To all my critics, some who either posted comments to my open letter to Diane Ravitch or tweeted them or blogged them: thanks for the discussion. Many of you made thoughtful points that can be summed up in this post:
Even though this blog is addressed to Diane Ravitch, I don’t think you are engaging in a discussion on the same issues she highlights. Much of what you say about teaching and curriculum is true. Teaching can and should be better. Teachers can and should do a better job of engaging students. Curriculum needs to be richer, deeper and more learner friendly. Your leadership in the area of curriculum design has been invaluable, although it has not had as full an impact as you desire. I believe that improvement has been seen over the last thirty years in teaching and curriculum, but we have certainly not done enough. I find more elementary classrooms than not to be engaging places where students are active and learning. Work is still to be done on the high school level.
All that being said, the corporate reform movement will destroy any gains that have been made and stunt any continued growth. The vast majority of charter schools are even less engaging and more draconian in their disciplinary policies than are public schools. The teachers are less well prepared and even more likely to rely on low level instruction. Voucher programs are stealing badly needed funds from the public schools. Money doesn’t always improve learning, but lack of money has a negative impact on learning. There can be no question that the corporate driven test mania will make schooling less engaging and the curriculum narrower if it is allowed to continue.
So, Grant, I would argue that we need to attack teaching and learning on all three fronts. All fronts that we can control if we choose. One front you articulate well here. The two other fronts, ending the corporate usurpation of public education and attacking poverty as a barrier to learning are well articulated by Diane Ravitch.
I am in complete agreement. My point was merely to ask those who speak only of forces outside of our immediate control as educators to attend to what is not only in our control but can make a big difference.
Alas, others of you resorted to the cheapest of ad hominem attacks that further poison the national discourse.
Strikingly, many of you missed my point.
Teachers and schools make a difference, a significant one. And we are better off improving teaching, learning, and schooling than anything else as educators because that’s what is in our control. Am I denying or tolerating poverty? Of course not. I decry the increased poverty and wealth inequality in this country. I vote democratic and give to liberal causes such as MoveOn and SPLC. I agree with Diane that there are nasty people and groups trying to subvert public education for their own ideologies and gain.
But to tar all reformers as evil?
More to the point of my post, I have lived my whole life on the simple belief that you do what you can and should do to make a difference, in your corner of the world; it is wise to spend little time repeatedly decrying things over which you don’t personally have much control, and thus contributing to the fatalism that afflicts teaching and the country in general. I’m a kid of the 60s: you are either part of the solution or part of the problem. And teachers have great control over whether or not their classroom is a haven and a joyous place of learning – period. [added: I recently read Dave Burgess‘ Teach Like A Pirate and found many of the author’s hundreds of ways to control your learning space delightful and useful.]
To further this with some evidence of note, I have three cautions, in brief phrases: Hattie’s meta-analysis, outlier schools, and Garfield High School in particular.
SES and achievement. Here is a cautionary note for those who simply look at aggregate data concerning SES, from Hattie’s research:
We need to be careful, however, about the unit of analysis used in these studies: is it the socioeconomic status of the school or the student? … The aggregate effect was .73 at the school level, whereas the effect as .55 at the individual student level. The effects were lower in rural schools (.34) than in suburban schools (.56)… Further, the effect was much lower when the data about SES were provided by students (.38) than when provided by parents (.76).
Here is a graph of results that reminds us that there are many outlier schools in terms of SES vs. achievement – including ‘good’ schools that don’t do as well as they should:
Does this graph really suggest the truth of the simplistic statement “Poverty is key”?
Here and here are two recent reports on such outlier schools.
On the power of good teachers. Here is Hattie responding, in effect, to those who criticize me for over-emphasizing the small-focus issue of good teaching. Hattie provides full support for my claims that variance of quality is rampant, and it is not just a problem in ‘bad’ schools (thus, it cannot be an SES issue primarily):
The major message is simple – what teachers do matters. However, this has become a cliché that masks the fact that the greatest source of variance in our system relates to teachers – they can vary in major ways. The codicil is that what “some” teachers do matters – especially those who teach in a most deliberate and visible manner.
A major theme of this book is that [teacher] intentions often fall short because the decisions are inadequately evaluated relative to alternatives, they tend to be related to structural and working conditions and not to teaching strategies and conceptions,, and they are evaluated using models that seek success and ignore failures… In many classrooms and schools, there is evidence of low effect sizes, reliance on poor methods and strategies, a dependence upon war stories and anecdotes, and an agreement to tolerate different and sometimes poor teaching….It is also clear that, yet again, it is the difference in the teachers that make the difference in student learning. [emphasis added]
By contrast, here is Ravitch in Reign of Error:
The reformers often repeat the claim that three “great” or “effective” teachers in a row would close the test score gap between black and white children… Perhaps such “great” teachers exist, but there is no evidence that they exist in great numbers or that they can produce the same feats year after year for every student.
