??? We're back to Alice in Wonderland where words can mean whatever we choose.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (70) | TrackBacks (0)

Editor's note: See author's "P.S." added since entry was first published.

I will have to delay a bit before I can get to the book you recommended. When I finished "Daniel Deronda," I immediately plunged into Robert Caro's wonderful biography of Robert Moses, "The Power Broker," which I am enjoying very much. It is fascinating from the start as a description of the life and times of a man who did so much to redesign New York City, who was celebrated and powerful, but in the end...was the subject of a very unflattering biography by a master historian. The book gives perspective to some of the events that you describe. In the end, people in public life are judged by their real accomplishments and their integrity, not by their wealth, their power, or their press releases. The latter fade, and eventually the record speaks for itself. This is one of the reasons that I love to write history and read history, as over time phony laurels disintegrate, and the applause that is generated by flacks disappears.

I would like to engage you in one of your favorite issues, which is the use and abuse of tests. Over the past few months, as I was finishing my book, I became aware of the startling extent to which the New York State Education Department has manipulated the state test results. So, while politicians crow about their "success" in raising test scores (as if they had anything to do with students' learning!), it turns out that the tests have been rigged in recent years to produce higher scores. The more I learned, the more I wondered if New York was on its way to becoming a national laughing-stock.

I wrote two articles about this. The first one appeared in the New York Post in August under the headline "Toughen the Tests." The article actually was NOT a call to toughen the tests, but a call to tell the truth. I wrote it to alert our new state education commissioner, David Steiner, who assumes his position on Oct. 1, to the scandalous manipulation of test scores by the agency he will lead.

The second article was published by the New York Daily News ("Bloomberg's Bogus Report Cards Destroy Real Progress"). There I discussed the Bloomberg administration's zany school report cards, which this year awarded an A to 84 percent of the city's elementary and middle schools, and a B to 13 percent more. In other words, 97 percent got an A or a B, including seven of the schools that the state says are "persistently dangerous." Only two of 1,058 schools scored an F. The administration thinks this is progress, but even its most ardent supporters on the editorial boards of the New York Post and the New York Daily News complained about rampant grade inflation.

Oh, by the way, the school that saw the biggest drop in its overall score was the Harlem Promise Academy Charter School, the school that David Brooks of The New York Times held up as a national model, claiming that it had closed the achievement gap. Our blog had quite a lively exchange of letters about that school last spring. Seems it dropped from an A to a B; in the present regime of inflated scores, a B in New York City today is nothing to brag about.

I wrote these articles to draw attention to the games that the state is playing with test scores. From 2006, when the state started testing grades 3-8, to the present, the proportion of points that a student needs to advance to a higher level has steadily fallen in many grades. One of our faithful readers, Diana Senechal, conducted an experiment for gothamschools.org, in which she took two of the middle school tests and answered the questions at random; she "earned" enough points to advance to level 2. The number of students who are level 1 (the lowest) has dropped precipitously in these past three years; some very low-performing schools have few or no students in that category, not because instruction has improved, but because the state dropped the bar. The public doesn't know this.

Over these past three years, the proportion of students who are allegedly "proficient" (level 3) leapt from 29 percent to 63 percent in Buffalo, from 30 percent to 58 percent in Syracuse, and from 57 percent to 82 percent in New York City. In 2006, a student had to earn 60 percent of the points on the state tests in math to be proficient; by 2009, the student needed to earn only 50 percent. The public does not know that the bar has been quietly lowered.

The reporters at the New York Daily News have diligently exposed the corruption of state testing by New York's education department. For reasons that I cannot fathom, the reporters at the New York Times have completely ignored the story and continue to refer to the state scores as though they have real meaning. Perhaps the Times will take notice later this year when the NAEP results come out and the public realizes that the claims of double-digit gains are phony. Unfortunately, what the Times does and does not report matters, as some people will believe nothing unless they read it there.**

In June, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago issued a report showing that the score gains in that city (which President Obama cited when he nominated Arne Duncan as secretary of education) were mostly a result of the state's decision to lower the cut scores on the state tests.

When states play games with cut scores and conversions from raw scores to scale scores, testing becomes a mighty scam. As Secretary Duncan said when he spoke at the National Press Club last May, we are lying to our children when we give them a false picture of their progress. When district officials know that the scores are manipulated, yet report their "gains" with a straight face, they become complicit in these lies. When public officials boast about score gains knowing that the scores are the result of game-playing, they too are complicit.

Have testing and accountability become a massive fraud against our children? Do they now serve adult interests while ignoring, indeed disregarding, the needs of children?

Diane

**P.S. The New York Times Faces Facts about State Tests: In my blog entry that was posted today (and written a few days ago), I complained that the New York Times had failed to acknowledge the dumbing-down of New York's tests. Yesterday, Sept. 14, the Times ran an article by Javier Hernandez on that very subject ("Botched Most Answers on New York State Math Test? You Still Pass"). The article pointed out that a student could pass the 7th grade math test by getting only 44 percent of the questions right, and that the passing mark had dropped so far that students could actually pass by random guessing.

Officials at the state Education Department told the Times, apparently with a straight face, that they dropped the passing mark because they made the test "harder." They did not explain why passing rates had soared if indeed the test was harder and comparable to previous years. Apparently the officials think that the rest of us are fools.

So the Times at last has weighed in, but has not yet given the full picture of the extent to which intensive test prep—using clone items—has corrupted the state tests, not only in math, but in ELA as well.

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

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 | Comments (7) | 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 | Comments (89) | TrackBacks (0)

Editor's Note: After this week, Deborah Meier and Diane Ravitch begin their annual summer break. Their blog will return in September.

Dear Diane,

I’m still amazed at how fast the new educational establishment plans to “revolutionize” our schools. I acknowledge that your support for national testing and curriculum is a bit out of line with the train that’s long since left the station, and I suspect you will end up as dismayed as I am. So, too, will many Americans who have not in any way been consulted by their governors or their president. One look at who’s in charge gives me the creeps—SAT and ACT. Unbelievable! Hardly.

I quote IBM’s Louis Gerstner in a conversation with John Bussey of The Wall Street Journal and Joel Klein : “What I’m going to suggest (to Obama) is that he convene the 50 governors and the first thing they do is abolish the 16,000 school districts we have in the United States." Why? Because “sixteen thousand school districts are what we’re trying to cram this reform through.” With only one—how much easier. (Note: When I was born, there were 200,000 school boards.)

Getting “around” the Constitution is hardly a new practice and, after all, I’ve supported it at times. But even in the case of gun control, I think I’m closer to the Founding Fathers' idea than the NRA is. And I’m glad we didn’t try to squeeze African-Americans et al into the Constitution by legalese. Instead, “we” wrote an amendment. On local control of schools, I’m certain I am on the side of the Constitution, and I think it’s more critical, not less, in today’s world and that no such amendment would survive the American people.

I’ve become more conservative: not in where I hope to go, but in the means for getting there. Rapid changes on a large scale are dangerous—and while sometimes necessary we need to be persuaded. That slows things down a bit I know. It’s one of democracy’s intentional “drawbacks.”

If we were capable of coming up with a list of just one book or idea in each of the disciplines for a “common core” I’d buy it. But that would be a utopian wish—and probably dangerous, too! Maybe I wouldn’t buy it.

The problem with the old “new math” of the '60s was not the mathematics, but the attempt to leap ahead without either persuading or educating those who we expected to carry it out (teachers) or support it (parents).

Possibly we will raise slightly the intellectual content of what kids are presented with a national curriculum. With certainty, we will lower the chances of having an inspiring year with an inspired teacher. It’s a trade-off that seems unnecessary if we took advantage of our schools as places for everyone to learn—for teachers, students, parents, and the community. If we started with where all of these parties “are” and encouraged them—with resources—to dig deeper and more richly, with greater attention to the love of learning, we could have both. In a generation of two.

I liked your list, Diane. I think we could connect each of our lists to the future health of democracy, and by extension not only to a stronger economy, but a real understanding of what an economy is. Schools and the economy have moved lock-step into shoddy conceptions of what a strong mind and economy can be measured by and then substituted the measure for the object itself.

Books to read. There are many good books on education to read. And yes, “Middlemarch” can even help us think about schooling! That’s what I discovered about education—everything feeds it.

For example, I recently read an odd book that tells the story of the author’s encounter with a shelter for adolescents in Russia. Written by journalist Bob Belenky, “Tales of Priut Almus” delighted me. Exactly why? I’m still trying to figure it out.

I’d still recommend James Scott’s “Seeing Like a State” for examining our current situation and Evans Clinchy’s “Reforming American Education: From the Bottom to the Top”—which has an introduction by me (“Supposing That..”) which I still agree with. I recommend my “In Schools We Trust” for a chapter on changing the odds, as an approach to school reform writ large—to those who keep carping that my ideas depend too much on exceptionalism.

Like your rediscovering “Middlemarch,” I rediscovered a collection of essays by physicist David Hawkins in a book entitled “The Informed Vision.” Ken Jones, formerly with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, also edited a useful book, “Democratic School Accountability,” that is only three years old, but totally out of synch with the “latest” Gates Foundation wisdom. Linda Darling-Hammond and colleagues Jacqueline Ancess and Beverly Falk’s “Authentic Assessment in Action” has a lot to show us, including a chapter on the old Central Park East Secondary School that I often refer to. Just this week, friends in NYC—including you, Diane—collaborated in producing a book called “NYC Schools Under Bloomberg and Klein: What Parents, Teachers, and Policymakers Need to Know.”

There are many more, depending on one’s taste. I particularly love accounts by teachers—like Julie Diamond’s “Welcome to the Aquarium.” I re-read Mike Rose’s “Lives on the Boundary” yearly. Ditto for oldies, like John Holt’s “How Children Fail.” Or anything by Frank Smith—including his most recent—“Unspeakable Acts, Unnatural Practices.” An oldie—“Horace’s Compromise” by Ted Sizer—should be read by policymakers every few years, alongside Richard Rothstein’s classic—“The Way We Were?”. Diane, there’s another history of education often forgotten even by the best historians and well-captured in “Roots of Open Education in America,” edited by Ruth Dropkin and Arthur Tobier—with a last chapter by my hero Vito Perrone.

(And as soon as I send this off, I’ll feel terrible about having left off mentioning x and y—like Seymour Sarason! Maxine Green!—and Linda Nathan’s not-yet-available book.)

Have a joyful summer—living the alternate life we didn’t live from September through June. Which is why I reject the idea of a longer school year. What kids need are fascinating alternate life experiences for two summer months. We owe them that, as we owe it to ourselves.

Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (24) | TrackBacks (0)

Editor's Note: After this week, Diane Ravitch and Deborah Meier begin their annual summer break. Their blog will return in September.

Dear Deborah,

We have had fun these past couple of years exploring our differences and our agreements. It is clear that the point where we diverge most strongly is whether anyone should set common standards or curriculum outside the individual school. And the point where we agree most strongly is on the role that schools should play in advancing our democratic purposes as a society.

This past week’s events in New York City have caused me, as well as many education advocates and parent activists, to despair about the prospects for democracy in education. The law that granted sole control of the public schools to the mayor expired on June 30, and many advocates hoped that this would provide an opportunity to rethink control of the public schools to expand democracy. For seven years, the mayor has run the schools without any checks and balances, which we know are integral to any democratic functioning. The law provided for a board of education, but our mayor renamed it the “Panel on Education Policy” and turned it into a rubber stamp.

The reason the law expired was that our state’s legislature has been tied up in knots for weeks. The lower house—the Assembly—renewed the mayor’s unrestricted ownership of the public schools with only a few cosmetic changes. The upper house—the state Senate—did not act, because the Republicans and the Democrats are locked in a 31-31 stalemate and unable to pass any legislation. The customary tiebreaker is the lieutenant governor, but there is none at present, because ours, David Paterson, was elevated to governor when the former governor, Eliot Spitzer, resigned in a scandal.

So, last week, when the mayoral control law expired, the former governing structure was resurrected. It now seems as if a corpse was hauled out of a graveyard. Under that structure, the mayor appoints two people, and each of the five borough presidents picks one. In the past, there was a presumption that the elected officials would each pick a distinguished community leader to represent them on the city’s Board of Education.

So, while parents and advocates celebrated what they briefly dreamed was a new day, the elected officials delivered a stunning shock. Rather than select distinguished community leaders, the mayor picked two deputy mayors to represent him. The borough president of Queens picked the mayor’s deputy for education to represent that borough. With only one exception, three other borough presidents picked one of their deputies as their borough representative. Only one borough president, in the Bronx, had the courage to select an independent person, the former president of Hostos Community College.

The new board, on which the mayor controlled six out of seven votes, quickly voted to vest all of its powers in Joel Klein, who has been running the school system for the past seven years, and to petition the legislature to promptly pass the mayoral control bill, thus preserving the status quo of the past seven years.

What a cynical sham. How shameless. How can we speak of democracy in education when democracy is so easily subverted by our elected officials?

On to happier subjects.

I finished the book on which I have been working for the past couple of years. It will be published by Perseus next spring. Those who are regular readers of our blog will recognize many of its themes. The blog served as a sounding board for ideas that I was working through as I was writing, and many of our readers helped me see things more clearly with their astute comments, questions, and challenges. One of our faithful readers, Diana Senechal, was my research assistant and crack editor these past few months. I was very lucky indeed to have her help.

I plan to catch up with my reading. I have only two books on my table. One was recommended by Mike, one of our readers. It is Gerald Grant’s "Hope and Despair in the American City." As soon as Mike suggested it, I ordered it because I so admire Grant. He is a wonderful writer. His book, "The World We Created at Hamilton High," is one of the best that I have read in many years.

My main summer reading is George Eliot’s "Daniel Deronda." I loved Eliot’s "Middlemarch," as well as "The Mill on the Floss" and "Silas Marner" (the latter is a book that I hated when it was assigned in high school, but loved as an adult). I have wanted to read "Daniel Deronda" for many years, but kept putting it off. The time is now.

Having just completed a book that required me to read dozens of education books, new and old, in the past year, I don’t want to read anything more about education this summer. I want to immerse myself in literature. I expect to read poetry, too, which I love. Every once in a while, I get tired of reading about education, and must attend to my own education in literature and history. I also hope to attend to my health and physical well-being by swimming, biking, and gardening. And I expect to undermine my mental health by beginning a partial renovation of the kitchen.

To you and to our readers, have a great summer!

Diane

P.S. Happy (belated) Independence Day! I took this picture of the Southold Public Library's float in the July 4th parade.

A beautiful day to celebrate our freedoms! It was my 2-year-old grandson's first parade. He loves books, just like his grandma.

—Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 1:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

I enjoyed seeing you honored as a hero of education by FairTest last week, which established an annual award named for you. If anyone had told me five years ago that I would be at that event, I would have thought them mad. This is what “Bridging Differences” has done for me, I suppose.

At the event, I was surrounded, not surprisingly, by educators who have long believed that standardized tests are more wrong than right, or that they are a crime against children’s nature, or worse. I continue to believe that we can get valuable information from standardized tests and that they can help with diagnosing problems and needs. The information derived from testing can be useful, but lately I have begun to see how often test scores are being misused to punish kids, teachers, and schools and to mislead the public.

As it happened, New York state just released the results of its annual tests of English language arts and mathematics, and the scores soared across the state to an extent that was literally unbelievable.

The state Education Department released the math scores last week. From 2006, when the current testing regime’s trend line begins, to today, the percentage of kids meeting state standards (that is, scoring a 3 or 4 on a four-level proficiency scale) has gone from 65.8 percent to 86.4 percent. In 8th grade, the proportion meeting or exceeding standards leapt from 54 percent to 80 percent. The gains for black and Hispanic students across the state were huge—for black students, from 45 percent to 75 percent, and for Hispanic students, from 51 percent to 79 percent. White and Asian students are already close to the ceiling, at 92 percent and 95 percent respectively.

Some districts saw increases that defy anyone’s wildest dreams: In Buffalo, the proportion passing flew up from 28.6 percent to 63.3 percent; in Rochester, it went from 33.1 percent to 63.4 percent; in New York City, from 57 percent to 82 percent; and Syracuse nearly doubled from 30 percent to 58 percent. All in four short years! At this rate, everyone will be proficient well before NCLB's deadline of 2014.

The news media reported the dramatic gains with a straight face. The superintendents of Rochester and Buffalo basked in the limelight. Mayor Bloomberg said the scores proved the value of his one-man control of New York City's schools, although surely his reign had nothing to do with the even larger gains in other cities in the state. Only the Rochester newspaper asked in an editorial whether these gains made any sense.

Now the New York Daily News has done an analysis of the math tests and concluded that the state tests got progressively easier from 2006 to 2009. Kudos to reporters Meredith Kolodner and Rachel Monahan, who beat The New York Times to this statistical scandal. Kolodner and Monahan had the smarts to turn to Jennifer Jennings of Columbia University, who was formerly the blogger for Education Week known as eduwonkette; Jennings analyzed the tests and discovered that the state has been testing only a fraction of its math standards, and teachers are able to predict which standards will appear on the tests.

Jennings also found that nearly identical questions have appeared every year. “In 2009, at least 14 of the 30 multiple-choice questions on the seventh-grade exam, for example, had appeared in similar form in previous years,” said Jennings. Teachers and principals chimed in and agreed that the questions were predictable and students are taking frequent practice tests that teach them the format.

A teacher explained to me recently that “we drill down into the state test to predict what will be tested," and then students practice those questions, again and again.

My guess is that if the students in New York state were given a math test from another state—one that they had not been primed for—their scores would be much lower.

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan keeps telling states and districts that they are “lying” to kids when they tell them that they are doing just fine, but they really are not. Just last week, Duncan said that many states are "lying to children and their parents, because states have dumbed down their standards." New York is a perfect example of what Duncan means. The proportion of students who pass the tests keeps going higher and higher every year, but when the 2007 NAEP scores were released, the state had flat scores in everything but 4th grade math.

