Bridging Differences

Dear Diane,

A lot of questions. I’d love to know more about your answers, too. But part of the problem is that there are lots of different things called charters—even the charter laws differ dramatically in different states and the schools even more so. Not all are small, and many are no more, and sometimes maybe less, self-governing than the average regular public school. Vouchers are, of course, a straightforward proposal to get out of the public school business—except maybe for the left-overs.

The Edison schools (now moving into online learning) have been as large as any public school. In fact, most charter school students in Massachusetts attend large schools, although the average charter is modest in size. Many of the “chains” are even more “standardized” than KIPP. You sent me a piece, recently Diane, about IKEA schools—in of all places, Sweden!—whose leader boasts: "We do not mind being compared to McDonald's. If we're religious about anything, it's standardization. We tell our teachers it is more important to do things the same way than to do them well." A colleague and pro-KIPP’er friend acknowledged that their kids sometimes have difficulty in high schools that expect kids to be more independent, speak up, write well, and be intellectual explorers. He hoped they’d learn from this. But deciding to go into the high school business may just be postponing the bad news. (See Mike Rose’s brilliant "Lives On the Boundary" about just this subject.)

A side note on test scores: dramatic system-wide improvements in test scores, like New York state’s and D.C.'s, would have sent up a red flag in the days of psychometric standards when such results were a sign of poor tests or cheating. One of the odd qualities of the current mania for testing is that we have no standards for standardized tests.

But back to small schools. The purpose of smallness—that kids and faculty and families are better known to each other—is generally irrelevant in many of the new “small learning communities” and in most of the chains that profess smallness. Irrelevant, that is, for the purposes we had in mind. The reason for the large “dinner table” conversation that small schools (and smaller classes) allow for is precisely in order to make difficult decisions together, to weigh trade-offs, to look across age spans at unexpected side effects (or no effects at all, e.g. “successfully teaching fractions” starting at scratch year after year). Kids have always created their own form of smallness (cliques, gangs, groupings), so have adults! What we wanted was smallness on behalf of educational decision-making close to the ground.

Knowing kids better is not simply to help kids “feel good” (which is definitely a positive), but so that we can over time better understand their interests, styles, passions, “ways of thinking”—and our own. It matters only if we—school and family—are in control of how we can respond to what we learn. It’s a laboratory, in effect, for democracy. It’s not intended to turn teachers into social workers (although hopefully there are social workers that the kids can see) but into wiser intellectual leaders. Fewer and fewer kids take for granted any more that they live within something they can call “a community”—a living culture held together by common bonds as well as common norms for dealing with differences. Democracy is one kind of community, and a very complex kind. When our lives depend on democracy many of its citizens have only the faintest notion about how to think, much less operate, within it. Often enough, they abandon it at precisely such moments as a frill we cannot afford.

When we tease local school boards, or local decision-making in general, for stupidity, we are acknowledging that we have created a society in which very few people “think like” democrats, seeing the importance of connecting their knowledge to their arguments, taking the opinions of others into account, and on and on and on. Once every four years we deride “elitism” but in between we operate with elitist assumptions about the way “ordinary people” think. That’s the most telling indictment of our schools, not their scores on tests.

Yes, representative democracy is essential when the numbers prevent direct democracy, so we must learn equally how to operate within such a system. But each school needs to develop its own set of trade-offs between the two, which was a central argument of the NYC Network project. I think the Boston pilots come close to representing a helpful model that has captured the strengths of charters, but has remained true to our commitment to public’ness. I’m hoping the L.A. model follows in that path.

But, remember, what you and I have hoped for in public schooling has always been aspirational. As you have noted in your books, it has had a rocky and uneven history. Many were excluded. Nor have we ever depended on them as much as we do today given all the other publics kids were once exposed to in their growing years. Today, the young experience the adult world, if at all, through a variety of media, via pre-programmed, often solo games. They require very little negotiation amongst peers, and the ends are pure amusement—to induce the state of wanting “more, more”. (I’m sure there are some skills that are honed, some knowledge taken in—I’m an acknowledged novice at kids’ electronic games.)