I find the putting of quotes around “great” to be very offensive to many such teachers.
The impact of Jaime Escalante at Garfield HS. Here is Jay Matthews on the impact of one particular such teacher – Jaime Escalante at Garfield HS – and, importantly, a very different story than posed by the hagiographic movie. Note that once Jaime Escalante showed what was possible, more teachers had more success with more students – including more than he had!. In fact, a few years after Escalante started his effort, his kids were outscored by his junior colleague and some of his history and science colleagues:
“Garfield had done better that any other normal enrollment inner city high school in the history of the country. About 74% of the 329 AP examinations taken by Garfield students received grades of 3 or better, above the national average of 69 percent.
The 129 Garfield students taking Calculus AB or BC examinations exceeded the total of every US public school except three… Garfield had sent more calculus students to the calculus examinations than Exeter or Punahoe, New Trier, or Hunter College.
Here’s Matthews writing just after the death of Escalante:
“Yet the school had produced phenomenal results that would challenge widespread rules barring average and below-average students from taking AP classes. The stunning success at Garfield led U.S. presidents to endorse Escalante’s view that impoverished children can achieve as much as affluent kids if they are given enough extra study time and encouragement to learn.
In 1987, 26 percent of all Mexican American students in the country who passed the AP Calculus exams attended a single high school: Garfield. That meant that hundreds of thousands of overlooked students could probably do as well if they got what Escalante was giving out. But what was that?
Whenever I suggested that the great teaching I was seeing at Garfield might be the reason so many students were succeeding in AP, people at parties dismissed me as romantic and naive. “I bet if you checked out their backgrounds, you will find those teachers are skimming off the few kids whose parents went to college,” one professor told me. More common was the assertion that Escalante, and the school’s splendid history and government teachers, drilled enough facts and formulas into their kids to fool the AP tests but had no chance of giving them the conceptual understanding that well-prepared suburban students developed.
These theories quickly fell apart. I surveyed 109 Garfield calculus students in 1987 and found that only nine had even one parent with a college degree, and that only 35 had a parent with a high school diploma. The engineering and science professors at USC, Harvey Mudd and the other California colleges recruiting Garfield grads laughed at the “no conceptual understanding” myth, as did the Escalante students I started running into who had become doctors, lawyers and teachers.
It took me several years to understand how Garfield’s AP teachers, and the many educators who have had similar results in other high-poverty schools, pulled all this off. They weren’t skimming. It wasn’t a magic trick of test results. They simply had high expectations for every student. They arranged extra time for study — such as Escalante’s rule that if you were struggling, you had to return to his classroom after the final bell and spend three hours doing homework, plus take some Saturday and summer classes, too. They created a team spirit, teachers and students working together to beat the big exam.
Schools, all schools, can be much better than they are. That is the core premise in my work. Many anti-reformers believe that most schools are darn good and it’s just those ‘bad’ schools that are the problem. Anyone who has spent hundreds of hours in schools of all kinds knows this is simply not true.
Nor are educators in the Ravitch camp going to be happy you spoke her words when you go to seek more funding in non-urban schools from Boards and communities. Suburban districts have for a long time played a very dangerous game of making their communities think that they are truly outstanding. Well, good luck getting funding when the new PARCC or SB test scores come rolling in and you look more average, and you have only consistently claimed that poverty is a key factor in test results.
Finally, a few of my favorite posted comments:
” I just finished reading [Grant’s post] and it’s like I just listened to a pump up speech before a game! I need to make sure I get to work, planning, teaching, designing, and evaluating my math team!
I think there are forces outside of school’s that affect a child’s performance, but I also agree with Grant that teachers play an extremely significant role. I am still left with the question – Why do teachers have such a difficult time analyzing what they are doing and seeing how they can improve?
For gosh sakes, Peyton Manning, arguably the best in the game of football right now, tirelessly studies film, listens to coaches, tweaks his plays, practices the basics, and works out. In short, he analyzes, assesses, and then makes a plan to improve. He’s the best there is! Teachers need to be committed to this process!
Along these lines, one thing that really bothers me in teaching is hearing other teachers make excuses and teachers not modeling what they are trying to teach.”
“Thanks for having the courage to say what many of us in schools feel. Good teachers do make a difference and it bugs me when people want to put all their energy into complaining in the staff room about all the things we cannot do much about, day after day. And let’s face it: many of the teachers who blame parents and poverty are not the strongest teachers in my building.”
I’ll have a detailed rebuttal to Ravitch’s use of NAEP data in my next post to show that she has glossed over a long stretch of poor student performance on the more demanding items especially at higher grades.
PS: I am appending this as a result of a lengthy Twitter discussion on teacher attitudes:
Many years ago, Alessi reviewed more than 5000 children referred to school psychologists because they were failing at school. Not one located the problem as due to a poor instructional program, poor school practices, a poor teacher, or something to do with school. The problems were claimed, by the teachers, to be related to the home and located within the student. As Engelmann claimed, “An arrogant system would conclude that all the problems were caused by defects in the children, none caused by the system.”