What we see in New York state is institutionalized lying, according to Secretary Duncan’s definition. The state is well on its way to becoming a national laughingstock if it keeps up this Ponzi scheme whose victims are its students.

Mark Twain wrote, “Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.'"

The New York State Education Department is showing how easy it is to lie with numbers.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (82) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

You are right. We agree on the civil rights movement’s history. Schools were never the primary focus—but one of many interconnected ones.

The connection between schooling and the economy interests me—but for different reasons than the usual PR-linkage (you’ll make more money). As long as there are jobs that pay poorly there will be “the poor,” but a well-educated underclass will have a better shot at defending their social and economic interests—as citizens. And a well-educated citizenry in general will give us a better shot at a healthy economy. Maybe. It depends on what we mean by being “well-educated.” And the latest headlines about 46 states joining together to decide year by year school curriculum (and tests) is not the way to decide this.

I was talking about the end of childhood play in Washington last week to legislative aides et al—the hours spent in front of TV and the hours spent at prescribed “literacy” tasks. When we speak of the “information age,” or the “knowledge age,” we act as though the brain lived in a world of its own, rather than one interacting all the time (even in sleep) with the world around it—people and things. When we complain that poor children don’t think in abstractions and have limited conceptual understanding, we imagine “concepts” as disembodied, disconnected, and alien to ourselves. It’s the interplay—the “conversation”—the back-and-forth between ordinary “things” and “ideas” that education must build on. TV and worksheets are not appropriate 5-year-old discourse.

We forget that the American economy lived off the ingenuity of “ordinary” people, including many with limited or no formal educations, and not just “the best and brightest.” They sometimes saw themselves as anti-intellectuals—because we mistakenly created a false divide. Too many so-called intellectuals missed the connection between hand and eye and brain—not to mention ear, feet, and stomach! Americans turned their “ordinary” fascination with the world of work into hobbies and into finding new ways to do old things and old ways to do new things as well. They produced actual goods and products—good decently paid work was a source of pride.

In less than half a century we have lost it. “We” (Americans) produce less and less. We give General Motors our taxpayer charity so they can close factories here and open them elsewhere? I was stunned to read that we put a financier in charge of rethinking the auto industry. We need dreamers and tinkerers to invent a new America, not more fancy financial handlers.

Obama, alas, has surrounded himself with all the financial wisdom that got us into this economic meltdown, people who couldn’t predict it a week ahead of time, and he is, alas, doing the same in education. Hosts of rich or would-be-rich young people are now eagerly planning to save our schools as long as they can own a few. (Eva Moskowitz was paid $371,000 for running four charters with a total of 1,000 students in the 2006-07 school year. And, the retiring leader—not the principal, more like a CEO—of the Beginning with Children charters was paid close to $700,000 for her last year on the job.) Yes, it’s scary.

The leaders of business and industry (of which there are not many left) may have messed up our economy, but they still have enough money left over to bring the same mindset to schooling. The masters of manipulating symbolic goods—money in all its varied forms—are now designing our schools with the same manipulative mindset.

But “if they work, Debby,” say a few of my critical friends, "why not?" But what do we mean by “it works?” Oddly enough, even on the measures they have chosen, the answer is, “they don’t.” But it wouldn’t convince me either way. How kids do on school tests that measure (at best) school learning is petty compared with…. It’s not a good stand-in for achievement. I want to see how those kids “produce”—the books they write, the movies they make, the cars they invent, the families they raise, the gardens they plant, the medicine they practice, the songs they sing, the fast train system they put into place, the better ways they show us to grow food, to produce energy, and on and on and on. I want to see graduates coming back to see us who are good cops, teachers, nurses, architects, furniture-makers, inventors of new products and new ideas. (And powerful, noisy, feisty citizens.)

We need studies on the impact of schools on real life. We need not only the quantitative data on their future lives, but the anecdotal, the narrative ones that help us see our uniqueness, not only our uniformity.

I visited a school last week, a charter in D.C. that I’m enthusiastic about. It’s an outgrowth of the work of Experiential Learning (which grew out of Outward Bound) and the Coalition of Essential Schools. It’s got its feet in both as it seeks to grapple with the conflicting pressures of our times. But for all its immense strengths I worried at the lack of time devoted to work/play stemming from children’s own interests and passions, or even the passions of the particular adults. When I re-read what the CPE/CPESS kids said about our school 10 years later I was struck with how often they reflected on the school’s impact on their strong life-enduring pursuits. My granddaughter referred to something similar when she described a seminar with a particular faculty member at her high school: “I literally felt my mind expanding.” He had passed on something no test can measure. But not everyone in class, she noted sadly, felt the same way about her teacher’s philosophical musings. We are not, conveniently, all the same.

I suspect there is a connection between such schooling and real-life achievement, between schools that prepare us for "The 2lst Century" rather than schools that expect us to actively invent it.

Deb

P.S. Diane, I just re-read "Keeping the Promise?: The Debate Over Charter Schools" * with chapters by Ted Sizer, George Wood, and Linda Darling-Hammond that fit nicely into our conversation.
*A Rethinking Schools Publication. 2008.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (21) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

It would have chilled Martin Luther King’s blood to see how the struggle for equality has been narrowed into a race for higher test scores in a society that abandoned Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty.” We are now one of the least equal and least mobile modem societies. Less racist than we once were, but no less disdainful of “losers.” Our individualistic modes of thought have gotten badly skewed to just mean “it’s your own fault.” Or if blame must be placed, it’s the fault of those on the next rung up the ladder.

Imagine, in 2009—the year that the business and finance worlds have exposed themselves and their shoddy notions of accountability to worldwide shame. Not a day passes without another financial scam hitting the news. Yet they still dare to preach to public school teachers about working in the interests of children vs. adults!!!!!

The poorly attended, but well-covered “civil rights” rally in D.C. led by Gingrich/Sharpton/Klein last week has nothing to say about poverty or the “gap” in black/white incarceration, or income, or health data, not to mention housing and access to paid leisure, or lobbyists.

In a speech made by David Berliner to AERA a few years ago, he opined the following: “School reform…really involves relatively little money and, perhaps more importantly, asks practically nothing of the non-poor, who often control a society’s resources,” and is accompanied by the “good feelings that come from our collective expression of faith in the capacity of the poor to overcome disadvantage on their own.”

When the War on Poverty ended we not only forgot poverty existed with its unequal impact on people of color, but we also soon lost the battle against de facto segregation of schools and communities. It’s no surprise then that the recent recession has hit hardest upon the already poor, and next hardest upon recently middle-class people of color.

I became a teacher in the midst of the Civil Rights movement in the '60s. The current gross distortion of that movement’s message by these masters of Orwellian doublespeak chills and outrages me.

I have spent 45 years demonstrating that schools can do a lot if we focus on challenging the intellectual and social imaginations of the young. But I never had the chutzpa to claim that I could strip away the impact of being a despised loser in a nation that claims all can be winners (if they but will it), nor that we can unlink the relationship between money and schooling. Bah humbug. I never pretended that the advantages we garnered for our own children were of no serious account in the successes they have had in their lives. Neither President Obama nor Arne Duncan can be faulted for giving their own children the best and the most expensive educations. It’s what we can do when we have advantages.

It makes me wince that such a high proportion of Obama’s current team are Harvard graduates. I suspect their secondary schooling was equally segregated, for the “best and brightest”—those born assured in their right to rule. This sense of entitlement, which should be the birthright of all children, is not easy to teach didactically. It early on suggests to some that the larger world is “their world,” one which they (or their powerful friends) can influence. The “others,” children who enter our schools with the comparable skill, savvy, perseverance, and native ability to read the world, are equally busy using their skills to influence the world—the one they were born into. Doing double-work is not easy.

We need to more equally share the same world while also honoring each child’s own special one. When I started teaching kindergarten in Chicago in 1965, the prescribed curriculum for the fall semester was: Los Angeles and Tokyo. I was “caught” in an act of subversion by teaching my 33 kindergarteners about Chicago and Tokyo instead. (I also made the mistake of not just saying, “Oops, I’m sorry.”) The prescribed view of poor and “minority” children in 1965 was similar to one we hold today: they lack “language,” “concepts,” useful families, and Culture. Not true. But there is, indeed, another kind of gap, one that we can take advantage of or view merely as an obstacle. To do so, we’d need very different kinds of schools, different relationships between families and their schools, and far greater respect for those who know the children best. That’s why control needs to be closer to “them”—those most affected by the judgments made. NAEP samples, Diane, should be mandated: to provide information. But the “data” about “Dick" or "Jane” still must be compiled from the bottom up.

My old friend Michael Harrington wrote an influential book in 1962, "The Other America." We still have such an America, and until we confront it, the Sharptons and Gingriches will continue to cover over what needs to be uncovered.

The idea that the terms “civil rights” and “equity” are being used by school reformers to increase segregation, to attack the mothers who struggle with their unchosen poverty and the teachers who work with poor children day in and day out is painful. The public middle school across the street from my apartment in NYC (which my children attended) is being “closed” this fall, replaced by a program for children who score in the top 3 percent on IQ tests: in the name of equity! The gentrification of the West Side that began in the '60s (called urban renewal) has finally reached IS 44. A school that has for more than 40 years been predominantly black and Latino will become virtually all white on the whim of the mayor. We long ago lost the battle to make it a fully integrated school. Now the latest wave of reformers is solving it the 2lst Century way.

NYC has just inaugurated an expansion of “gifted kindergartens” open to all who score above the 90th percentile on IQ tests. To the chancellor’s “surprise,” it’s mostly white. He proclaims, however, big increases in the number of underprivileged accepted into such programs. Yes, indeed, by “reaching out” the numbers have gone from one to three (300 percent increase) in some poor neighborhoods. We’re officially tracking at age 5—along lines of race and class—in the name of “equity.”

You must all read a new study published by the Alliance for Childhood on where we’re heading in the 2lst Century, unless….It’s a shocker. More next week.

Deb

Posted by Deborah Meier at 2:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (31) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

You seem to believe that I was chastising "the poor" for their lack of manners. Not at all! We live in an age when manners, self-discipline, respect for others, civility, and courtesy are in short supply in all parts of society. Like you, I have encountered many children from comfortable, middle-class, and affluent backgrounds who were spoiled, undisciplined, selfish, and disrespectful of others. I agree that no social class has a monopoly on manners and behavior.

The subject came up in the context of David Brooks' column about "The Harlem Miracle." Brooks made the point that the results of this school "vindicate an emerging model for low-income students." He went on to laud the "no excuses" schools where lower-class children are taught in schools with a "disciplined, orderly, and demanding counterculture" that teaches "middle-class values." In distinction to Brooks, I said that all children—not just the children of the poor—should learn the values of self-discipline, respect for others, courtesy, civility, etc.

It is amazing to me that this idea should come as some sort of revelation, or as a prescription for the children of the poor. I went to public schools in Houston and all my teachers insisted on good behavior and other civic virtues. It would not have been possible to run an orderly school without everyone paying attention and behaving in a civil manner.

You are right to take issue with Brooks for treating the "miracle school" as a vindication of Joel Klein and Al Sharpton's Education Equality Project. EEP insists that schools alone—with no support from other institutions—can close the achievement gap. This is claptrap. The Broader Bolder Agenda (which we both signed) has steadfastly maintained that the gap won't close without addressing the need of children for improvements in health care and the well-being of their families. The Harlem Children's Zone was created to address these needs, and to place schooling in the context of families and communities.

Geoffrey Canada has vindicated not the cramped prescriptions of the Rev. Al Sharpton and Chancellor Klein, but rather the vision of BBA.

Regarding accountability, I am on board with your suspicion about the use and mis-use of high-stakes testing. One of the virtues of NAEP is that it is low stakes. I would even say that it is no-stakes. No child, student, or teacher has ever suffered the consequences of doing poorly because of NAEP because the assessment does not identify individual students, teachers, or schools. It gives results for the nation, states, and some cities (that volunteered).

I think our society is in dangerous territory on this subject of accountability. The so-called "reformers," the guys (yes, guys) who call themselves the Education Equality Project, would have the world believe that accountability is the key to improving American education. They think it can be done fast, not incrementally. They think the key to improvement is punishing the bad students, the bad teachers, and the bad schools. Their latest formula, as enunciated by U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, is to close down 5,000 schools and re-open them. I wonder where he plans to find 5,000 new principals and thousands of new teachers, or does he just intend to reshuffle the deck?

This approach rests squarely on the high-stakes use of testing. One only wishes that the proponents of this mean-spirited approach might themselves be subjected to a high-stakes test about their understanding of children and education! I predict that every one of them would fail and be severely punished.

We agree that a better approach is needed to assess how well students are learning what they are taught. We agree that current standardized tests are not adequate to the task of determining the fate—whether they should be rewarded or punished—of children, teachers, and their schools.

I think that testing is important and can be valuable, as it helps to spotlight problems and individuals in need of help. But the determinative word here is "help." The so-called reformers want to use accountability to find people in need of termination and schools in need of closure. Let's hope this punishment-obsessed crowd is never put in charge of hospitals!

Unfortunately, events are not breaking in the direction we both prefer. The stimulus bill includes millions so that every state can create a data system. This system will track the test scores of every student, from pre-K to college, and attribute their test score gains (or lack thereof) to their teachers. When the information is available, it will be used and misused. Every teacher (at least those who teach the tested subjects) will have a public record detailing whether his or her students made gains or not. This information will be used to establish calibrated merit pay schemes, so that each teacher will get more or fewer dollars depending on the scores of the year. Is this piecework?

The federal government seems ready to impose a Dr. Strangelove approach on our schools to turn them into "data-driven systems." Not, as you suggest, "data-informed" systems, but data-driven systems. Teachers will certainly teach to the tests, since nothing else matters. The only missing ingredient from this grand data-driven scheme will be education.

Remember when we used to debate "what knowledge is of most worth?" Those were the days.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

The columnists at The New York Times are deeply engaged in school reform these days. First Nicholas Kristof discovered that the key to high achievement is measuring student test score gains, then paying more to the teachers whose students gained the most. Then Thomas Friedman discovered that Teach for America was the key to national educational greatness, despite its small numbers.

Now David Brooks has discovered "The Harlem Miracle," which is a charter school called Harlem Promise Academy, run by the Harlem Children's Zone. Brooks says that this school has closed the achievement gap. If anyone missed the point, he writes bluntly, "Let me repeat that. It eliminated the black-white achievement gap." Brooks asks which city will now take up the challenge to do what this school has done.

This is quite an interesting column, and I highly recommend it. There are lessons for American education, but not necessarily the ones that Brooks points to.

Geoffrey Canada created the Harlem Children's Zone with the intention of saturating a very poor neighborhood with social services, including a charter school, which now has 600 children, from kindergarten to 8th grade. Paul Tough of The New York Times Magazine wrote a fascinating book, "Whatever It Takes," about the travails of the Zone, and especially its charter school. Canada's board, which includes some very wealthy financiers, wanted results, and they wanted them fast. They looked enviously at KIPP and wanted to match its scores. No matter how hard Canada tried, the first class that he admitted just couldn't do it. So after the scores were posted, he called in all the students in that grade, told them he was closing down the grade, and told them they had to find another school.

Apparently things got better, because the school now is getting the good test scores it wanted, which is why David Brooks (quoting a study by Roland Fryer and Will Dobbie) has hailed it as the "Harlem Miracle." Brooks says the school succeeds because it is a "no excuses" school that teaches middle-class values and stresses good behavior and discipline. The school teaches students "to look at the person who is talking, how to shake hands." Also, he attributes its success to the fact that the students go to school for 50 percent more time in the course of a year than the neighborhood public schools.

But let's take a closer look. Canada was interviewed by the CBS program "60 Minutes" about the school, which said that it has small classes and superb facilities, including state-of-the-art science laboratories, a beautiful cafeteria, and a first-class gymnasium. The HCZ raises some $36 million a year, so the school has the best of everything and plenty of money to hire extra teachers and to pay teachers to work longer days and weeks and summers.

And according to the Web site for the New York City schools, the students at the Harlem Promise Academy are somewhat different from those in the neighboring public schools. For one thing, only seven of the 600 students are Limited English Proficient, about 1 percent; that is way less than the district or city average. And, of course, the school can remove those who don't go with its program or who are disruptive, a special privilege granted to charter schools, which write their own rules.

The Harlem Promise Academy has used its deep pockets to reduce class size dramatically. Classes in K-6 are no more than 18 students, much smaller than in the neighboring public schools. Classes in the middle school range between 12 and 20, again much smaller than in the regular public schools.

And the results of the Academy are not quite as dramatic as Brooks has been led to believe. Aaron Pallas of Teachers College found that the gap persists on the school's scores on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Yet there can be no doubt that the school gets better scores than the neighboring public schools.

Brooks uses the Harlem Promise Academy as a way of illustrating the divide between the Klein-Sharpton Education Equality Project and the group called the Broader, Bolder Approach to Education. EEP says that schools alone can close the achievement gap between children of different races, and between children of affluence and children of poverty; the answer, they say, is constant testing, merit pay, and charter schools. BBA says that schools alone are insufficient to overcome the burdens imposed by poverty and that poor kids need preschool, health services, and other supports. Brooks claims that the success of the Harlem Promise Academy suggests that the EEP "reformers" are right. This is odd because the whole premise of the Harlem Children's Zone is to surround children and families with exactly the resources that BBA advocates.

There are lessons to be learned from the success of the Harlem Promise Academy, but they are not the ones that Brooks cites. What are those lessons?

First, spend lots more money. Spend enough so that children in the regular public schools can be in classes no larger than those in the Harlem Promise Academy. Spend enough so that every public school has facilities that are state of the art, and every school has excellent laboratories and a first-class gymnasium.