Small schools are an attempt to re-create, intentionally, the best of the family dinner table, the town meeting, the public square, the legislative process, the team, and the academy of thinkers—with as much of the diversity of the larger community as we can corral all in one manageable place.

You asked many other questions; particularly about the reason so many hedge fund managers (etc.) want to start schools. Money and the pleasure of control is my short answer. The longer answer is that they really are “believers”. Note the rest of that piece, where IKEA’s spokesman broadens his McDonald’s analogy. What works for hotels and airlines, he says, is what’s best for schools.

But this is more than enough for starters.

Deb

Posted by Deborah Meier at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (41) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deborah,

I am still somewhat unsure about the difference between your small schools and the small schools created by various school districts, or your small schools and the charter schools that are popping up in many districts.

I just read in the LA Daily News that Antonio Villaraigosa, the mayor of Los Angeles, has asked voters to approve a new multi-billion-dollar bond issue to support new charter schools and "small learning communities." Not long ago, the Broad Foundation (and Eli Broad himself) committed $23 million to create many new charter schools in Los Angeles.

How will these schools differ from what you did at Central Park East? Will they replicate the promise of the Annenberg Challenge? Are they designed to achieve what you tried to do in the early 1990s? What are the similarities, what are the differences?

How do you feel about the dramatic expansion of KIPP charters? Soon KIPP will have 40-plus charters in Houston, and a growing number in many other cities. KIPP boasts a high graduation rate and unusually high test scores. How do you feel about their methods and their success?

Does the charter movement promote the privatization of public education? Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Why?

And last, why do you think so many super-wealthy individuals are so deeply interested in starting charter schools? Do they see public education as a government bureaucracy in need of an injection of private enterprise? In New York City recently, we have seen an upsurge of hedge fund managers and others with vast resources choosing to start charter schools, in some cases actually getting set up in a public school building. For example, Courtney Sale Ross operates a charter school in the ground floor of the Department of Education's headquarters. So, when people come to visit the school system's headquarters, the school on display is a charter school. This was supposed to be a showcase school, but it has run through a string of principals and teachers in its short life (see article in New York Sun detailing problems in Ross Global Academy Charter School). Another charter school is supposed to be inserted into P.S. 15 in Red Hook, Brooklyn, by one Spencer Robertson, son of billionaire Julian Robertson. I wonder why the billionaires don't buy their own space instead of taking it away from regular public schools that lack their deep pockets. In NYC, nearly three dozen charter schools have been wedged into public school buildings, and you can imagine the culture clash between the two schools in the same space, which is accentuated when the charter students—with private funding—have smaller classes, more technology, etc. A group called Democrats for Education Reform, run by wealthy hedge fund managers and other zillionaires, has the primary goal of creating more charter schools.

So, what gives here? How did some of your ideas migrate to become the plaything of the super-rich?

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 9:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

Every few days I have a new object for “the worst ever” prize. Our new American-as-apple-pie identification with torture is the one that keeps me up at night. It seems so unbelievable that it has gone on for so long, so publicly, and is so unstoppable. The gulag of our time—here in America.

But in answer to your query, the collapse of the Annenberg Challenge in 1995 remains painful for me to remember and too long to tell well. ("In Schools We Trust" has a chapter on it and other similar efforts.) I was just recently going through the documents from that period and recalling my disbelief and joy—could it possibly be (I kept pinching myself) that all the powers-that-be have signed on to such a serious and visionary effort to innovate on a sufficient scale to really influence future policy? We had the state commissioner, two successive NYC chancellors, the chair of the school board, and the head of the teachers' union signed on! We had both NYU and Teachers College prepared to develop the needed database, to document process and assess the outcomes over a minimum of five years, as well as track graduates over far longer.

The NYC Annenberg “idea” was to take a stab at the “accountability/governance” conundrum. Was there a way to do what’s right on the ground—which requires lots of “local” latitude—and still be accountable on a broader public scale.