Second, it is worth exploring why so many public schools in the big cities have been unable to establish a clear, fair, and functional discipline and behavior policy. Is it because of long-forgotten court orders? Have public schools become so wrapped up in procedural rights and processes that they can't provide an orderly environment for learning? Deborah, you recall as I do the claims made in the 1960s and 1970s that it was "white imperialism" to impose middle-class values on poor and minority children. Now there is a growing movement to do exactly that. My own view is that schools are by definition middle-class. If they are good schools, they teach the knowledge, skills, and behavior that one needs to function well in work, in higher education, and in life. So, there is a common-sense element to the "no excuses" mantra.

But I don't think that our schools need to be boot camps to teach courtesy, civility, respect for others, self-discipline, and other virtues necessary for democratic life. If all schools did that and had the same resources as Harlem Promise Academy, there would be many miracles.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 9:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (44) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

Ah yes, miracle promises are dangerous.

In the bad old “decentralization” days, we were told local “corruption” ran rampant—thus the need to centralize. Your account of the Al Sharpton/Joel Klein deal, not to mention all the no-bid contracts under Klein, the high-paid consultants, etc., makes the bad old days seem pretty good. It’s true that for me 1975-95 were heady times: I thought we might break the mold! The innovative work going on in District 4, District 2, and the Alternative High School division were the result of a lively teacher conversations occurring all over the city. We mistakenly thought we were on a roll toward serious bottom-up change made possible by some classy top-down superintendents.

I’ve been rereading work published by the old CUNY (City of New York) education department, where I first learned to think deeply about education. “Building on the Strengths of Children,” published in 1981, collects the work of some wonderful teachers—of children and adults. “The child learns to recognize objects only by working with them, that is, by transforming them in one way or another,” notes science educator Hugh Dyasi in an essay on Jean Piaget. The central role of childhood is constructing a “picture of reality,” they note. This in turn requires time of a sort which schooling rarely allows author after author reminds us. The alienation of learners from their own learning that results from trying to speed up learning is profound, they argue. Every essay is a gem.

I’ve tried over the years to practice teaching in ways that respect a child’s prior picture of “reality.” But harder still has been to transfer that mindset to my fellow adults. I’m much quicker to label them, with all the stereotypes such labels carry with them. I’m much quicker to try to overwhelm them with expertise, rather than struggle to understand where they are coming from. I get madder at them. But building a good school means to remember that teachers, like students, need the time and power to explore alternate realities.

I am truly having a hard time “getting” it when it comes to public gullibility about NYC's Bloomberg/Klein. But it’s there. Ditto for the public’s innocence about test scores, or the theory that poor kids of color need military school discipline while privileged kids learn best in open and respectful settings. I just don’t “get” why so few of my fellow New Yorkers can’t see through the false data that their mayor is presenting them.

I shouldn’t be so shocked. After all, I’ll bet most educated people still believe in Rod Paige’s Houston miracle notwithstanding exposure to the truth. Ditto for Paul Vallas in Chicago. He was acclaimed the hero of another miracle, was briefly exposed, and then went on to lead school reform in Philadelphia (where he failed) and now in New Orleans. And on and on. Arne Duncan enjoys the same PR glow, with equally dismal real data behind him. Michelle Rhee will be next.

One thought that maybe helps explain public denial:

When I came back to NYC with three school-age children in 1966, friends told me that “no one” sent their children to public schools anymore. Do the 1.2 million children attending public schools come from some other planet, I asked? Of course, you and I, Diane, know what they meant. And, this fact—which is true in D.C., Chicago, Houston, and New Orleans—helps explain the flim-flam. Those who “make” the news have only the PR data concocted for them to write about. They have no “reality” with which to check it out. It makes them dumb in much the same way as children are made “dumb” when they have no experience with the realities we want them to believe in. The media has constructed its own reality with the help of some powerful players.

The enormous disrespect for practitioners and education scholars—and ordinary parents with kids in our public schools—makes it easier. They are written off as less than the “best and brightest.” Plus “self-interested.” Some combination of Harvard and Wall Street smarts are seen as all-purpose disinterested expertise, fit for any purpose. The master key. While disregard of educators has a long history, and demonizing of teacher organizations is hardly new, it has reached new heights. A mere 20 years ago one could not imagine school systems would be run by people who never practiced or studied schooling or education. The assumption that “smarts” based on hands-on knowledge is valuable has lost its historic place in our view of reality. Law and business and finance smarts have ruled the day for this generation. At a cost. And not just in schools.

We have forgotten that we were once a nation of do-ers, makers, creators with ingenuity and perseverance and respect for “manual” labor. That’s what distinguished us from “the old world.” The aristocratic disdain for getting one’s hands dirty was “un-American.” But we have lost that special American strength. There is, as Mike Rose and Jean Piaget remind us, no conflict between “hand” smarts and “mind” smarts. They go best together. Our schools and our economy—and, above all, our democracy—require us to restore the balance.

Where, Diane, do we start on this journey? Perhaps with “the facts, ma’am, just the facts.” What have the past 10 years of mayoral control actually produced?

Deb

P.S. How about our setting up an easy-to-read chart: What the mayor says and what the real data say?

Posted by Deborah Meier at 8:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (39) | TrackBacks (0)

Editor's Note: Bridging Differences is back today after a week's publishing break.

Dear Deborah,

We in New York City were treated to an amazing show in early April. A group that calls itself the "Education Equality Project" held a conference and attracted such stellar educators as Arne Duncan, Joe Biden, Newt Gingrich, Margaret Spellings, and Michelle Rhee. The conveners of the conference were New York City's Chancellor Joel Klein and the Reverend Al Sharpton. The purpose apparently was to talk about how important it is to close the achievement gap between whites/Asians and Blacks/Hispanics. On this count, no one disagrees. The problem, as ever, is how to accomplish this laudable goal.

Chancellor Klein and Reverend Sharpton (dubbed "the odd couple" by the New York City media) have the answer: more testing, merit pay, and charter schools. This combination and a willingness to knock down the teachers' unions, derided as "adult interests" whose agenda conflicts with "children's interests," are the key strategies that they believe will lift up the scores of poor and minority students and close the gap.

There was a bit of an embarrassment for the EEP a day or so after the conference concluded** when columnist Juan Gonzalez of the New York Daily News published an article saying that a hedge fund in Connecticut that was interested in obtaining control of various gambling enterprises in New York State had generously contributed $500,000 to "encourage" Rev. Sharpton to get interested in improving education. It seems that the money was contributed to some group called Education Reform Now, which passed it on to Democrats for Education Reform (an advocacy group for charters, also headed by a hedge-fund zillionaire), which passed it on to the Education Equality Project or maybe directly to Reverend Sharpton's organization, the National Action Network. Being somewhat unsophisticated about how that kind of money gets passed from one hand to the next, I am not sure about the money trail, but Mr. Gonzalez nailed it.

What is the evidence for the formula offered by Klein and Sharpton? The great success of New York City under the reign of Mayor Bloomberg. This celebration made me think that it was time to publish a critique of the miracle of New York City. I sat down and wrote an article for The New York Times, debunking the Bloomberg-Klein claims and showing that the test scores and graduation rates have been artificially inflated. My article appeared on Friday, April 10.

Sad to say, Secretary Duncan—who likes to expostulate about the importance of data—swallowed the New York City claims without any verification. As I showed in the article, Secretary Duncan has been on a crusade to persuade the nation's urban mayors that they should follow Mayor Bloomberg's lead and they, too, can push through radical reforms without dissent. They, too, can close public schools and replace them with charter schools. They too will see great results.

The only missing piece of his argument is that New York City has not achieved great results. Instead of truly raising the graduation rates with better-prepared students, it has been gaming the system, practicing "credit recovery," whereby students get graduation credits for courses they failed or never even attended. The city further boosts the graduation rate by adding in GED students and not counting students who were discharged (many of whom were actually dropouts). As a result of all this gamesmanship, the graduation rate keeps climbing, yet 3/4 of the graduates who enter our local community colleges need to be remediated in basic skills. Remember that social promotion was eliminated? Not.

This is not improved education. It is statistical legerdemain.

Why do people swallow this swill? There are many reasons, but most of them come down to the supine media that is too lazy to check facts. And, of course, there is our complacent, compliant, and complicit State Education Department, which loves to claim victory, even when kids are learning nothing.

What a sad state of affairs.

Diane

**P.S.: I got the date wrong for the publication of Juan Gonzalez's article in the New York Daily News. It appeared on April 1, 2009. The conference co-sponsored by Chancellor Klein and Rev. Sharpton started the following day.

Posted by educationweekly at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (19) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

My own evolution, politically, has always been influenced by the realization that I might be in a minority! In fact, maybe some of us are born with that realization (even if shielded from it by a family surrounding in which we have a hard time imagining another reasonable viewpoint).

But democracy appeals to me in part because there’s always another chance—maybe next year. It‘s also an incentive for trying to learn a little more and thus being more persuasive. My exaggerated belief in the power of education rests perhaps on the hope that reason can overcome prejudice, meanness, and short-sightedness. And, if I’m not naturally a part of the majority, then I’ll need even more “reason” on my side.

So I can embrace “standards” published by the profession that have weight, the power of expert ideas, but not the power of coercion. Democracy works best when it has the luxury of being non-coercive. A sampling system of testing that adds to our informed decision-making seems relatively harmless. Especially if the nature of the sample allowed one to include some scripted conversation that helps us make sense of answers.

Seeds of doubt are always healthy; or almost always; or at least sometimes healthy!

The startling thing about Bloomberg, Broad, Klein, et al is that they appear never to have a seed of doubt—even when they reverse direction, they explain nothing and march ahead with equal confidence. The way folks caved in to Mayor Bloomberg’s decision to over-ride the public referendum against third terms is unbelievable. Chavez and Putin and others like them failed—with their even greater coercive power—in their attempt to continue their elected posts beyond the term limits. Something is rotten in NYC that this could happen here, of all places.

These Billionaire Boys—as you call them—remind me of adolescents with utopian plans for the future. They are not yet inclined to include a concern for the trade-offs involved in their utopia. I excuse 13-year-olds when they fall into such traps, but for us to be at the mercy of such logic by adults with serious power is frightening. “Why can’t everybody agree with me?” is hardly an evil complaint, but one hopes that a good education will overcome the egocentric sentiment. It hasn’t for Rhee/Klein and Company.

E.D. Hirsch Jr.’s Op-Ed dream in Sunday’s New York Times of having every child follow his curriculum and then a national test that is aligned to it is another typical utopian’s adolescent dream. I forgive him because I, too, have such dreams on occasion. Fortunately, neither of us has the power.

The evidence is clear: there has been no substantial improvement in test scores or graduation rates over the past decade as we follow the agenda of the neo-Reformers. Little squiggles up, down, and flat again is the pattern for almost the entire nation—on precisely the measurement tools upon which they have built their whole case. Would the board of directors of a “real business,” after being told their business was in a state of disaster, crisis, etc., be satisfied with such flat data???? How come we’ve bought it, against all the instincts of the wisest educational practitioners and scholars? Maybe some rethinking about “accountability” is past due.

Even the business world has, alas, not been sufficiently shaken in their confidence by the failure of their own accountability system in their own sphere of expertise to wonder, “Could we be wrong?”. Instead, they are blindly prepared to see our educational system go over the cliff with them.

To the one or two readers who asked me whether I’m not behaving like a defender of the status quo. No! I have spent 43 years critiquing it and working on the ground to change it. Even if just a little bit. But the one thing I cannot be accused of is embracing schools-as-they-are, have-been or will-be if we don’t support dramatic changes in the relationships between teachers, parents, and learners.

The kind of dramatic changes I want go in precisely the opposite direction than the current round of impatient pro-business reforms has taken us. I don’t need test scores to see that schools have become more boring, not less, and relationships thinner, not deeper. My ideas will—I always recognized—even if more vigorously supported, take a long time to “convert” the vast majority. Which is as it should be. And maybe, just possibly, I’m wrong, and we shouldn’t aim at that at all. Maybe we can live quite well with democratically governed schools and systems that take different paths, mutually respectful of their differences.

I spent a few days last week visiting a public school in Ann Arbor—called the Open School—now in its 26th year. We watched a movie—rather skeptically—about “democratic schools” of the Summerhill variant. It didn’t convert me, but it reminded me of how little danger democracy gone perhaps “too far” poses compared with what passes as our ordinary and/or neo-Reformed public schools. I’m not inclined these days to worrying a lot about the potential sins of too much democracy.

Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 11:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (28) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

My guess is that we will have a long time, not months, but years, to discuss national standards and a national curriculum. The question won’t go away. It is one of the items on Secretary Duncan’s “to-do” list. In 1995, I wrote a book on the subject and predicted that we would inevitably move in this direction, as it made no sense to have 50 different ways of measuring how we are doing in math and science. I believe that NCLB has sharpened the contradictions and laid bare the confusion of so many different “standards,” as well as the yawning gap between state and federal standards.

My fear is that this effort will be captured by the NCLB basic-skills crowd or the P21 ignorance-is-bliss crowd. Or both! So you can see the seeds of doubt have been planted. I have always thought there was a downside; it’s in my nature to look at all sides. I hope I am wrong.

In terms of the bleak scenario you laid out, we have no differences to bridge. It appears that the Big Money has placed its bets on dismantling public education. Mayor Bloomberg decided long ago, when he took over New York City’s public schools, that their biggest problem was too much democracy. So he persuaded the legislature to turn control over to him, and he eliminated any vestige of democracy. We both know how messy democracy is; people make mistakes. But with a vigilant press, there is always a chance to make changes, correct errors.

That’s not the situation in New York City. Michael Bloomberg does not confront a vigilant press. The press barons applaud his every move, and there has been no vigilance, no scrutiny, and no outcry against his authoritarian mode of governance. Those who don’t like it, most especially parents, are voiceless, except for blogs. (The best is here.)

There have recently been a series of public hearings, held by the state Assembly’s Committee on Education, on whether to renew mayoral control. At each hearing, parents and advocates have expressed their frustration about what has happened to the city’s schools in recent years, the disdainful way in which the Department of Education treats them, and their fear that the next public school to die will be their own.

Under Chancellor Klein, the Department of Education has closed nearly 100 regular public schools and replaced them with charter schools or new schools. Unlike other cities where charters have to supply their own facilities, New York City gives them space in public school buildings, and sometimes the entire building. Currently, the DOE is closing a neighborhood public school in Harlem and putting a charter school in its place. The DOE tells angry parents that they should be thrilled to have choice, but parents worry that their children will have no neighborhood school to attend.

All such decisions are made without consultation. And the chancellor goes around the country boasting of his success in closing established schools and replacing them with new schools and charter schools.

Most bizarre is when the mayor and chancellor show up at charter school rallies and tell the parents that their local public schools are no good and that they are lucky to be in a charter. I often wonder at such times if these two have forgotten that they are responsible for the 98 percent of the city’s public school children who are in regular schools. It’s like the president of Macy’s telling his customers to shop at Wal-Mart.

Of course, this course of action has the enthusiastic endorsement of the Billionaire Boys Club, that is, the Gates Foundation, the Broad Foundation, and the Walton Foundation. They know what needs to be done, and they don't see the point of listening to such unenlightened types as parents and teachers.

At some point the music and the upheaval will stop. But when it does, will there still be a public school system? Or will the schools all be run by hedge fund managers, dilettantes, and EMOs?

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (55) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

What a week we’ve been through—full of lessons about accountability as it’s practiced in the world of high finance.

NYC’s grading policy is indeed embarrassing, Diane. Had they used test experts—like Daniel Koretz—they might have invented something better. But no single grade, even a smart one, can avoid giving data a bad name. Even in the hands of wise and knowledgeable teachers, summing up an individual kid by an A-F never works well, for many of the same reasons. It’s why schools like ours—CPE, Mission Hill—develop tools of assessment that don’t try to combine apples and oranges, and include external and internal assessors.

More shocking than these grades, however, is the grade NYC’s mayor gives himself. Did you read Bloomberg’s sharp condemnation of The New York Times’ editorial, which recommended “minor” changes in mayoral control? (Readers: The NY Times has been consistently for mayoral control, and for Bloomberg).

Bloomberg: “The idea that a mayor’s authority over schools should be checked by an independent board” (as the Times suggested) “threatens to return the schools system to the bad old days.” Without total control, he goes on, “we would never have been able to end the shameful practice of social promotion….” Good example. The lay panel he appointed was poised to vote “no” on his plan to automatically hold over 4th graders with low test scores. So he got rid of the majority. Since then they’ve been compliant—i.e. not independent. But, of course, so has the data about “social promotion” been “compliant”—i.e. dishonest. To begin with, before Bloomberg rode into town to save us at least half the kids entered high school at least one year over age—all hold-overs. Many were 2-3 years over-age! The hard data demonstrated that holding kids over was a sure fire way to increase drop-outs. Kids who entered high school at 16 or older almost certainly drop out. They still do. The bad old and “good” new look remarkably alike.

Bloomberg: The times we live in “demand full accountability to one person.” Oversight by independent bodies is a “recipe for failure.” How is that for a civics lesson?

I read Paul Tough’s book about the Promise Academy in Harlem. You are right, Diane, it’s fascinating. Paul Tough is able to see complexity the way Bloomberg can’t. Tough gives us a rare blow-by-blow account of Geoffrey Canada’s struggle to prove a point (including a comparison to the KIPP schools). Canada was determined not to be choosy about whom he accepted at his secondary school that he started with 6th graders at the bottom of the academic barrel. He also decided not to fall into the boot camp trap. But he was so focused on math and reading test scores that over time he felt he had no choice but (1) to move more and more toward being a test-prep boot camp, and then (2) to close the school when that didn’t produce the scores he dreamed of either. He felt he couldn’t compromise about being choosier re. students (as KIPP is, Tough claims) or less dependent on test scores. Instead, he broke his promise to the students and families of the Promise Academy by announcing the closure of the school in March of the school’s third year. “You promised,” they said angrily. "It’s now too late for the 8th graders to find good alternatives for high school," the children’s families cried. It was either breaking his promise to them, or breaking his promise to himself, he says. He hasn’t abandoned the project, or the dream, but….

I think he worried about the wrong promise. Our promise to ourselves is often vanity speaking; the promises that count are the ones we make to others.

I was also curious about the fact that a third of the 6th graders who came to the school—all kids in serious trouble—had left by the 8th grade. Tough doesn’t tell us a lot about that. (It might have been typical school mobility?) Nor does Canada seem to wonder what impact the three years at Promise Academy had on the kids who stayed—other than their test scores. I found that puzzling. Maybe the school had an enormous impact, and would over time have been transformative in real-life ways?

Tough’s posing of Canada’s dilemma—as between the “no excuses” camp and what he calls “Rothstein’s” Big, Bold camp—is a false dichotomy.

There’s no reason we have to put all our eggs in any one basket just to prove our point. Do Tough or Canada doubt that having better jobs, better housing, better medical care, and not having a father in jail makes it easier to do well in life—and get higher test scores along the way? Nor does Richard Rothstein doubt that a school that helps kids build their skills makes a difference. The hard data is clear about this. When it comes to test scores, just having a higher family income “works” for almost all kids. That we can also get higher test scores, and better futures, for many without improving the family’s resources, is also true. How about doing both?

More on the Tough book (“Whatever It Takes”) in weeks to come, as I begin to tackle Tony Bryk’s book, "Trust In Schools." I’m also hoping to send Canada some of the follow-up studies on Central Park East’s work, which tried to look more broadly at the impact of schooling on young people’s futures.

Meanwhile, we have a lot of thinking to do about Bloomberg’s stunning declaration in favor of autocracy. The idea of a balance of power has always applied to the U.S. Army, even in times of war, but apparently not to educating our children? (There’s one risk when we choose politicians from the business world to lead us—they have a limited understanding of accountability, although even they have boards.)

Deb

Posted by Deborah Meier at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

I heard from a friend who attended the New York state Senate hearing where you testified. He said you were outstanding.

Just last week, the New York City Department of Education released its “report cards” for the schools. Every school was assigned a single letter grade from A to F; this was the second year that grades have been released. Fully 80 percent of the city’s schools got an A or a B, and 18 got an F (last year, 50 schools were graded F). Mayor Michael Bloomberg, not surprisingly, said that the large number of A’s and B’s and the small number of F’s showed the great strides that had been made on his watch.

Last year, the grades were controversial because a number of high-performing schools received a D or an F, having not been able to show much “progress” as compared with low-performing schools that were able to move their students up a few points.

The New York Times’ report on the grades quickly picked up their inconsistency with NCLB grades. Thirty percent of the schools that got an A were ranked failing schools by the state for NCLB purposes; 89 percent of the schools that got an F were in good standing as judged by NCLB. Professor Walt Haney of Boston College said that the fluctuations in grades from year to year, especially for small schools, do not accurately portray what is happening in the schools.

Closer analyses of the grades by Eduwonkette, by Aaron Pallas of Teachers College, and by Philissa Cramer of GothamSchools show that the grades are essentially meaningless, since they probably reflect statistical error rather than real changes in instructional practice. Among other things, the tests are not vertically scaled; they were not designed for value-added purposes to measure growth from year to year.

Just like last year, there were excellent schools that were given a low grade. This year’s most notorious example was P.S. 8, the school in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. This school has seen a tremendous revival in recent years. The mayor and Chancellor Joel Klein held a press event at the school last July to announce their plans to build an annex; they said the school was a model for the city, one of the most successful in the city. Now, two months later, the DOE gave P.S. 8 an F.

Here’s my two cents: The grading system is absurd on its face. It lacks face validity. The first set of grades was released in November 2007. Students took the state tests in January 2008. There were exactly 34 school days between the public release of the school grades and the next round of state testing! Now we are supposed to believe that in such a short period of time, some schools improved so dramatically that their grades rose from an F to an A? Such claims on the part of the city are ridiculous and make a mockery of “accountability.”

The best commentary on the grades, I thought, came from Ellen Foote, the principal at I.S. 289, which received a D last year only two weeks after being named a Blue Ribbon school from the U.S. Department of Education. Foote said that her staff made no changes after receiving a D. They just continued doing what they had always done, looking at internal assessments, science reports, writing samples, and math projects. When she learned that the school’s grade this year was an A, she laughed, according to a story in The New York Sun. “I was just rolling on the floor,” said the principal in response to the school's A.

More such “accountability” and the whole concept of accountability will be discredited.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

Today (Thursday) I hope to appear at the New York state hearings on NYC’s school governance system. Last week I spent a few days in D.C. listening to my colleagues discuss dropout rates at a congressional briefing. It was organized by the Alliance for Excellence and the Forum for Education and Democracy. Common themes kept arising, along the lines of your last letter and mine.

By the way, I’m happy to learn that the mayor’s plan for NYC was misstated in The New York Times. Five to 7-year-olds will be summed up and compared on two, not one score. Also, one measure of democracy is not WHO one votes for. I imagine, as commenter Ed Jones notes, that McCain enthusiasts feel the same way about Obama enthusiasts. That’s precisely what’s tricky about democracy.

That’s my point! There is a huge missing discussion throughout our society about democracy, its current meaning, and about what it could be. But I don’t think it ever, in any of its lives, described the way education policy is made in New York City today. Yes, ultimately, the mayor is an elected position and thus can be held accountable. Except that….he isn’t up for reelection, the majority of voters do not have kids in public schools, and their information about schooling comes almost entirely from what the mayor’s office makes public to us. We’re talking about decisions that intimately impact upon each of the 1.2 million children, their teachers, principals, etc.. (Larger than the entire population of Alaska.) There is no independent lay body, and all the other intervening bodies are creatures of the mayor, or directly accountable only to him. Of course, it's actually much more labyrinthine—with all kinds of ever-shifting sub-bodies and tangled jurisdictions. But, believe me—everyone knows exactly who to be afraid of. That’s the plan—its precise beauty, its advocates would argue. What democracy, in contrast, is all about is finding mechanisms for making it harder for us all to be afraid of just one powerful ruler or ruling party. It’s the existence of multiple sources of power that makes us “unafraid”—that leaves space for other voices.

It just so happens that being afraid is particularly unsuitable for teaching/learning—above all the kind of teaching/learning we need for the future of democracy (and, in fact, for the auto and energy industries, too!).

Imagine if the governor or legislature in any of the other 49 states decided to wipe out all local school boards. Would there be an outcry? However we belittle local boards I suspect most people think there needs to be something in between their child’s classroom and the State.

It’s particularly dangerous, as you and I have noticed, Diane, when the mayor is effectively a bipartisan, rich (very), and extraordinarily powerful person, with almost no opposition. It means he can effectively get away with claiming that our schools are doing much better under him when the evidence suggests this is just hype.

I could go on and on. Of course you are right to be worried, Diane. You know better than most about the history of this issue in NYC.

The panel in D.C. was, in many ways, about the same topic. The three panelists—Linda Darling-Hammond, Pedro Noguera, and George Wood—made two devastating critiques about the way we are responding to the revelations about our high dropout rates, and how we’ve been fooled by bad data. First, Noguera said in his opening remarks that dropouts are a symptom, not the disease. If we focus our rewards and punishments on changing the data, we do more harm than good. Secondly, as Darling-Hammond and Wood noted, the latest “cure”—re-defining the graduation rate based only on those who finish in four years is an example of this danger. If these new regs are abided by, anyone who appears unlikely to graduate in four years will be more vulnerable to being pushed out. There are many reasons that kids fail to finish in four years, including crises at home that require their attention. The solutions clearly lie in providing sufficient flexibility so that they stay attached to school as closely as they can for as long as they can. Ideally, even after they get their diplomas. (Ditto re. “no excuses” suspension policies.)

George Wood described the many ways principals deceive themselves and the public about dropouts/push-outs in order to protect the school and themselves from harsh penalties. I could add more.

Engaging students in pursuit of their own education is possible, and it’s the real “cure”—not just for the crisis of school dropouts, but the larger one of societal dropouts. It requires knowing each other well and having the power to act on that knowledge in respectful ways.

On boot camps. I’m always intrigued with why boot-camp-style training “worked” for many of the English aristocracy. First of all, it was voluntary and exclusive (as are some of the current schools you describe). Second, it may not have been so good for all the students, and maybe it was bad for those “excluded”—most people. Maybe it’s only “useful” if it goes along with a sense of being the chosen elite, being toughened up for precisely the purpose of ruling others. This goes back to our failure to define “works” except by test scores—and then selectively.

If there were no other way, even toward these tawdry ends, I might buy it—uncomfortably. But there is another way. It, too, rests on feeling special, but in a more inclusive sense. (Read Mike Rose’s "Lives on the Boundary" on just this dilemma.)

Finally, I was astounded while in D.C. to witness an example of how lies/myths spread. A congressman noted in passing that 97 percent of all Chinese youngsters complete high school to very high standards. Even I sat on my hands, politely, though I doubt if 97 percent currently complete 5th grade to any standard. It will soon be on everyone’s lips along with claims that we don’t produce enough engineers.

Best,
Deb

P.S. It will take a few weeks or so to read the two books you recommended in your last post, but I’ve ordered them.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

I'm not entirely ducking it—just partly. I'm also getting at it in a circuitous way!

Of course, at heart, I am struggling to understand the American "people." I know I am hopelessly out of the loop, although I keep circling around for common threads. The enthusiasm for Sarah Palin is a case in point.

How can I simultaneously want to keep more, not less, power in the hands of the same public that might elect a pair like McCain/Palin? And, they aren't by any means the worst we might do. I'll feel better about the public if they vote Obama/Biden, but after all it will actually only tell us about a marginal shift in the public's mind.

Democracy rests on a kind of skeptical trust that is both risky and hard to stick with. If I knew of a better way, I'd bet on it. But I'm stuck where Winston Churchill was when he declared that democracy was a terrible idea, except if one considered the alternatives.

I think I end up having a secret fondness for local corruption vs. centralized efficiency, in part because I have a sneaking suspicion that behind that centralized efficiency lies a much more powerful form of corruption.

I was stunned to read so much about the new heroine of education, Washington's new star Michelle Rhee. In explaining why paying teachers and students for results is, after all, the American way, she makes a scary point. Rather than seeing it as a complex trade-off, she appears to see it as an unambiguous good, even if it had no effect, on scores. I haven't got the quote in front of me, but maybe it was in Education Week? You and I argue that schools should conduct themselves in accordance with democratic values—whether or not doing so produces improved test scores. It's why I note, in admiration, that the Catholic Church wouldn't argue for dropping religion from their offering even if it raised scores. You and I worry, similarly, about the future of what we see as "the liberal arts" in an effort to raise scores. (Even if we differ somewhat on what it is about those "arts" that we value.) Rhee worries, too, in accordance with her highest values: that kids aren't sufficiently aware that school equals making more money and making money is what we're all about..

It goes back to our uncertainty over the purposes of publicly funded education.

One of our readers has sent us a longwinded, but interesting "comment" on the virtues of the teen cell/tech culture. Since my grandchildren are into all this, I read it with some interest, and hope. I'm not convinced, but I do intend to ask them more questions about it. As you can see, I'm looking for signs of hope almost anywhere. So, I urge readers to explore his argument and see where it gets us.

I think the issues of trust and community are very high on my list of priorities. The notion that these may be bedrock basics for democracy's possibility, hard to replace if not nurtured when we are young, and built into our accustomed ways of thinking, may be arguable. The ease with which we've replaced human judgment with "hard data" has both strengths and weaknesses, of course. Mothers for a long time have been unduly influenced by the latest expert opinion on child-rearing—as though these were strictly "scientific" matters. The evidence is hardly unimportant in the exercise of judgment, but it needs to be set within the context of ordinary experience and beliefs. I was always worried when parents or teachers would tell me that they thought a child was not a good or bad reader until the scores came in. Instead of using this as a chance to wonder why the two pieces of evidence didn't match, they shifted their stance in the face of "hard evidence." But I am equally disturbed when citizens dismiss "evidence" with mindless claims that they have a right to "their opinions." In short, replacing potentially biased direct evidence with potentially biased indirect evidence is a bad habit, just as the opposite is.

[Editor's note: Deborah Meier submitted the following revised paragraph after the blog entry was initially published.]

But I'm counting on conflicting dumbness (maybe another word for half-digested experiences) to keep new or now passe ideas alive. When the mayor of the largest city in the nation, famous for its intellectual elitism, promotes the idea that we can't teach 5-year-olds if we don't test them, it's hard not to despair. And, when he proposes to somehow combine scores on a paper-and-pencil group test in math with one in literacy to come up with a single number that can be used for teaching purposes, I tremble. When his education chancellor defends the need for a single number so we can compare kids across the city (state, nation, planet), I wonder at the quality of both of their educations. The worst thought is that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein believe this nonsense; the best is…that it's a ploy. A way to wrest even greater mayoral control? Or is it part of a more general view amongst his crowd, one that sees virtually all public institutions that rest on a restless, often ignorant public, as inferior to ones controlled by people more like themselves? Former Chicago and Philadelphia miracle worker Paul Vallas says he loves working in a New Orleans where he has total power. We don’t need “privatization” if we can have public schools minus the nuisance of teachers’ unions and public input seems to be the new liberal reform slogan.

We live amidst a profound lack of respect for democracy and a profound weariness in the face of enormous conundrums that cannot quickly bring us comfortable answers. My naïve hope is that we can make schools themselves a place for examining the strength and value of democracy.

Deb

P.S. So much for my idea about shorter columns! You're doing better at it, Diane.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Debbie,

I must say that I do not see mandatory schooling as incarceration, and I suspect that you really don’t see it that way either. We surely know of many nations in the world where the availability of schooling is very limited, and there is no surer guarantee of inequality and social stagnation than not gaining access to education. I sometimes have libertarian sympathies, but I have never felt that compulsory schooling was akin to prison for children.

Not long ago I was invited by a Pakistani government agency to do a paper about “standards” in that nation. I spent quite a lot of time reading about educational opportunity in that country and was struck by one stark fact: Very few students get much schooling beyond primary school. About a third of the nation’s children were not enrolled in primary school, only 40 percent made it to high school, and only 3 percent enrolled in higher education. Overall, barely 10 percent of young people managed to make it through high school. It seems friviolous to think about "standards" when so many children don't even have a basic education.

I daresay that no one would have the chutzpah to say that Pakistani children are “free” because so many of them are not in school. I think we are very spoiled about schooling. We take it for granted. People make money saying foolish things along the lines of school=jail. Given the importance of literacy and education for everyone’s future roles as citizens and as members of society, it is irresponsible to disparage the necessity of compulsory schooling (for individuals and for society) and the availability of equal educational opportunity (also for individuals and for society).

Like you, I am shocked that New York City’s Department of Education is set to endorse a policy of retaining students in eighth grade. I have seen estimates that as many as 18,000 students may be held back. Like Pedro Noguera, I have wondered how it is possible that so many students have reached eighth grade unable to pass state tests in reading and math when the city previously “ended social promotion” in 3rd grade, 5th grade, and 7th grade. As we both know, the research on this issue is unequivocal: Get-tough policies of this kind invariably produce higher dropout rates among the kids held back.

I am aware of research by Robert Hauser of the University of Wisconsin, as well as Melissa Roderick and others from the Chicago Consortium on School Research, all pointing in the same direction, against retention policies. My understanding is that the New York City Department of Education will defend their decision by referring to a study of the Florida retention policy, written by Jay Greene and Marcus Winters. Greene and Winters are best known for their writings that support merit pay and vouchers in education.

Under the current system of mayoral autocracy in New York City, no one has the power to stop this latest change in policy. There is no board of education, only a powerless advisory board. Four years ago, when three members of that board planned to vote against the new retention policy for third-graders, asking for more time and study, the three were fired on the day of the vote and replaced. See an account of this controversy on the current issue of the New York City Public School Parents blog, in an item titled “On the fourth anniversary of the Monday night massacre; what have they learned?,” by Leonie Haimson.

So, the question is, are we punishing kids by compelling them to go to school, or punishing them by humiliating them when they didn’t learn what they were supposed to? I don’t think that compulsory schooling is a punishment. I do worry about the harm that is done when we pack kids into overcrowded classes, force-feed them deadly textbooks, inflict failed methods of teaching on them, test them with dumbed-down tests, and then fail them. Most of the time, it seems to me, it is we who have failed them.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

I have read the reports of the international assessments over the years and think it would be foolhardy to dismiss them out of hand. The professionals who create them and administer them have no axe to grind; they don’t get bonuses if the scores go up or down. They are scrupulous about reporting the participation rates, the exclusion rates, the age of the students who took the tests, and all other relevant factors. Unlike district superintendents and state superintendents, they have no reason to boast about rising scores or seek better results.

The analysis of the international tests that I have found especially interesting is one published in 2005 by the American Institutes of Research called Reassessing U.S. International Mathematics Performance. This study examined the dozen nations that participated in both TIMSS and PISA. It exploded a common myth that American students do well in fourth grade, are about average compared to other nations by eighth grade, and perform dismally in senior year in high school. No, says the study, this is not an accurate characterization. In fact, when looking only at the nations that have consistently taken part in international testing, students in the U.S. are mediocre at every grade level, not ranking better than eighth or ninth out of the dozen nations.

One of the characteristics of most of the high-scoring nations was a national curriculum in mathematics. That way, teachers did not have to engage in guesswork about what students needed to learn.