The four nonprofit partners to the project came from different political and pedagogical wings of the reform movement, but were all interested in tackling the conundrum. Small schools were a part of it because we each, for our own separate reasons, thought that the kind of changes in attitude and practice needed required the consent of all those involved. Size would make this easier by making everything more transparent, and decision-making more direct. Ditto for choice—for staff and families. Self-governance was a given, because what we were exploring involved freedom from some of the constraints imposed by labor, management, and old habits.

Of course, you can see immediately how this might echo the business mantra! Less regulation, “trust us”. I worried about it, but I figured we were mom and pop stores, if you will; pre-corporate-style capitalism—and operating under a public umbrella.

Our definition of choice was that it belonged to families, not schools, to do the choosing, and to the community of professionals, not principals, to select their colleagues. Self-governing involved figuring out systems of governance that balanced professional and constituent voices and votes. Small sizes meant being small enough for all the staff to sit around one table and be heard; small enough so that part of our accountability would lie in the sheer transparency of the work. Dropouts would be noticed, by name.

Our definition of accountability was a system of multiple measures by which constituents could assess their work in public and transparent ways. We did not presume each Network would develop one standard approach; instead each Network was charged with developing its own intra- and external accountability system. But we did assume that we needed public review of each Network’s practices so that their systems of accountability met professional standards. A shared board of representatives would ensure the project’s financial and educational integrity, and provide a forum for important cross-learnings that came out of the work.

The aim of what we called Networks for School Renewal was to create a largely unregulated “learning zone” made up of networks of four to seven schools each, which would serve a total of 50,000 students (5 percent of the system) in an “open, collaborative fashion, working closely with the Board…the Chancellor’s office, and the UFT, and consulting regularly with…all the major stakeholders…so that our work can have a galvanizing effect on the system as a whole.” It was to be a controlled setting to study what did and didn’t work.

Alas, a new chancellor (and as a result a new school board chair) and a new state superintendent came on board, and didn’t like the idea. Forget it, they said. Alas, too (from my viewpoint), the Annenberg Foundation and the sponsors saw no other solution but to take the money and salvage what they could. Some of the old terminology was borrowed by the new chancellor, e.g. a “learning zone” for failing schools. Choice continued to thrive on a small scale as each of the sponsors used the resources to help small schools get started.

Ten years later, a new administration—under direct control of New York's mayor—resurrected the idea, calling for more “empowerment”, more choice, and more small schools—and networks, too. However, the empowering was for principals directly “accountable” to the central system. The new “networks” of 20-30 schools were accountable not to their constituents, but to the mayor. The system offered choice—a vast array of schools, with many free to choose their students. It is a kind of General Motors with competing automobile divisions accountable to a single CEO. Instead of moving toward more direct voice “from the field” via a range of democratic avenues, the Bloomberg Mayoral Plan insures as few intermediaries or dissident voices and as little public review as possible. Instead, we have a single mayoral package of reform, accountable to the mayor alone.

Sadly, and inevitably, it also took the wind out of the sails of most of the early innovators who were literally made invisible (official NYC history claims small schools started with Klein/Bloomberg), whose experiences were ignored, and whose innovations were severely curtailed. Part of my pique is no doubt personal! (There are some positive side effects as well—for another time, including the Boston Pilot ntwork.)

It was a lost opportunity to explore under public aegis how the ideas of small, self-governing schools, accountability, and choice might work in a big urban community. The time will come for another try. New words, new ideas, and new innovators will invent their own new form of the Annenberg Challenge, someday.

Deborah

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

Dear Deborah,

Sometimes, like you, I start feeling down about the direction of our world today. The soaring price of gasoline is making life harder for everyone; millions of people are finding that it puts an intolerable strain on their budget for food, shelter, and other basic necessities. Meanwhile we are exporting billions of dollars to undemocratic regimes around the world.