While on the subject of math, there is an interesting insight about the New York State Regents that I want to share with you. A former mathematics teacher, Steve Koss, regularly writes for the New York City parent blog, and he recently pointed out that the passing score on the Regents exam in mathematics is a farce. A student need answer only 31 percent of the questions on the exam correctly in order to get a passing grade of 65. Or, as he puts it, “a paltry 31 percent is now the new 65 percent.” The public presumes (I certainly did), that a grade of 65 on an exam means that a student answered 65 percent of the questions correctly. This is not, according to Koss, the case. So much for high standards. Education Week, by the way, ranked New York as the #1 state in the nation recently in education. I wonder if those who created the rankings looked at the examination system.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

You’ve quoted the part we most agree about from your book "Left Back." It’s amazing how much flows from that agreement. I suspect it’s this core that immunizes us against the "reign of (soft) terror" that we’re witnessing in the most innovative school districts, such as NYC.

In the 1980s many of us celebrated what we thought was the final victory—at last—of Dewey over Thorndike. Alas, we were dead wrong. It was a momentary blip. But, Diane, you were also right that progressivism came in many guises, including forms of Thorndyke’ism, and virtually all guises were far more hopeful about the uses of testing than they should have been. And some still are.

In opposing elitism we are both in the same camp. But what an “elite” education means is what we often argue about. I think we’d both agree that it is not necessarily what the particular elite of a particular moment in history designed for their children. Knowing Latin (regardless of its other virtues) was esteemed precisely because it separated one group out from the masses; similarly being “well-educated” meant speaking a particular dialect—not because it was superior but because it defined one’s status and class. Technology had no status in my youth, but today the very rich think it’s cool. And so on.

Each generation needs to rethink what ALL its citizens—from the least to the most advantaged—require. We can call that essential The Academics, followed by lists of traditional lore, or we can redefine the meaning of academia in ways that capture the passions of the young. But in either case, we must defend it against a largely thoughtless and heartless world. Including too many elite academics. As Gerald Graff reminds us, many academics seem as "clueless" about its broader value (see "Clueless in Academe") as their students do.

We are all capable of high levels of intellectual inquiry, of entering into the important arguments that shape the world, of playing with the important concepts, and of being creative and critical in a wide range of different arenas of life. This is as true for the cosmologist as the cosmetician, as teacher JP affirms in his "comments" on the blog that you quote.

Ted Sizer was right, I think, in noting that the most intellectually rigorous class he observed in his study of the American high school several decades ago ("Horace’s Compromise") happened to be a particular shop class, and the least rigorous happened to be an "academic" honor’s class. Anything that smacks of being "practical" is too often scorned, and anything that seems "impractical" valued. What an odd way to frame the argument to the young!

The what and how of schooling is where I want to remain flexible, while also firmly stating that the intellectual life is not reserved for an elite and can and must rest in everyone’s hands. Our letter-writer Cal is just plain wrong—and I say this as someone who has, I believe, "proven" the point—at least to my satisfaction.

But what to do about "reformers" (maybe we should rename them "deformers"?) who use their extraordinary power to rush through one after another measure that undermine such optimism about democracy?? They are on a different track entirely. Of late the buzz word for taking such Orwellian 1984 measures is "equality." Bah, humbug. You and I both know that there are other efficient routes to be taken to attain greater equality via tax policy, housing policy, health policy and on and on. It is no accident that M.L. King Jr.’s assassination took place during his involvement in a strike for higher wages and job security, as part of the long-forgotten War on Poverty.

Michael Bloomberg (NYC’s mayor, and if he had his way president) thinks that offering 4th graders $50 dollars is an important anti-poverty tactic! I do not joke. He has used the same perverted logic to argue that IQ testing of all 4- and 5-year-old will level the playing field. That such tests are known to contain infamous class and racial bias, and that testing all children at age 5 opens the doors wide to historically biased notions about intelligence doesn’t worry him. Nor are our leaders concerned with the technical psychometric limitations—the gross unreliability—of tests for children under the age of 8—not to mention ages 4 and 5!

Then, just yesterday—more or less—Bloomberg decided that not only will children be automatically held over based on 3rd-6th grade test scores, but he promises to show his toughness on behalf of equity by refusing entry into high school for students who fail the 8th grade benchmark. Apparently the proposal would leave thousands of already over-age 8th graders to linger there a year or so longer. It will automatically do one thing: increase actual drop-outs while simultaneously improving graduation rates—which are calculated based on 9th graders. If you’re unclear how this magic works, write me.

And then I read in The New York Times: “NYC has embarked on an ambitious experiment, yet to be announced, in which some 2,500 teachers are being measured on how much their students improve on annual standardized tests….The move is so contentious that principals in some of the 140 schools participating have not told their teachers….officials say it is too early to determine how they will use the data, which is already being collected.”

This stuff is not a NY-only phenomenon. Nor do most of the richest philanthropists in the field see anything wrong with any of the above. Eli Broad’s trustees chose NYC as their model not because they didn’t notice all this flim-flam, but because________

I urge readers to complete the sentence above. I’ll give the "right answer" next week.

Deborah

P.S. I note that our passions have led us to write our two longest letters of this year-long conversation!

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

Like the distinguished panel of assessment experts whom Commissioner Mills called in to examine it wrote—the old CPESS model was a promising beginning. We had much work to be done if others were to follow suit. Instead others were discouraged and finally prohibited from doing so. If we had a commitment toward such approaches, we’d solve its kinks. Then instead of being a rare, fragile flower it could have been transplanted widely. What’s amazing is that within half a dozen years more than 40 schools, just in NY State, jumped on board without any support and against the grain. That more than half have not given up is testimony to its hardiness.

I wish Ed Week would make it easier for folks to read the comments we get to our letters. Some blogs do. Because as I suggested to one respondent last week, age-grading and course-passing as ways to organize “credit” toward graduation limits our options. It offers unacceptable trade-offs. What was nice about CPE and Mission Hill (K-6 and K-8 schools) was that we could place kids in groupings that made sense for their learning and did not have to decide artificially whether they had to repeat a grade or not. Ditto for passing courses. Like other Coalition schools, what we had to decide, child by child, was what was best for maximizing learning. Period.

You ask, how did our schooling fall “so effortlessly into the control of Know Nothings…”? Weep, and then, as we once said, “organize”.

New York City is now preparing to test all 5-year-olds (and encouraging day care, Head Start and nursery schools to do the same) on the Otis-Lennon IQ Test. Next it will be 6- and 7-year-olds. Decades of work to eliminate standardized testing of the young will be reversed. Just as we managed to eliminate standardized testing as part of Head Start (thanks to Sam Meisels and the Erikson Institute), NYC is implementing something even worse. IQ tests. As though we haven’t, as Emily Gasoi notes in her excellent commentary (posted after last week’s letter), a long history to draw on re. IQ testing.

Like NCLB it’s being sneaked in (without any public input) under the guise of Equity! Can you imagine the gall of calling IQ tests a means toward equity???? Yes—it’s supposed to make it easier and fairer for all children to get into “gifted and talented” programs.

Mozart was surely talented, in fact a genius, but whether his particular genius would have been detected in the Otis-Lennon IQ test no one can know. Howard Gardner has been writing for decades about the wide diversity of “gifts” and “talents”. But, above all, we know that race and class have an enormous impact on who seems “smart” at age 5. We also know a lot about what it means to “track” kids by test scores—into various different ability-grouped classes. When I came to NYC in 1967 that was the norm. Even in schools that had substantial diversity, classrooms were neatly divided by race and class. So are “talented and gifted” classes. And they will be after we make it easier for poor kids and black and Latino kids to take IQ tests. Finding the kids who score in the top 5 percent means eliminating most non-white and poor children. That’s basic to the design of most standardized tests, but above all of IQ tests. If the slogan “all kids can learn” meant anything it was in defying the odds that the tests claim to be able to predict.

Not only will this new round of testing create more mostly white classes, but it will misinform all parents and teachers about the intelligence and learning assets of their own children. It will make it easier, once IQ scores are available, to once again openly argue that “after all, you can’t expect” x or y to achieve high levels of intellectual work. They are “after all” intellectually deficient. Don’t blame the messenger for the message, we were once told. We’ve been there before; we will be there again. It’s the fall-back assumption of those at the top, that their superiority is “natural” and that those beneath them just don’t have “it”—the smarts. If we do this when we know better, it will literally be criminal—a deliberate sabotaging of our most vulnerable children.

How can we begin to talk again, you ask, about schools that truly educate? Where can folks who agree with us on this part of the argument weigh in, Diane? The absence of any form of public voice, or for that matter professional input, in places like NYC makes it hard. But people in truly totalitarian regimes have organized for change, so I know there are ways for us to reverse this one, too. The reforms that reared their promising heads 20 years ago shall not vanish from this land!

Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 10:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

There's a streak of naivete about you that is both delightful and infuriating! The notion that we have come to a consensus on what constitutes the well-educated 8-, 12- or 18-year-old, on what body of facts and scientific truth we all agree is essential, and finally that we have a way to get at this that will not impact on narrowing or distorting the curriculum—all seem far-fetched. Politically, not to mention technically, this seems beyond our current human capacity.

Add to it that such a testing system would demonstrate that huge majorities of the students in some states are failing by these standards and it seems politically even more unlikely. Of course, that's perhaps one of the few reasons I'd like it. How about, for starters, if we agree that we do not give any test to high school students before trying it out on all state and federal legislators—as a kind of base line? We might also test trustees of universities and major corporations.

I wrote a book, "Will Standards Save Public Education," in 2000 (Beacon) in which I set out the assumptions underlying test-based standards and contrast them to an alternate set of assumptions. If you didn't read it—it might help us to see where we diverge.

Remember, what we're arguing about are mandated state-sponsored tests about intellectual truth. The information, while not high stakes re. students in your proposal, is high stakes for the intellectual and democratic assumptions upon which the nation rests. The fallout of testing is, as we both agree, not irrelevant as some test-makers argue in claiming no responsibility for the narrowing of the curriculum. But there is narrowing of many sorts, and any national system in a nation as diverse and huge as ours has serious reverberations. How would yours avoid it?

Which reminds me of what we face in NYC right now at the other end of the spectrum—not 18-years-olds but 4- and 5-year-olds. NYC has sent principals (no names because this is supposed to be super confidential) copies of practice tests which they are expected to hand out to parents who must come to school to get them. Such parents must promise to reveal nothing about the pre-tests, in exchange for being able to use the information to help prepare their children. Hush hush. One outcome available to parents who agree is a leg up on getting their kids into gifted and talented classes—open to the top 5 percent of national test-takers. (Despite our knowledge of how IQ tests—which these are—differentially impact on kids based on economics and race—NYC is proposing this as part of its drive for equity!) What happens to the information garnered from the other 95 percent?

Erikson Institute's Sam Meisels, perhaps America's most eminent expert on early childhood, has written extensively on the unreliability of early childhood testing. We know a lot—and it's all bad news. On the basis of this, Congress agreed to remove standardized testing for Head Starters. But not NYC 4-5-year-olds. If anyone reading this letter has the inclination—please write, call and holler! It's coming next to you. I wonder who, in the field of early-childhood education, they consulted? Or did they just assume that based on their experience in business, law, Wall Street, et al they knew best?

And imagine, officially involving parents in the test-prep game! I suppose they can claim that this is leveling the field! It's also—if they knew anything about norm-based testing (which these are)—further corrupting the instrument itself once we prep for it! IQ tests are based on the assumption that everyone is taking it under the same conditions as the population they were normed on.

I see national testing as another nail in the coffin of a nation prized for being creative and innovative. I know, Diane, that textbooks often establish dumb standards, too. But whatever leads you to believe that these tests won't repeat what's already in (and not in) those textbooks??? At least now some schools—and not just private ones—can ignore them or use them as mere back-up. There remains another way to get good information without dumbing education down; sampled in-depth testing (which NAEP started out doing) could be invaluable, based on interviews, performance tasks, writing samples, etc.

We could feed our adult thirst for knowledge without mandating that schools deprive kids of a taste of the real thing. I know, I know—only some kids now get that kind of education; but what's kept me going for 40-plus years is trying to spread the real thing to more and more kids. I know it's do-able; but it's getting harder and harder.

Deb

Posted by Deborah Meier at 7:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

It's fun occasionally to be reminded of why we were considered by so many to be "in opposition." When you took pleasure in the NY Times editorial promoting tests (this time national), I was reminded of our disagreements!

Allowing a national definition of success to rest on so many unaligned tests is patently absurd. You would "align" them, I would eliminate them! My quarrel with NCLB is with its power to define success, and then with its use of tests to do so. A more "sensible" NCLB, with a single consistent test, would make it more, not less dangerous. If teaching to the test is bad now, it would become suffocating if tried on the scale the NY Times suggests.

As I gather, however, you are not for tests that are high stakes, but just "fyi". It's important, if you hold this view, to spell that out. I doubt if it's what the NY Times has in mind, nor am I sure it's do-able until the politicians (and reporters) understand the limits of test data. I would argue that the task of strengthening schools that serve the larger purposes of education cannot be achieved until we flesh out the possible definitions we each hold of what being "well-educated" looks like. There may be more than one answer—which is why I go back to that other idea: a Consumer Reports on schooling. One that allows us to compare and contrast, but does not seek a single answer.

You suggest, as does NCLB, that if folks were forced to acknowledge their failure (by true scores, and true consequences) they'd go about fixing them in ways that would improve true test scores. For reasons good and bad there's no evidence for that. Just suppose Atlanta's improvement is related to just better prepping? Would you recommend we all do the same? No. You wouldn't. But once we go down that road…….

There is no way to be well-educated in everything by age 8, 12, 16. And which qualities of mind or skill we think deserves to push out others is hard to agree about. And unnecessary! We don't all agree about cars either, or any of the other stuff covered by Consumer Reports. But we can make our own judgments—or at least better ones than we might without it. Probably we rely in the end on what our friends and relatives also say, but that's fine, too. For cars and schools.

So, I want to pursue this. I met with a few people recently who were really struck by the idea of a CR-type review of NYC schools. I think it's do-able.

I ought to quit now. But I want to shift ground a little to an old obsession: where in the world do folks think we learn about the arts and science (and history and practice) of democracy? We once based it on such small, geographically close and "common" constituencies that it didn't take as much counter-intuitive understanding. But even then, the Federalist Papers did quite a job bouncing the ideas around. How can we ignite a similar debate? What role could a Consumer Reports play in such a debate?

Why aren't the major Universities—and I don't mean the education departments—convening folks to dig into the deeper question of the relationship between democracy and K-16 and beyond. We know that there are stress points in a democratic society—what do we know about how we weather them and what we lose during such historic moments. How instinctive was Giuliani's idea of postponing the election in NYC after 9/11? Or Chavez's retreat from democracy in Venezuela, or Putin's or Musharraf's dodges? Why do reformers look for the man on the white horse over and over? Or for technocratic solutions—the perfect test? I enjoyed James Traub's comment in last Sunday's NY Times piece ("Persuading Them"): "What we say about ourselves no longer has much effect; but what we are seen doing—on occasion, what we are caught doing—matters immensely." Maybe too many youngsters reach 18 without ever having seen democracy "done"—much less reflected on the dilemmas involved, guided by wise adults.

How can schools—without being inappropriately political—teach politics? How can we counteract our natural tendency to elevate "nonpartisanship" above politics, rather than seeking a more vigorous politics, with all its self-interested warts?

When we knock politics, we undermine the struggle to make democracy work. No politics, no democracy! While you and I are both feeling a little weary about how politics has distorted schooling, we both know that it takes renewing that discourse again generation after generation, not giving up on it.

Part of our weariness is that it takes a somewhat leveler playing field for the game to work at its best. When we lay the task all onto schools we undermine what schools can do, and forget about all the other parties to democracy's warts.

Ted Sizer and I once tried to get Harvard interested in the topic. Everyone said "yes yes", "great idea". But it never happened. Maybe NYU? Meanwhile we can also look around for folks to help us launch a CR for schools. Anyone else out there interested?

Deborah

Posted by Deborah Meier at 7:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

I note with pleasure that The New York Times endorsed (again) the principle of national testing. My guess is that the latest NAEP results for New York City prompted them to do so.

As you know, New York City has been trumpeting its "historic gains" in test scores without let-up over the past few years, since Mayor Bloomberg gained control of the school system and persuaded the Legislature to turn it into the Department of Education. As part of what may be a nascent Bloomberg-for-President campaign, the Department's very large public relations staff works hard to persuade the public that Chancellor Joel Klein has wrought a historic transformation and the kids in the city are now performing on a par with those in suburban districts. If only it were true!

Based on this energetic campaign, supplemented by a privately funded campaign of another $10 million, the city's leaders have been selling their corporate-style, top-down organization as a model for the nation. The state scores were trending steadily upwards, enough to persuade the Broad Foundation to give NYC its prestigious award as the most-improved urban district in the nation in September 2007.

When NAEP's urban district scores were released on November 14, it contained a heap of bad news for New York City. The reports compared progress in 11 cities and showed that NYC's public schools had made "no significant gains" from 2003-2007 in 4th grade reading, 8th grade reading, or 8th grade math. The only subject and grade where there was a significant improvement during these years was in 4th grade math. However, doubt has been cast even on that gain because (as an article in the New York Sun pointed out), 25 percent of the city students received accommodations (e.g., extra time), a rate far higher than in any other urban district and double the rate for the city's students only four years ago. Los Angeles, which has a far higher proportion of English-Language Learners than NYC, assessed with accommodations only 8 percent of its 4th graders on the math test, compared with NYC's 25 percent. Giving such a large number of accommodations presumably would give the city an extra boost in scores in 4th grade math.

Reporters wondered how the Chancellor's PR staff would "spin" the bad news. It didn't seem possible. After years of audacious claims about "closing the achievement gap," "historic improvements in reading and math," etc., how to explain that there had been NO significant gains in reading in either 4th or 8th grade? And how, after the state proclaimed that 8th grade scores soared in both subjects in the spring of 2007, to explain that 8th grade scores showed no significant gain on NAEP? How to explain that there had been no significant gain for any subgroup of students from 2003-2007, not for whites, Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, or lower-income students in three of four tests?