Add to those real and present economic burdens the ongoing threat of climate changes, and we do confront terrible challenges and crises. I must say, I also worry about the growing tensions in the Middle East. The leader of Iran has been threatening for a few years to wipe Israel off the map, and last week the Iranians demonstrated that they have the missiles capable of carrying out the next genocide in our world's sorry history. Like you, I do not want to see the United States embroiled in another war in the Middle East; but I would not be sad at all if the Israelis performed another of their military surgical strikes, identifying and eliminating every single nuclear site in Iran. Not only would I not be sad, I would celebrate. I do not want to see a nuclear strike on Tel Aviv or on any other place in the world.

I have recently been reading the latest novel of Alan Furst. His novels deal with events in Europe in the eerie pre-war period in the 1930s. They are historically accurate, though the characters are his own. I have read all of his novels—he is something of a cult writer and has a devoted following, which includes me—and he makes no political point, just tells a gripping and very informative tale. In the current book, "The Spies of Warsaw," there is a Nazi who says that one of Hitler's favorite sayings is, "The world wants to be deceived, and we will deceive them." If Ahmadinejad says again and again that he wants to wipe Israel off the map, the Israelis would be foolish not to take him at his word. At the very least, this is not a situation in which they should wait to see if he is going to do it, because then it would be too late; millions will die in Israel and millions will die in a counter-strike on Iran.

But, whoa, I am getting way out of my zone of knowledge, just speculating, as is every citizen's right, as we all do. After all, if only experts were allowed to speak, that would vitiate the very meaning of democracy, in which all of us have the right to express our opinions. That, too, is a problem, as the blogosphere is both democratic and filled with opinions that range from insane conspiracy theories to really smart amateurs to really knowledgeable, well-grounded debates.

But, here and now, I have a question for you about the past. Friends have contacted me and said, "Ask Debbie what happened to the Annenberg Challenge." What they really want to know is how the small school movement turned into one of the favorite strategies of the corporate elites who are so interested in education. They also want to know how you feel about this idea that "headquarters" can decide to open 10, 20, 50 small schools, recruit principals, and will them into existence.

And while we are at it, were you aware that the New York City Department of Education just awarded a $50 million, $5 million contract to its own Leadership Academy? The Leadership Academy was created by Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein. Klein was the chair of its board. He selected the other board members. He and the mayor raised $75 million for its first three years of operation as a quasi-public entity (imagine: $75 million to "train" 160 principals!). They tried to sell the rest of the country on the idea that this Academy was a national model, though no other district could possibly afford to emulate it. Just recently, Klein removed himself from the board of the Academy and awarded this $50 million contract to it. Of course, this means that the same crowd will be in charge of recruiting and training the school system's new principals long after they have left office. Doesn't this eviscerate the principle of mayoral control, since the new mayor will find that the old mayor is still in charge of training principals? Funny, with the exception of The New York Sun, not a peep in the media.

What a world.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

You've put it neatly—whose expertise is running the show? Except for one flaw. How come, since there are more teachers than policymakers, we give up and not them?

There are lots of reasons, of course, including the fact that teachers (and parents) tend not—as we noted once before—to "see like a State" (ala James Scott's wonderful book). Policymakers seem to do it naturally. But, of course, it's also because they represent people who are more powerful. And also people who, alas, take themselves more seriously.

When I first got into being a kindergarten teacher (as more than an idle past time), my family of origin was a bit disappointed. It was clearly a status step down. While I stuck with it because I got fascinated, part of it stemmed from another family trait—a kind of knee-jerk anti-snobbism. Of course, I had the luck (in retrospect) of being turned down for a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship in 1951 because I was a married woman! Perhaps I was also lucky in finding substitute teaching the most challenging thing I'd ever done; and alongside it getting credentialed in Chicago's school system the most humiliating. It produced a kind of feisty "I'll show 'em" response.

But I knew from the start that being an early-childhood public school teacher did not make me very interesting to important people or give my ideas much prestige. Since I wrote articles I was occasionally invited to speak publicly. But not as an expert. I was the "voice from the field", invited to add some spice. Receiving the MacArthur changed it—suddenly I was an expert; the Wizard had given me a brain.