But it was possible and they did it. First, the Department issued a press release that focused almost completely on the 4th grade math scores, barely mentioning the main findings. Then, when The New York Times published a first-page story that accurately described the NAEP results for the city, the Chancellor's office sent out an email that went to over 100,000 recipients, denying that acheivement was flat. He sent out a graph showing NAEP gains that started in the 2002-2003 year, before his reforms were implemented.

Even Lynn Olson, the very smart and able editor at Education Week, was taken in by the Department's statistical legerdemain. In her story about New York City, she reiterated the spurious claim that reading scores went up in the early days of Children First, but this was wrong. They went up on the NAEP test between 2002 and 2003. The 2003 test was given in January-February 2003; at that very moment, the mayor and the chancellor first announced what they intended to do in September. Klein started his "Children First" program in the schools in September 2003.

If one sees significance in the national tests, which have similar standards for all states and cities that take it, then the clear winner among the cities over the past five years is Atlanta. Atlanta has an enrollment that is more than 90 percent African-American; it has a superintendent, Beverly Hall, who has been on the job for eight years. Its NAEP scores in math and reading at both 4th and 8th grades have trended steadily upward over the past five years. Something is happening in Atlanta that the nation should pay attention to. Too bad the Broad Foundation didn't notice.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 7:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

The intellectual and informational inaccuracy, sloppiness and thoughtlessness of so much of education reporting still shocks me—I know I ought to have gotten over it. The story you told me about the reporter who bought NYC's claims that the latest NAEP results are a sign of the DOE's success is such a perfect example.

Investigative reporting is a lost art. They too often see themselves as conduits for press releases, with perhaps one quote from someone "on the other side" to show that it's impartial. It's their style even when I'm delighted with it! E.g.: I loved the front-page story in the Boston Globe proclaiming the success of the Pilot Schools in Boston, with its obligatory demurer from one critic. But that's not good newspaper reportage.

Thanks for alerting me to the fact that NAEP scores—representing the only national comparisons available—demonstrate that NYC hasn't moved forward or back since Klein and Bloomberg took over; except in one test at one grade level. Since tests are all the DOE cares about they can't, like me, claim that testing is not the only way to judge their work.

Another example. I ran into a headline today—NY Times, I believe—proclaiming that while we're not doing badly compared to most European rivals, we are being badly beaten by Asia. Yes, Japan and Singapore do better. But Asians? Neither China nor India are doing better—nor are their scores even mentioned in these international comparisons. Americans believe it must be true because they are the primary locations of outsourcing, and we've bought the lie that outsourcing is related to our poor public educational system—rather than appallingly low wages in outsourced sites. The headlines shouldn't obscure these realities.

Yes, wouldn't it be nice if there was something comparable to Consumer Reports on education. Maybe we can interest them in working on this?

Such a "simple" idea. Reporting that is not self-interested, that tries to explain the complexity of automobiles (toasters, etc.) in ways that acknowledge that we're not all looking for the same thing, and that we might want to easily scan the alternatives to see what the trade-offs are. I want 4-wheel drive, but….I also want…. And on and on. We don't actually have to reinvent the wheel.

I think "accountability" has to start by separating the different purposes and audiences to which we feel accountable. For example, I'm accountable to my students—they have a right to know what I think of their work and how it can be improved. I'm accountable to my colleagues to share my work in the interest of improving collective practice. I'm accountable to families to bring them into the full picture of what I see happening and what I hope together we can do about the situation. This can include standadized tests. But since such tests are designed to be statistically indirect "indicators"—at best (see psychometrician W. James Popham's piece in Education Week…), it would be odd if we ignored the fact that we have access to direct evidence. We have the hard data—the kids and their work.

But while individual schools are the best place for this assessment to originate, there's the kind of data needed by more distant publics: professional and lay, politicians and academics.

Some years ago we designed a 5-year "experimental" project in NYC—with $50 million in Annenberg funds, to explore a large-scale experiment with the above in mind. It involved an institute at Columbia headed by Linda Darling-Hamond, Michelle Fine at CUNY and other research backup, about 130 schools with 50,000 students, organized into 15 networks. It gave schools direct access to their full budgets and a great deal of freedom from union, city and state mandates in return for developing new forms of accountability. It managed to get the support of the then-chancellor, mayor, teachers' union and state commissioner. Unfortunately, as we were about to "go", both the chancellor and the commissioner departed and their replacements said "no way."

It's an oddly distorted version of this idea that emerged 10 years later under Bloomberg and Klein. It gutted what we believed was the essence of the plan: that it was voluntary, small scale (the size of the average American city), invited networks to develop self-designed plans, and had the support of some of the best independent research institutions in town to track different aspects of the work as it played out over time. We hoped that the work would help us find answers suitable to the various audiences involved. We were genuinely curious and thought it quite likely that we would end up with some shared agreement about "what works" and many different answers as well!

We lost that chance. So, now maybe you and I can try to imagine what some of these different solutions might have looked like.

D

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

It was interesting that you used the analogy to Consumer Reports to discuss the value of grading schools. As a longtime subscriber to CR, I understand that it is useful to have a disinterested voice evaluating the products in the marketplace. To make sure that there is never a conflict of interest, CR does not accept advertising; no one can ever say that their judgments were tainted by commercial interests.

The CR example shows, I think, the problems with assigning a letter grade (only one letter grade, not a report card) to each school. To begin with, schools are not situated in a true marketplace. We may decide to buy this car, not that one, or this television, not that one, because we are consumers and have a wide choice of products. But parents do not have the same free choice about where to send their children; even if they wanted to withdraw them from an F school and send them to an A school, the A school may be too distant from their home and it certainly will not have enough seats for students who might want to transfer in. Most parents would be happy to know that their children were attending a good school that was close to home. They have neither the time nor the sophistication to shop around the city for a higher-rated school. Given the widespread complaint that the ratings themselves are flawed, school officials may be dispensing false data to parents, scaring them needlessly about their children's school and destabilizing schools and communities.

Then, too, there is the problem of conflict of interest. Is it really a good idea that schools should be graded by the very officials responsible for leading them? Don't they have an inherent conflict of interest? Consumer Reports takes pains to insulate itself from the appearance of conflict of interest. Top school officials, on the other hand, are the ones who rank and grade and test and report on their own performance. In New York City, the situation is anomalous, in that school officials disdain any responsibility for improving the schools; under their theory of principal empowerment, only the principal is to be held responsible, even though there are many conditions affecting achievement that are beyond the principal's influence.

I certainly agree with you that NCLB should not be reauthorized until there is more careful reconsideration of what it has accomplished and what its negative consequences have been. Everything that I read and hear supports the view that it will NOT be reauthorized until after the 2008 election. A new president will presumably set the agenda for federal education policy. Since Democrats control the Congress until the next election, I think it fair to say that NCLB is now the property of the Democratic party.

Given the importance of the NEA and the AFT within Democratic ranks, I would have assumed that Congress would be taking a hard look at NCLB, but this does not seem to be the case. Last week I was invited to meet with a very smart Democratic congressman who is a member of the Education Committee in the House of Representatives. I told him that I hoped Congress would consider a radical restructuring of NCLB. He immediately disabused me of that idea. He said that NCLB will be re-authorized; that there would be changes, but that they would not be radical ones. I told him that if they did some polling or even talked to teachers in their districts, they would find that the law was hated by most teachers. That didn't seem to faze him. The law will no doubt get a new name, but the basic structure will not be abandoned.

One wonders, if the people who have to do the implementation say that it is not working, why would Congress push ahead? But apparently they are. It is time to realize that this law, in its next iteration, will be a product of the Democratic party. My guess is that no one in Washington wants to give up the power to tell teachers what to do.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 7:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (10) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

Amen. We agree, although it will be interesting to see where this takes us—re. alternatives. (For next week?)

Bard College President Leon Botstein's outraged voice last week helped me sort out the issues raised by NYC's new school grading system. (Disclosure: my granddaughter is a very happy student at Bard's public high school.) He's right that it is a unique school engaged in a unique project. He is wrong that this makes him different than most other schools—each of which is also "unique". He claims the Regents exams are not good measures of their work. He's not alone in such a view. Those who seek to offer currently unsuccessful students a serious intellectual experience face the same dilemma as Bard—even though Bard starts with some of the most successful young people.

In the old factory-model tradition we gave kids A's to F's, without comments or narratives. But even then each child got a separate mark for each individual course, for deportment and citizenship, etc. It was more complicated than the current NYC and Florida A-F grading system.

In fact, Chancellor Klein would note, the A-F scores are derived from the most complex scoring system. True enough. It takes into account in various weighted forms dozens of factors; and involves a great many different judgments made by mortal beings with a lot of power. For example, the independent school quality reviews, conducted during the year of all NYC schools, don't count at all in the equation.

In the elementary schools, test scores in grades 3-5 are 85 percent of the grade; no points are added for passing grades. In high schools, passing courses (credit units) are counted heavily and test scores are not based on annual improvement but compare 8th grade scores to subject-specific Regents scores often taken many years later. (This leads the NYC Chancellor to now promote tests in K-2nd grade to be "fairer" to them—alongside the newly mandated IQ tests in kindergarten.) We've got the most complicated scoring system, hiding many judgments, to produce a simple-minded grade. What I think you and I might propose is a "simpler" system producing a more complicated school-specific grade.

What came to mind for me was how Consumer Reports tells us about cars. Generally, there are a whole host of charts providing "best buy" info in a variety of ways, alongside of (over the course of the year) narrative reports. The evaluations include performance-based measures, as well as data on size, gallons per mile, repair rates based on sampled surveys, etc. You can run down the charts and find stuff that matters or doesn't to you the buyer.

Isn't it odd that in a matter more personal than cars we think we can establish a rank order of schools that is more definitive than we can about cars? Despite disagreement in the nation (or city) on what constitutes a well-educated adult should we trust the "judgment" of our political leaders to decide this for us on a single scale? That's what this "equation" is, after all.

At least Consumer Reports is a voluntary non-profit, not our boss who, despite protestations to the contrary, is not accountable to consumers or voters except in the most convoluted way—in the Mayor's one and only bid for reelection. This is not "for advice only" info. Grades have imposed consequences. Nor can school leaders, like General Motors, take exception publicly. Nor is there any counter-balancing political body to provide checks and balances as is the case in most of our nation's institutions.

NYC is becoming an example of what some marketplace enthusiasts like to call a "government" school, or a "state monopoly". If the consumers are dissatisfied they can leave one public school for another (which is actually not reality based), or try their luck with a charter (lottery permitting) or private school (money permitting)? Or home school, I suppose. They are right to call our bluff if this is how we run "state" schools.

If Fordham Institute or CATO put out a rank list of best schools or systems we all know (or should), those lists express their biases; my list would, too. So does Bloomberg/Klein's list. Mr. Bottstein is right to be upset, because in a top-down system the future of his school rests on their values and biases, hidden beneath their weighted equations.

I spent a day last week with a group of elementary school parents and staff—whose schools ranked A through F. No one there felt like being congratulated; they all felt demeaned. It's simply harder for them to jump to Los Angeles the way Joe Torre did, and not fair to our kids whom I care about more than I do about Yankee fans.

Deb

P.S. It's bad enough fighting city hall; it's harder still to influence particular actions of one agency of the Department of Education in D.C.. Until we pause to consider more thoughtful forms of federal intervention I'll be glad that Congress doesn't rush into reauthorizing NCLB—do you agree, Diane?

Posted by Deborah Meier at 7:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deb,

I must add two points to my blog about the letter grades handed out to New York City public schools last week.

As I said in my original post, the formula was complex but heavily dependent on how students did on the state tests. Eighty-five percent of the letter grade (and remember that each school was given only a single letter grade, not a report card with a variety of grades) was based on these test scores, a combination of "performance" and "progress." Some very reputable, high-performing schools got a low mark because the proportion of students who passed the test was lower this year than in the previous year (say, from 90 percent passing to 84 percent, still an incredible mark in this city). I erred, though, as a reader pointed out in one of the comments, in saying that the other 15 percent was based on the school "environment," as evaluated by outsiders. In fact, the 15 percent was based on surveys sent to parents, teachers, and surveys. The response rate to these surveys was very low, in many schools below 10 percent. So, how valid these surveys are in assessing the quality of each school is not clear.

A second point that I should have mentioned was that each school was judged in relation to 40 schools considered demographically similar. This was another reason why, in some cases, a well-regarded school ended up with a low score and a very low-performing school ended up with an A or B. In a similar schools analysis, some schools identified by the state as "failing" received high marks because they were compared to other schools that were also low- performing.

As I said, it is a very complex formula, and many people are unhappy with the results. It is hard to explain how a school that was honored last year as the best middle school in the city got a D or why a school that parents clamor to get their children into got a B or C. Author (and former teacher) Dan Brown pointed out in an article in Sunday's New York Post (and on the Huffington Post) that some of the schools labeled "persistently dangerous" by the state earned an A or B. A very strange methodology indeed.

Diane

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

Deborah,

You mentioned the new grading system. Our readers may not be aware of what is happening, so let me recapitulate the system as best I can. "Best I can," to be sure, because it is not a transparent system and its calculations are extremely obscure. At bottom, it amounts to this: Each school in the city school district (but not charters) is given a letter grade from A through F. The letter grade is based mainly on the state's standardized test scores. The grade is comprised of both performance (the school's scores) and progress (the school's value-added). Added in are "quality reviews," in which each school is judged by outside reviewers for such things as its environment, as well as surveys completed by parents and teachers. (Editor's note: See Diane's Nov. 14 addendum on the environment component.)

This may not be 100 percent accurate, as the formula is complex. But observers have faulted the system because the underlying tests on which most of the grade is based were not designed for this purpose. Year-to-year fluctuations in scores make such judgments questionable. There is also reason to wonder about the value of giving a school a single letter grade, which stigmatizes some schools and puffs up others. It would be akin to giving a student a single letter grade, and saying in effect, "you are a D student," when it would make far more sense to give grades or evaluative judgments about a student's performance in a variety of subjects, which may be quite variable.

In this new system, which is related to the Florida system of grading schools, some highly reputable schools have received a B or C or even in one case, an F. The high-performing schools are penalized by the grading system because so many of them are near the ceiling and are likely to experience fluctuations down a few points, which condemns them. A much-admired school in Staten Island, for example, received an F, even though its students regularly had the highest scores in its district; but in the last year, the proportion of students who passed the state tests had declined, not by a lot, but nonetheless it was a decline. So this well-respected community institution was graded an F.

Meanwhile, a number of schools that have been identified by the state as failing schools have received an A or B. The Village Voice reported that Stuyvesant High School, one of the competitive schools that is a jewel in the city's crown, initially received a C, but someone talked the higher-ups into raising the grade to an A. I suppose if the grading system had actually awarded a C to Stuyvesant, the grading system would have been laughed out of town. Meanwhile The New York Times reported that Bard Early College High School has protested its C and the president of Bard, Leon Botstein, has made a personal appeal to the chancellor to raise the school's grade to an A.

The best deconstruction of the grading system that I have seen to date is in a marvelous blog called eduwonkette.com. This is an anonymous scholar who is admittedly female, but has otherwise decided, for reasons of prudence, to keep her identity secret. Her analyses of policy decisions have been brilliant, bold, and incisive. Many people are talking about her, because she usually adds a sharp dimension to whatever is in the news. She is wise to remain anonymous. Her bottom line: the methodology used to grade schools is fundamentally inaccurate and invalid.

Parents in some districts are outraged, and educators in outstanding schools that received low grades are demoralized. It is hard to know what the value of this exercise is. The school system's leaders seem to believe that shame and humiliation will incentivize the staff in low-grade schools to do a better job and that this will be sufficient to promote improvement. Of course, the best way for a school to raise its grade will be to focus on the state tests even more than they have done up till now. Some principals will realize that it is time to toss out the arts, physical education, history, and any subject other than reading and math. The only thing that counts is making progress on the state tests.

I don't know if we write too much about New York City, but we have reasons. For one, we both know this system well. For another, New York City is now being touted as a national model after winning the Broad award. Caveat emptor.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

We've been e-mailing back and forth during this past week—so you already know how shocked I was, even though I might have imagined I was above and beyond shockable.

Some months ago I wrote about my own fears—about potential retaliation against the schools I was most identified with—that might follow my outspoken critiques of their bosses. I am not paranoid enough—perhaps unwisely—to presume that all the bad "luck" that has befallen my beloved NYC schools is due to deliberate sabotage. But it doesn't keep me from worrying when the other shoe will fall with regard to my "legendary" "genius" status. There was always the other side of the coin to all the praise. I consider myself to have outlived my good luck—and wait daily to be "found out." I just wish no one else will pay the price should it happen.

You reminded me at the time that I had nothing to fear: let me see if I can find your response—and quote it here. But none of us are. The degree to which foundations, universities, the media, columnists, editorialists and you name 'em are in some form or other indebted to the Mayor and Chancellor is beyond anything I have seen—since a certain earlier period in Daley's rule in Chicago.

Multiple sources of power and control are useful precisely for this reason. The failures of the old Board as well as the local boards should not have led to eliminating all other forms of lay control. To imagine that the Mayor's future—his or her accountability—can be the one and only back-up for educational policy is absurd. Given that the vast majority of New Yorkers, and its most powerful voters, do not use our schools, it becomes even more ludicrous. And dangerous.

For all the talk of increased autonomy, I know few principals or teachers who see themselves as operating with more freedom and site control. The high schools always had control over their budgets, and the elementary schools could easily have been grand-fathered into the high school system: each school had a formula-based unit allocation. Each unit equaled the average salary of a teacher (approx. $50,000) that could be used to cover virtually all legal and contract-allowable expenses.