It did help me. I had "an idea" that I thought could impact more widely on public education; so being taken seriously would be useful. I was deeply influenced by Ted Sizer's work on school reform writ large, and thus tried to "think like a State". The idea, as you noted, was the "small school movement". I saw it as an avenue for getting teachers to seriously think through and change their practices, by creating settings designed for such work. I wrote an Op Ed in 1988 for The New York Times ("Small is Beautiful", more or less), and a few years later we got $50 million from the Annenberg Foundation to take our "idea" citywide.

The idea was that all else being equal, it would be easier, faster, and more powerful to change the way schooling took place if we had small schools (under 300 students), self-governing schools (with a few exceptions), in which the constituents were there by choice. It took a decade, but the idea has clearly had an enormous impact: on everything but what we originally had in mind.

In part because it was translated by people who were better than we were at "thinking like a State". Their translation read as follows: small (under 600), with more power in the hands of principals in return for less autonomous classrooms and schools, and in which schools had more choice over whom to accept. They saw it as a way to better monitor top-down mandated change, not to foster a bubbling up of change. (e.g.: I read this week that small schools in Portland can't decide if they want their kids to be able to take electives in their sister small schools.)

If you want to be an innovator? Go private or charter, the policymakers advise. (And even most of the charters soon were looking more and more like top-down corporate enterprises designed by policymakers.)

NCLB didn't invent this, and getting rid of it won't stop it. What is needed is a serious discussion of what's best done by whom? And for what purpose? I think I've a natural paranoia for centralized decisionmaking that's usually pretty healthy. My default is always, "so why not let those most involved in having to live with decisions make them?" But I also know that if my forebears hadn't taken on racism, leaving it to the locals wouldn't have brought us as far as we've gotten. The same for global warming. And a lot in between.

Where power is unequally held, unequal outcomes are not surprising—intentionally or not. Local or federal. Still, we can't help but try.

We're left with thinking aloud about what the federal government can do to level the field (resources, for one thing), what is best left to the state, and what to the local community, school, family, individual teacher, and student?

Deb

P.S. Do you ever read Mike Rose's blog? It's great. His column this week is on a topic that has kept me in the schoolhouse for 43 years.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Deb,

Don't worry about our agreeing too much! If we are really going to "bridge differences," then we should constantly seek common ground.

I like small schools, but I also like middle-size schools. About ten years ago, Valerie Lee of the University of Michigan did a study in which she asked what was the ideal size for a high school, and she concluded that the ideal school was small enough for kids to be known by the teachers, but large enough to mount a reasonable curriculum. The best size for a high school, she decided, based on a review of student progress in schools of different sizes, is 600-900 students. You may think this is too large, but it sure beats schools of 2,000-3,000. I think we can all agree that the mega-schools that were created in the past forty years or so are hard, difficult environments for adolescents, where they can easily get lost in the crowd. Anonymity is not good for kids or for adults, either.

Anyway, American education seems to be engaged in yet another statistical sham, this time involving small high schools. Everyone wants Gates money, so almost every big-city school district is breaking up big schools into small schools. To make sure that they look good and get good press (the same thing), the leadership of some districts stack the deck by screening out the lowest performing kids—the special education students, the limited-English speakers, and kids with low test scores.

Sorry for referring once again to the city where I live, but in New York City, we have had a barrage of publicity about the success of the new small high schools. The barrage, needless to say, emanates from the NYC Department of Education, and the local media (and national media) embrace whatever is doled out to them, without thinking or investigating. The facts have been ferreted out by, among others, David Bloomfield of Brooklyn College, who filed a lawsuit against the Department of Education for excluding disproportionate numbers of special education students and LEP students from the new schools; and also by Leo Casey of the United Federation of Teachers. Casey did an analysis in which he compared the qualifications of the students in the new small high schools to those in the large schools, and found that these were very different groups of students. On the UFT blog, called Edwize (www.edwize.org), Casey demonstrated that the Department of Education had tilted the playing field towards their little schools. He wrote:

"In every specific comparison between a new small school and a large comprehensive school, the small school took in higher percentages of students meeting standards and ready to do high school work, and lower percentages of students at risk for dropping out. Much larger percentages of the incoming ninth and tenth grade of the new small schools had met or surpassed standards on the 8th grade New York State English Language Arts [ELA] and Math exams than the incoming class in the large comprehensive schools. Most strikingly, in one instance the small Pelham Prep had five times as many students meeting ELA standards and more than three times as many students meeting Math standards as the large Columbus HS."