The current system of "grading", added to the federal system of AYP, and total central control of principal's tenure is a strangehold on innovative and imaginative practice. Klein acknowledges that it is not a finished product—but the damage it causes is for him just part of the process of getting things right. As were all the biannual reorganizations that have taken place during his tenure. But the actual teachers, principals and parents (plus kids!) who are harmed by these labels are real, live humans and the damage done to them and their schools will not easily be repaired. Klein probably says, hurrah, because it will make them work harder, be more careful and improve children's test scores, etc. I fear he is right. Working harder is not the goal—for kids or adults—although one might think so some days. And given the entrenched inequities of our society we better begin to honor some creative juices within our classrooms and teacher rooms. And finally, the last thing we need is more attention to test scores—at least of the kind of tests that now rule our school lives.

Diane, I think we could make a difference if, whenever someone said that the bottom line is "school achievement", we asked them to replace the phrase with "test scores" on math and reading tests—unless they actually mean something else. Current tests are only a very small part of what should be meant by achievement. What they make no pretense of measuring are most of the things that employers and citizens of this nation claim they want—including those worrying about our economy or participation in our civic life. I'm not always fond of those lists of 21st Century skills, but they largely focus on stuff like perseverance, initiative, meeting deadlines, curiosity, oral language, creativity, team work, "good sense" and so on. Klein's move to start testing of 4- and 5-year-olds threatens further a dangerous trend that is already undermining America's creative head start. (On that note, see Jeannine Ouellette's marvelous summary of the case for children's play.)

Oh dear, Diane. I'm ranting to you, who agree with me. But I simply have to get it off my chest. If they even think of intimidating you, just imagine who else has a right to be fearful. We all have a stake in this—probably least of all you, Diane! It's those more vulnerable than you that this unwarranted attack is perhaps meant to silence—and for that reason we all have a stake in this unwarranted use of public funds and public office. (Editor's note: The underlined text and the "P.S." were initially omitted due to a posting error. Both were added back in on 11/9/07.)

In support, collegiality, solidarity and more arguments.

Deborah

P.S. The nerve of your critics for claiming that you have occasionally changed your mind! When Mr. Klein changes his mind (every other year) he doesn't just upset some people's sensitivities, but he causes time-consuming upheavals in a system in which practitioners are seriously short of time.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deb,

What a week this has been!

I received a phone call late last Monday afternoon (Oct. 29) from an editor at the New York Post, offering me a “heads up.” He said, “Just wanted to let you know that there will be a personal attack on you in tomorrow’s paper, on the opinion page.” That was a bit unsettling, to say the least. A few hours later, I received an email from a journalist friend that contained the actual article, with the byline of Kathryn Wylde, the CEO of the New York City Partnership, the organization that represents major corporations in the city. Somehow the article was in circulation before it was published, and the last email—transmitting the article to the Post—was written by Howard Rubenstein, who owns a major public relations firm that is very active in New York politics. So, it was clear that the article came to the Post from a PR firm, and it was not clear who wrote it.

The next day, the article appeared, with a headline calling me a "Hypocritical Critic.” The trigger for the blast at me evidently was an article I had written the previous week, in which I pointed out that the teachers’ union had outsmarted the Mayor and the Chancellor in their recent negotiation over performance pay. Although the Mayor and Chancellor claimed that they had won “merit pay,” what they got instead was a schoolwide bonus plan whose distribution would be decided at every individual school and which might or might not include non-teachers such as secretaries who belong to the union.

But instead of debating the issues, the article was a personal slam at me, attempting to destroy my reputation and credibility because I was not supporting every move of the Klein regime.

The very next day, as I was pondering whether to respond, an article appeared in the New York Sun documenting the fact that Wylde’s attack had been written in concert with operatives at the New York City Department of Education. The Sun reporter, Elizabeth Green, wrote that the DOE had been keeping a file on me, comparing my statements past and present, and this dossier was the basis of the Wylde attack on me.

The next day, the New York Post printed my response to Wylde’s article.

Two points from my article deserve reiteration here. First, I have a right to change my mind, based on observation and experience. As I wrote, I used to think that nothing could be worse than the old Board of Education. But I was wrong. Having watched the Klein team in action for five chaotic years of reorganization and disorganization, having observed their mandates and micromanagement, having seen their disrespect for educators, having seen that they have no educational strategy, only a program of testing and accountability and paying students, teachers, and principals for test scores, the old Board begins to look better and better every day.

The second point is that what they did to me is scary. The fact that they compiled a dossier on me and then turned it over to someone to write an attack is a frightening misuse of government power. They think they did nothing wrong. They think that if journalists and academics can compile files on people, so can they. They forget that they are not journalists or academics: They are government. Wouldn’t you think they have enough to do managing 1,500 schools without having time to pursue those who dare to question their policies?

I forgot to mention one more thing. I discovered last spring that someone from the Department of Education press office was taping my public lectures. The first time I thought it was amusing. The second time I thought it was weird. The third time I thought it was scary. Now I realize that I was under surveillance.

I believe that all of this—the taping, the dossier, the attack by a surrogate—was a blatant effort to silence me. And as I said in my response, if they could silence me, I would serve as an example to anyone else who criticized them.

If any good came of this brouhaha, it was the response of the blogs. From the National Review to the Daily Kos, the condemnation of the DOE’s tactics was swift and strong. And take a look at this spectacular photomontage. I have never been so grateful for the democracy of the blogosphere as I was this past week.

What does this say about the state of education and democracy?

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 7:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deb,

I hope we are not disappointing our readers by agreeing more than we disagree. I think I am letting down my part of the bargain by agreeing with you so often, but our areas of convergence became clear from the first time that we sat together almost a year ago to talk about our views about No Child Left Behind. The fact is that you are writing and saying the same things you have believed for a long time, and I am in the process of reconsidering and revising my views on many counts.

I have been doing quite a lot of soul-searching these past couple of years. I don’t think it is because of age, although one can never be too sure about that. I think I am reconsidering first principles because of the very topics that you hit so hard in your latest letter. Living in NYC, I see what happens when businessmen and lawyers take over a school system, attempt to demolish everything that existed before they got there, and mount a dazzling PR blitz to prove that they are successful.

Lest anyone think that what you described is purely a NYC story, consider this: I hear from various people who participated in the judging for the Broad Prize that NYC will win it this year. This is not much of a surprise. When Joel Klein was first named chancellor, Eli Broad held his annual prize event in NYC and handed Klein a huge dummy check and predicted that one day soon this would be his. The $1 million hardly matters to NYC, which has an annual budget that approaches $20 billion, but the prestige is what the city is after. It desperately wants the confirmation from Broad that its new regime has succeeded.

About 18 months ago, I was invited to meet Eli Broad in his gorgeous penthouse in NYC, overlooking Central Park. I hear that he made his billions in the insurance and real estate businesses. I am not sure when he became an education expert. We talked about school reform for an hour or more, and he told me that what was needed to fix the schools was not all that complicated: A tough manager surrounded by smart graduates of business schools and law schools. Accountability. Tight controls. Results. In fact, NYC is the perfect model of school reform from his point of view. Indeed, this version of school reform deserves the Broad Prize, a prize conferred by one billionaire on another.

Thanks for your recommendation about the James Scott book, "Seeing Like a State." I happen to own it, as it had been highly recommended to me by Morton Keller, a historian at Brandeis University. It is a wonderful critique of reforms that seek to overturn the world, of the arrogance of reformers who do not understand the practical wisdom of those who must make decisions every day that respond to unique situations.

As I read "Seeing Like a State," especially its concluding chapters, I kept thinking about the wholesale gutting of the NYC school system by Messrs. Bloomberg and Klein, who are now hailed in the media as our nation’s leading education reformers. Professor Scott, an anthropologist at Yale, would find in NYC a perfect exemplar of men who think they can “see like a state.”

Worse, Deb, they seem to have sought out even the cracks in the sidewalk and tried to pave them over. They seem to have succeeded.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

I enjoyed (and agreed with) practically every word in your last letter. And I identified with your grief over Molly, too.

I sometimes think I'm exaggerating the dangers facing us—and then I read the Daily News about math scores and think I'm maybe not worrying enough! More on this below.

We may have some sharp disagreements, which we ought to pursue carefully this coming year, but at stake, at the moment, are two greater concerns. One, the continued existence of a public school system. Two, turning the public one that's left into a super-centralized enterprise run by a combination of unaccountable businessmen and distant political interests (ala Mister Barber's British experiment.) Both of these undermine the bottom-line tools for accountability—democracy and honest information.

I note with amusement that, much like education, every few years a new guru arrives with the new answer to how to guarantee business success. He gets fat consulting fees and is soon replaced by another. Yesterday's wonder turns into an ordinary mortal.

You and I are struggling to find democratic ways to bring ends and means together, to serve accountability and good schooling. It's tough. But imposing our pet ideas on over a million unwilling teachers, families, kids is not an answer. Nor is the smash/disappear-the-past strategy. Dictators—too harsh a word for NYC Chancellor Joel Klein?—have an impulse to destroy the old, "fall-back" institutions in hopes that in doing so we can't undo their reforms. That's why I found James Scott's "Seeing Like a State" such a great read, a reminder of what some of us have lived through in the 20th Century. I'm still traumatized by that history of good intentions. Have I over-learned that lesson?

The Klein proclamation in the Daily News is a caricature of the little dictator. An "era is over," he declares. We've gotten rid of the obstructionists—educators. "Accountability", he continues, "isn't optional." Tell that to your friends in high places, Joel, who seem content with their nonaccountability: bail-outs and golden parachutes. See The New York Times, Sept. 2—NY state's fastest growing industry riddled with fraud! Honest data is another victim of dictatorships as the Daily News, generally a friend to Klein, notes in a story on September 4th. "When test scores rise, politicians crow that schools are getting better, but a Daily News analysis of recent standardized math exams and a News experiment suggest another reason: The questions might be getting easier."

Klein acknowledges our discomfort. "Some educators and parents won't be happy, and that's the way it should be. … The truth hurts sometimes." But, too bad, because these tools will "help us manage the entire system more effectively." He truly is a believer. It send chills up and down my spine. It's exactly the mindset that I want schools to help future citizens overcome; because it's a way of thinking (like a State) that is a danger to the concept of democracy itself.

But, Klein and company, like Fred Hess, another pro-business reformer (see The American online July 17) have learned a different lesson from history. Hess urges reformers to "…smash the regulations and support the entrepreneurs who will shake things up." (It's '60s "new left" talk from the right.) Shaking things up over and over is a common thread. You are right, Diane, it does serve a purpose; it makes the objects being shaken feel less and less confident and more hapless. Fear interrupts "resistance."

The other day a friend complained about teachers and principals "resisting" her plans (which I happened to like). We all need to watch our language. Maybe, I queried, they disagreed with you? "Opposition" (even questioning) looks like resistance when given no choice. But, "eventually," as you say in your final sentence, parents and teachers will "find their collective voice and say loud and clear: "Enough'"

I take that same lesson to the school and classroom level. When kids can disagree they are less prone to take their opposition underground, and the same goes for teachers. It's the above-ground way of doing public business that is at the heart of democracy. If there's ever been a regime that hides its policymaking, and is accountable only to itself (including its own manipulated data)—it's the Klein regime. (Oops, I forgot the Bush one.) Enough!

Meanwhile, there are all those kids whose teachers and principals need to figure out how to negotiate the spaces that are left to them. My old mentor, Lillian Weber, reminded us—years ago—that there are those cracks in the sidewalk, where some things manage to grow. It's our job to find them and feed them, she told us. The kids in front of us can't wait. I pass the word on.

Deborah

P.S. For the record, I am not "opposed to tests." More on this later.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 8:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deb,

Yup, back-to-school time. I too get that funny feeling in the pit of my stomach, especially when I find myself wandering the aisles of a stationery store, looking at spiral notebooks, pens, and the other accoutrements of starting school and hearing the voice in my head saying that it is time to get ready.

This was not a great summer. I spent most of it trying to get a diagnosis and appropriate care for my beloved 10-year-old dog Molly, who became sick in early July. One vet said she has congestive heart failure and has six months to live; another said she has lymphoma and was hopeless; I am now working with a homeopathic vet who is giving her herbal capsules, and she is looking very well. So I begin the fall with hope.

I am sorry to say that education henceforth will be on the agenda in Congress for a long time to come. Having worked in the federal government in the early '90s and lived in D.C. for four years, where I watched the federal education agenda grow, I see nothing hopeful about this. When it comes to reforming the nation’s schools, Congress is possibly the worst qualified institution to do it. First, they are very far from the schools, in every possible definition of the word “far,” and second, they don’t have a clue about how to reform schools. But typically they think that if they pass a law and give it the right name, they have solved a problem. As we can see from the travails of NCLB, our well-intentioned but out-of-touch Congress has only created new problems.

Now the presidential campaign has begun in earnest, and we will hear more glib promises about fixing the schools by passing the "right" program. The candidates, and the leaders of Congress (in both parties), think that the way to fix the schools is to micromanage them from Washington. They want more regulations, more mandates, more obstacle courses for principals and teachers. If you remember, the report by the Gates-funded bipartisan commission on NCLB offered dozens of recommendations for such things. It seems that we should change the name of the federal program from No Child Left Behind (NCLB) to No Adult Left Unregulated (NALU).

I think you are quite right that we must be suspicious of any school district or state that makes extravagant claims about the results of its tests. One thing that I learned while serving on the NAEP governing board was that changes in scores—whether up or down—occur slowly and incrementally. Occasionally a student may make extraordinary progress, perhaps because he or she decided to study harder and more consistently, or a student may see a dramatic decline, probably because of personal problems, but it should ring an alarm bell for parents, the public, and the media when test scores for a district or state show huge changes in a year or two.

Unlike you, I am not opposed to testing. But I don’t support testing as the primary means of educating kids, which seems to be the new business-style way to “reform” education. Testing is not a substitute for curriculum, and testing is not a substitute for instruction. Test prep may help raise test scores, but a cohort of students who have had little more than a steady diet of test prep have been cheated of a real education. In medicine, a thermometer is a valuable tool. But anyone who thinks that they can cure illness by constantly inserting a thermometer and preparing to have one's temperature read is...ill-informed at best and should really go into a different line of work.

Thanks for sending me the Pring letter. Too bad The New York Times did not see fit to print it. I expect that a lot of parents and teachers would want to know that there is another side to Sir Michael Barber’s account of his grand successes in Britain (subscription or fee required). It is unfortunate when our newspaper of record prints a puff piece about a controversial figure without permitting the contrary voices to be heard. (I am appending a copy below of the Pring letter, which is now akin to samizdat, the underground publications in the Soviet Union that circulated from hand to hand.)

My guess is that the business leaders who think they have the cure for the schools are likely to emerge from this era of faux-reform looking like Enron educators. They may get the scores, and they may pull the wool over the eyes of the press. But eventually the day of reckoning will arrive when their incredible test score gains will prove to be ephemeral, indeed in-credible, as in not credible; when the students discover that they never got an education; when educators find their collective voice and say loud and clear: “Enough.”

May that day come soon.

Diane

The following is Richard Pring's letter to The New York Times, reprinted with his permission.

Richard is now Lead Director Nuffield Review of 14-19 Education and Training for England and Wales and Former Director: Oxford University Department of Education Studies

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deb,

The promise of this blog “Bridging Differences” was that (is that?) we would acknowledge our disagreements and from time to time discover issues where we agree. We aim to keep that promise!

This is an issue—spotting the nonsense and naming it—where we are on the same page. A few days ago, I watched a movie made in the 1930s, in which there was a crusading newspaper editor. In his office was a sampler that said, “Tell the truth.” These days, we recognize that the “truth” may be elusive, and we may not even agree on how to define it. But where you and I agree is that we both sense that we have an obligation, as citizens, as sentient human beings, to tell the truth as we see it, without kowtowing to somebody’s party line.

I join you in frustration at the laziness or ignorance or indifference of the media, in education as in so many other areas. How poorly education is “covered”! Or not covered, as is usually the case. And, good grief, when was the last time that we encountered a crusading newspaper editor or an investigative journalist who was concerned about exposing the frauds in education? Remember the New York Post under Dorothy Schiff? Remember its dedication to exposing greed, malfeasance, and chicanery? (For more on that, read my friend Marilyn Nissenson's superb biography "The Lady Upstairs" about Schiff and her crusading newspaper and why it died.)

I agree with you about television. It is rare to hear more than a 30-second sound bite or headline, repeating the headline of someone’s press release. The print media is only marginally better. We may be treated to stories that run for a column, even two, but they too usually parrot the press release that was issued the day before by some public or private agency. They usually have a quote or two from a critic of the claim made in the press release, but no in-depth independent analysis of the claims made.

I served for seven years on the NAEP governing board. Whenever scores went up or down more than a few points, the customary response was to wonder what went wrong with the test or the scoring or something else. When scores jump way up or down, alarm bells are supposed to start ringing. But today, we read about scores leaping by large numbers and the press reports it without questions or alarm bells.

Same with graduation rates. As you note, The New York Times reported dramatic increases in several New York City high schools that had been broken up into small schools. Not much attention was paid to the fact that the population of the original school was dispersed and replaced with different students. Thus the comparison between Martin Luther King Jr. High School as a large school and the same school broken into small schools was not comparing apples to apples. Typically, a school with about 3,500 students is reconstituted as, say, four small schools with 500 students each. What happens to the missing 1,500 students? They are pushed into other large and overcrowded schools. The “new small schools” then have a population with fewer limited English proficient students and fewer special education students than the original large high school; the new population typically has higher scores and better attendance rates than the students in the original school.

So, voila, the new schools miraculously have a higher graduation rate, which should not surprise anyone who takes a look at the educational legerdemain. Until the press gets wise and starts covering the manipulation of data and the manipulation of the student body, the public will remain in the dark.

The message emanating now from New York City is that it is not hard to achieve educational success: open lots of small schools; invest heavily in test-preparation activities; test, test, test, then test some more; pay students to get higher scores; pay teachers and supervisors more if their students get higher scores; threaten to fire educators whose scores do not go up. A brilliant formula, no? Mayor Michael Bloomberg is holding this up as a national model.