So when the DOE puts out press releases touting the new small schools, they are not comparing apples to apples.

It is a shame to see the public taken in by these shenanigans. It is a disgrace to see the press going along with the charade.

Diane

Posted by Diane Ravitch at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Dear Diane,

We better be careful, or we'll too often think alike!

In 1989 I wrote an op-ed for The New York Times entitled "Small is Sensible." I love big cities, I began, but not big schools. I still feel the same way—about both.

"Critics worry," says a NY Times editorial (July 6th) that the "new small schools...handpick the most desirable and most easily educated students". True or false? "It may be true", the editorial continues. Still, "given the improvement," full speed ahead. Duh? The same issue is arising now in Boston. It worries me—because not only do I love truth but I believe small schools are a necessary but insufficient step toward engaging all kids—and I mean all. Large schools that can screen out the likely losers get better test results, too. Less hype and more honest data will, in the long run, help the small school movement, not hurt it. They don't need disinformation. And you are right, Diane. In a world in which "even the NY Times" treats data so sloppily it's hard to construct decent policy.

We also need a broader definition of the kind of data that counts. Giving more externally mandated tests (NYC now requires students to take 4-5 tests a year to monitor their progress) perhaps will raise scores, but whether it raises the intellectual competence of its students and their life chances is unlikely. John Ferrandino, the head of NYC's high schools a decade ago, followed a class of 9th graders for four years. He tracked their attendance, test scores and graduation. It was much like Tyler's 8-year study in the 1940s that tracked kids on an even wider range of outcomes for an additional 4 years following high school. A new Tyler study on a sampled basis every 3-5 years could provide the data for a useful democratic debate.

Aha—once again my favorite topic: democratic debate. So imagine my surprise when I ran into an article in the New Yorker (July 9) about a new book by economist Bryan Caplan (Princeton Press). Caplan argues that we'd be better off if fewer people voted. He lists stuff you know, Diane, about our woeful ignorance of how our government works, and the disparities between public "opinion" and public knowledge. He doesn't think there's any hope for a more informed public. Ergo, no need for a public debate.

Caplan's solution: Leave decision-making to economists. A friend in China (Dan Bell) wrote a piece in Dissent speculating that China might end up with a system of two Houses—one elected by "the people" and one chosen by national exams—in the Chinese tradition. I think Caplan might like something of this sort—as long as the exam was mostly based on orthodox Milton Friedman-ite economics. It was good to read Joseph Stiglitz, after Caplan. A bigtime mainstream economist and globalization guru, he reminded us that a consensus doesn't constitute Truth. His major book on globalization is a powerful critique of consensus economics (more on the value and limits of Expertise another time).

Klein and Bloomberg have, I fear, reached the same conclusion as Caplan: Scrap democratic debate. You and I haven't.

Bloomberg and Klein's latest nightmare scheme of financially rewarding kids and principals for test score improvements is right out of B.F. Skinner's scary child-rearing theories—imposed on everyone's else's children. Or at least those "stuck" in public schools. Caplan might see it as compatible with his economic model. It's an idea economists might dream up for sure.

Alas, Diane, we might keep the façade of democracy but lose the argument. Slogans in its favor are insufficient for the kind of long-term effort needed to preserve its heart. Such a fight will have to tackle the question of what information we need, how we get it, how reliable it is, who should be expected to decide what (and the relationship between the Congress, the President and the Supreme Court, for example). And it will need more live democratic experiences.

Best,
Deb

P.S. Re. the Reich affair. The sad thing about the way the press handled the Reichs versus the Bloombergs and the Gates, is that the former were willing to get their hands dirty with the daily needs of one kid at a time. I was there, I saw it. That's worth honoring.

Posted by Deborah Meier at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)