The end result is not hard to foresee: A populace that knows how to take tests but is uneducated, lacking the civic skills, the democratic understandings, and the cultural knowledge to enrich their lives and our society.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 7:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deb,

Now that our mayor, Michael Bloomberg, is readying himself as a potential candidate for the Presidency, it is clear that education will be one of his signature issues. Sadly, he knows no more about education today than he did when he became mayor in 2001, based on his latest plan to pay poor kids to get higher test scores. That strategy seems to me to be an abject admission of cluelessness: When you don't know anything about teaching or curriculum, then just pay for results.

I understand your frustration about the historical amnesia that you encountered. It seems to be the policy of our New York City Department of Education to wipe out all historical memory and at that they have been quite successful. Apparently, this administration wants the world to believe that whatever it is doing is historic, unprecedented, and of course dazzlingly successful. Part of their strategy is to launch one initiative after another, to persuade the public that they are on the move, when in fact they are merely lurching from one confused plan to another.

Last Friday, the Department released dazzling statistics about the graduation rates of its new small schools. The Department has created about 200 of them, of which 47 have a graduating class this year. The rate for these 47 schools is 73 percent, compared to a citywide rate of.... This is where it gets complicated. The city says it has a graduation rate of 60 percent. The state says the city's graduation rate is 50%. Education Week's latest Diplomas Count report says the city's graduation rate is 45 percent.

So the small schools graduation rate is impressive, right? Wrong. Dee Alpert, who publishes SpecialEducationMuckraker.com is a relentless devourer of data from the city and state education departments, and she sent out a bulletin describing her inability to decipher the real graduation rates at the "new small schools." She says:

1. NYCDOE gives no list of the 'new, small schools' included in its calculations for the spinrelease, so...
2. They give percentages, not raw numbers, for their graduation rates: you can't even try to work backwards to see what was included.
3. Most importantly, they gave no numbers for 'still enrolled,' nor for 'discharged.' ...NYCDOE is notorious for mis-reporting dropouts as having enrolled elsewhere, i.e., discharged from a NYCDOE school's rolls.
4. The numbers for graduates who earned local v. Regents diplomas is also critical, and missing. In prior years, local hs diplomas predominated. According to the NYS Court of Appeals' CFE [Campaign for Fiscal Equity] decision, a local diploma resulting from passing RCT [low-level competency examinations] put a kid-depending on the subject—at between the 6th and 9th grade level. This isn't exactly college prep.

Dee Alpert concludes: "It's all obviously part of the Bloomberg presidential campaign spin." And she strongly recommends "an editorial moratorium on reporting NYCDOE spin numbers unless the complete data set accompanies the press release."

I hope not to befuddle our national readership with too much news and talk about New York City, but there is an important point here. Alpert's analysis reveals how easily education data are distorted for political purposes. We have seen this done before, but seldom so blatantly or so cleverly. It is likely the case that every school superintendent wants to release test scores and graduation rates that show what a success he or she has been. But what we have seen over the past five years is a determined political campaign—not just Bloomberg for President, although that may yet happen—but rather a political campaign to "prove" that mayoral control without any checks or balances is the absolute best way to manage a school system. The Department is incapable of impartial research. Its press releases are filled with the kind of P.R. spin that we have come to associate with politicians running for office, not with research departments where someone has his or her professional reputation on the line.

Whenever there is a new release of test score data from the state, I invariably get calls from reporters, asking what I think of the latest numbers. I have learned over the past few years never to answer their questions until I have had a chance to see the complete data set with my own eyes. I know that the Department has massaged the data and sought out every glimmer of good news while creating a narrative that distracts the reporters' attention from anything unfavorable.

Forgive me, Deborah, but all this media manipulation persuades me that we need national tests (with no stakes), so that states and cities and districts can't play games with the numbers. Failing that, I think that every state should have an independent agency to administer tests and report their results, and that these agencies should be run by professional psychometricians who can neither take credit nor blame when the scores rise or fall. In New York State, when the math scores went down last year, the State Education Department said that the test was harder; when the math scores went up this year, the State Education Department was congratulating itself and the Regents (our state board) for its wise policies. How about an agency that dispenses the facts without fear or favor or self-praise?

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deb,

Sometimes I feel that we are having a discussion that is way too theoretical, while the world of American education is moving hard and fast in completely different directions. You may be comfortable with a school where the kids spend four years on biology, or four years (or is it one year?) taking apart cars and remaining ignorant of Shakespeare. It's a free country, and there are surely teachers and even principals who agree with you. But this is not the policy debate in Washington or the state capitals, it will not be part of the reauthorization of NCLB, no matter who is elected President or who controls Congress; it will not enter the heads of the business and foundation leaders who now seem to be in the driver's seat in many states and districts.

In other words, even if I agreed with you—which I don't—it would be irrelevant, because the policy environment is going elsewhere and not giving even a second's thought to the ideas you propose. There will be science taught because it will be tested this year, in accord with NCLB. All fifty states will have their own science test, and I have not heard them agonizing over which science to teach. My guess is that the science tests will reflect the science that is contained in the most widely used textbooks.In the early grades, and perhaps through middle school, science will likely be life science, environmental science, not much more than basic biology. I doubt that there will be much chemistry or physics on these state tests, for fear that the tests will be too "hard" and the state leaders want good news, not bad news. I doubt that there will be much chemistry or physics on these state tests, for fear that the tests will be too "hard" and the state leaders want good news, not bad news.

I confess that I cling stubbornly to the idea of a liberal arts curriculum, one that includes history, literature, the sciences, mathematics, physical education, and the arts. Forgive me for not including a foreign language. I would love to see every American student learn to speak and read a foreign language. Is that sort of liberal arts program too much to expect? Is it impossible? I don't think so.

Nor do I think it is necessary to get stymied by the question of "whose" history, "which" science or mathematics, any more than one should get stuck over which foreign language. Twenty years ago, I helped to write the K-12 history curriculum for California, and those who wanted no curriculum insisted that no one could decide "whose history" to teach. In fact, while the committee had some good debates, the content wasn't all that difficult to agree on. We all agreed that American children should know the basic ideas, individuals, turning points, and debates in our own history, and we agreed to expand the study of world history from one year to three years (that was hard, deciding which civilizations to include and which to leave out). The content of the U.S. history curriculum was straightforward; we had no problem agreeing on the inclusion of certain key events—like the American Revolution, the shaping of the Constitution, the Civil War, the progressive era, the Great Depression, the World Wars, the Cold War, etc. The interpretation of those events is left to teachers. At the very least, all the students should be able to discuss the Great Depression, for example, because they will know that it happened and will know something about its effects in American politics, its effects on the lives of many people, the art and literature associated with that era.

Will they remember all their life what they remembered in the history class in fifth grade or tenth grade? Will they remember everything they read or heard or studied? Maybe not. Probably not. But I would still argue that we must try our best to teach kids what we think is valuable, what history, literature, science, mathematics, etc., will be important to them in their lives as citizens, as individuals, as people who will work in the modern economy. After they leave school, I hope they will have a solid foundation for continued learning and have the knowledge and vocabulary to participate in our democratic society and the skills to make it ever more democratic.

Speaking of Shakespeare, as you did, reminds me that a couple weeks ago I heard a political leader say that our society will stand or fall, a century from now, not on whether anyone knows Shakespeare but on whether they have the right job skills. We would probably disagree with him, but for different reasons. If, a century from now, we have forgotten how to read Shakespeare, this would be (from my point of view) a culturally impoverished society. We will, of course, be long gone, but I hope that my grandchildren's grandchildren do not live in such a cold, hard place.

To switch subjects, I wonder if you saw the excellent piece about the NYC public schools in the current issue of The Nation (subscription required) by Lynnell Hancock? Quite a lot of teachers and parents are buzzing about it. Hancock, who is a professor of journalism at Columbia University, has done her homework. She sees a corporate style takeover of the public schools under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein, and I think she nails her thesis. Their latest scheme—to pay students for taking tests and for passing tests—is yet another example of the corporate mindset, which devalues education and assumes that the schools will be "fixed" if only the scores on tests go up (no matter the quality of the tests), by any means possible. As usual, the editorial boards of the local newspapers are cheering for an inane idea.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deb,

Apparently your trip to China has in no way dimmed your energy or your imagination. Imagine filing two pieces almost instantly!

What knowledge is of most worth? I don't think we would answer the question very differently. Despite some argumentativeness around the margins, we agree on "habits of mind," and we also (I think) agree that math, literacy, history, the sciences, the arts, and physical education are essential elements in education. You prefer to have the teachers in each school decide what the content of each year's curriculum is; I believe that it is valuable and indeed necessary to have curricular guidelines for the district, the state, even the nation. I think—and I may be wrong—that when it is left to individual schools to write their own curriculum, there is enormous variation. Some schools do it well, others do it poorly or not at all; most will tend to rely on the textbooks and the tests to determine their curriculum. Those who do it well tend to be located in the most affluent districts, which reinforces the inequities from district to district.

And there is another reason why it would be valuable to have a good state or national curriculum: Student mobility. Families move from state to state, and from district to district. Many years ago, I heard from a student who told me that her family had moved twice in three years, all in the state of New Jersey. Consequently, she had been assigned to study New Jersey state history three years in a row, in fourth grade, fifth grade, and sixth grade. That is wacky.

As to your point about hard work, I don't know the data any more than you, but I have read that Americans work harder and more productively than people in most other nations. A couple of years ago, Michael Barone wrote a book about the difference between life in school and life in the workplace, which he described as "Hard America, Soft America." Barone argued that the competition and accountability that typified the workplace made it very different from the schools. Maybe what we are seeing in schools today is a push to make the schools more like the workplace, in the sense of injecting competition and accountability.

I must say, before I get a barrage of comments from readers, that I am conflicted about all the stuff that is happening in schools today. I believe in the value of a national or at least a state curriculum, but I am very uneasy about the degeneration of the "standards movement" into the testing movement and the proliferation of test-prep activities. As someone who cares passionately about the importance of a knowledge-rich curriculum, I deplore the narrowing of the curriculum that has been caused by NCLB.

You may have noticed in Tuesday's New York Times that Mayor Bloomberg intends to launch a program to pay kids to get higher test scores. This is, it seems to me, the quintessence of absurdity. You and I agree that kids should become passionate about something; dinosaurs or space travel or archaeology or sports or music. But that assumes that they are willing to do something or pursue something or investigate something or practice something for the joy of it, for the sheer pleasure of doing it, not because somebody is going to pay them $5 or $50 to do it.

So here we are, having forgotten about curriculum, forgotten about "what knowledge is of most worth," forgotten about the goals of education, forgotten about the superiority of awakening intrinsic motivation...just figuring out what to pay kids to get higher scores. And if it "works," is there enough money in the world to pay everyone to do what they should do as a matter of commonsense, self-preservation, and civic duty?

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 6:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deb,

I hope you won't hold my Texas origins against me. I have lived in NYC since 1960—save for a 3-year detour to Washington, D.C.—and my first book was a history of the New York City public schools. I have been writing about these schools for about half my life, so, yes, I have a strong and continuing interest in what happens here. We don't usually say, "As New York goes, so goes the nation," but this is one of those instances where it might be appropriate to do so.

As you know, and our readers probably do not, the state legislature handed over control of the school system in 2002 to the Mayor, and he converted it to a city "Department of Education." He sold off its historic headquarters (110 Livingston Street in Brooklyn) and moved it to the notorious Tweed Courthouse, next door to City Hall. (It was something of a delicious irony that Boss Tweed himself had persuaded the State Legislature to eliminate the independent Board of Education and establish a NYC Department of Public Instruction in 1871.) The 2002 legislation abolished the central board of education and all community school boards. Although the legislation was silent on the structure of the school system, the Mayor abolished the city's 32 community school districts and replaced them with ten regions, each with a superintendent in charge of about 100,000 children.

Since 2002, there have been three reorganizations of the school system. The first totally centralized the district, so that all instructional mandates came from "Tweed" (as people now call the DOE), and everyone was expected to be on the same page with balanced literacy, Everyday Math, and the workshop model. In the second reorganization, the DOE created something called the "Empowerment Zone," where schools could escape the micromanagement of the first reorganization—and 332 schools, about one-fourth of the total, chose to escape and become autonomous of the regions.

Then this past January came the third reorganization, and this one was a doozy. The Mayor and Chancellor announced that they had decided to abolish the 10 regions (that they had created in 2003) and re-establish the 32 school districts (that they had abolished fin 2003). They described this as a natural evolution of their plans. Now every principal is tasked with choosing one of three options: 1) become an empowerment school and be sort of autonomous (the pedagogical mandates are still in place, even for "empowerment" schools); 2) affiliate with one of four "learning support organizations, each headed by a former regional superintendent who has no power to supervise the principal; or 3) affiliate with a private management organization to help them achieve their goals.

There is no template for the new structure. Apparently what is intended (though it is hard to know what is intended) is to abolish the school "system" and to rely on principal ingenuity and hard accountability to produce hundreds of quasi-independent schools, all meeting performance targets. The threat of firing hangs heavy over the heads of the principals, as this sanction has been repeatedly invoked for those who don't get the right test scores.

You quite rightly noted that the Mayor, in his press conference, belittled people who preferred his first reorganization to the last one. It has become something of a mantra in this regime to belittle critics, to castigate them as "defenders of the status quo," and to dream up other choice epithets for anyone who is not completely supportive of the leadership, whatever it may do.

You also rightly noted that the Mayor and Chancellor have mobilized quite an impressive base of foundations, universities, and business groups, in part because so many of these organizations have contracts or charter schools or want contracts or charter schools. The only groups that they have thus far been unable to bring into line are parents, teachers, and administrators. The administration thinks that these are "special interest groups," and of course they are; parents, teachers, and administrators do have a very special interest in seeing the schools get better, far more special and urgent I would say than the foundations, universities, and business leaders.

The sad fact is, Debbie, that dissent has been all but silenced in this city while our school leaders dissolve what used to be known as the New York City public school system and take a bold leap into the unknown. Apparently they hope that letting 1,500 or so flowers bloom will work. One need not be a seer to predict that the Matthew Effect will take hold in this educational marketplace, that the rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer.

It is all very sad.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 10:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

I wrote the following after reading the NY Times piece you sent me last week. Meanwhile my earlier effort to lay out our differences has led to a lively response from you on progressive education and the rationale for standardized national tests. I'm already preparing my counter-arguments. But before I blast back on either one of these subjects where we appear in great disagreement, I thought it interesting to talk a moment about where we are intellectually and viscerally on such common ground—on the educational system in NYC. I find that interesting—since one naturally imagines that one's day to day responses on the ground are the "natural" outgrowth of one's deeper positions. So while I want to explore the nitty-gritty of the larger disagreements you have responded to so eloquently—it will have to be postponed because this NYC contretemps will be old hat soon.

As to The New York Times piece "Mayor Attacks Critics of Plan to Fix Schools," (April 10, 2007), what an amazing photo, to start with. That grim crowd surrounding Klein, following a smug-looking Bloomberg to the podium, are determined to stop the enemy. But looking somewhat confused, too.

Photographers have the capacity to make us all look foolish if they want to. But that photo nicely captured it. Plus the quote in the story: "You are either with the children, or you're against them"

The existing system of 10 regions that the naughty "opposition" is supporting—by demanding that the Mayor and Klein not make still another overhaul so fast—was Klein's plan. It is not the "status quo" any more than his new plan—which virtually no one understands—will be ten minutes after he inaugurates it.

The "status quo" is, in fact, the great revolutionary upheaval he instituted two years ago to get rid of the old 32 districts and the complacent central bureaucracy. Now the last revolution is labeled the status quo and those who support sticking with it for a while called supporters of "failure, indifference and paralysis." If you aren't for my "new season of hope" you must be against children.

The most astounding thing, Diane, is that the Mayor may really be sincere in his amazement —"sadly and incredibly, I think, there is a small chorus of people" who aren't with me, he proclaims. Given his relentless and successful drive to marginalize any opposition base, and his overwhelming support from the business/foundation/university community, the abolition of all even semi-representative school boards, and the aura of secrecy that surrounds each new reorganization, it's amazing to me that parents and teachers have gotten organized at all, but probably equally amazing that it took them so long.

The juxtaposition—"you are either for or against"—is after all part of our political landscape. The "opposition" merely asks that he postpone the next revolution until folks can figure out what it is.

The nerve! Those folks standing behind him may be a bunch of well-meaning New Yorkers, folks who hope and expect that the institutions they represent will be able to do great things for kids if his latest set of reforms goes through. They would have been wiser to stay out of this since neither they nor anyone else knows exactly what it is that the next plan is—except that principals have to choose one of a prescribed set of new "bosses" within the month.

This is not just teachers lives that are being remodeled every year, but parents and kids too. It is hard to tell any parent in NYC where to go for advice or even—dare I mention it—to protest a decision.

In the absence of any lay control, accountability arises only when choosing the mayor—and this one isn't running again.

The frustration and anguish that many parents experience in "choosing" schools is staggering. Figuring out what to do if the system isn't working the way it claims it is requires unbelievable stamina, not to mention free time—assuming one ever finally gets to the bottom of it.

Since who's in charge constantly changes, it isn't even possible to get advice from a neighbor or the school principal! It does make me wonder if I'd have chosen private schooling if I were doing it over.

I think of the tension and potential anguish we all went through last month waiting for my 18-year-old grandson to hear if he got into the college he had his heart set on.

In a city in which parents with kids in public schools hardly represent a serious political threat, demonizing the teacher's union is the best the mayor could offer up. It's a measure of how out of control he feels at the least sign of opposition.

Shame on New Yorkers for having let things get this bad. As a "native" of NYC I take it more personally than perhaps you do, Diane.

But as a native of Texas you can sympathize.

Deb

Posted by Deborah Meier at 11:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Deborah

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

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

Deb,

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

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

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

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

Diane

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

Deborah,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Diane

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

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

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

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

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

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