…Elmore located the resistance, as do I, with the conception of teaching and learning shared by teachers. “Just leave me alone to teach my way” is the common mantra. We see the increasing numbers of disengaged students as the problems of students or their families, or of society, not of teachers or schools… The likelihood of the claims in this book having a major effect will depend more on whether schools can turn, as did much of medicine, to evidence-based claims. Hattie Visible Learning p. 253-254
PPS: An article in Atlantic that also indirectly proves my point that most schools are ineffective: accounting for demographics, public schools as good as and sometimes better than private schools. No news to me, as I have often reported. There is far less value added in private schools than private school people care to admit or measure.
PPPS: Tom Friedman, on Shanghai’s top level performance in education:
After visiting Shanghai’s Qiangwei Primary School, with 754 students — grades one through five — and 59 teachers, I think I found The Secret:
There is no secret.
When you sit in on a class here and meet with the principal and teachers, what you find is a relentless focus on all the basics that we know make for high-performing schools but that are difficult to pull off consistently across an entire school system. These are: a deep commitment to teacher training, peer-to-peer learning and constant professional development, a deep involvement of parents in their children’s learning, an insistence by the school’s leadership on the highest standards and a culture that prizes education and respects teachers.
Shanghai’s secret is simply its ability to execute more of these fundamentals in more of its schools more of the time. Take teacher development. Shen Jun, Qiangwei’s principal, who has overseen its transformation in a decade from a low-performing to a high-performing school — even though 40 percent of her students are children of poorly educated migrant workers — says her teachers spend about 70 percent of each week teaching and 30 percent developing teaching skills and lesson planning. That is far higher than in a typical American school.
70 Responses
Interesting. You’re always interesting. Question: Why is it relevant that you vote Democratic and give to liberal causes?
because I am getting tarred as a republican-corporatist reformer out to ruin public education. And Diane Ravitch implicitly put me in that camp in her ‘with us or agin us’ tirade in Reign of Error. She runs the risk of becoming like the tea partiers – and, ironically, hurting a cause that she and I both agree on, better public education. Normally, I would not mention my politics or personal actions; I think it is pretty unimportant. I just want some of these thoughtless either-or people to slow down and realize that this a complex issue with friends in many places who may not agree on all points, and angering your friends needlessly is unwise.
I understand. I am disgusted with all politics–now stick with ‘politics of personal responsibility’.
One reason I enjoy your articles is that whatever you say, you provide evidence. Even when I don’t agree, you give me food for thought. It’s always a good conversation.
Thanks. That’s my aim – some good open-minded dialogue.
Grant, well said as always. Diane’s blind spot is she presents no solutions, or if she does, I never see them. Parents and business owners(the folks we prepare our students to work for) are tired of blame. A perception I am having watching the rabid anti-common core, inBLoom ,APPR in NY is most of it is coming from wealthy school leaders and communities. (NYC is its own domain)I do not hear Troy or Elmira saying our kids can’t reach the higher standards. Many good things happening in schools that are forging ahead and working to improve their assessments and instruction.
If you don’t see Ravitch’s solutions it is either due to search engine bias or your not looking for them. Your categorization of blame is likewise off the mark, as is the idea about kids reaching higher standards being what is opposed. Sorry, but you appear to have no understanding at all about the what and why of peoples actual objections.
We disagree. Interesting, too, that you offer no evidence. And you seem to miss my point entirely: teachers need to improve schooling, but Diane refuses to address it because she wants to demonize her critics and their motives.
“refuses to address it because she wants to demonize her critics and their motives.” This is an over the top claim having no basis in reality. To me, refusal means an affirmative statement of non compliance with a request, Ravitch has never done that or in any way avoided the issue. When it comes to ‘demonizing her critics’, that is a deceptive misrepresentation. She seeks to demonize those who have earned such treatment, not ‘her critics’ but those she criticizes for their actions and failed, corrupt policies.
Originally Grant, I was responding to Mr. Squier. That being said, Ravitch does address the need to improve both teaching and teacher education. She posted this on her blog. http://dianeravitch.net/2013/06/04/a-sound-vision-for-improving-the-teaching-profession/ Also, she has a chapter in her book titled “Strengthen the Profession” which at the moment I cannot access the contents or citations of. Her books are not the only places she has discussed this. Here’s her debate with Hanushek on the topic of teachers. http://prealblog.org/2011/11/15/hanushek-ravitch-debate-firing-the-worst-teachers/
You miss my point. She wants to improve ‘the teaching profession’. That is a failure to discuss what can be done NOW to improve current teaching. I find her so-called solutions vague and clearly not grounded in a working knowledge of how schools actually function. We can agree to disagree.
Let me get this straight, Grant:
You write a post excoriating “bad teaching” – mostly on the basis of your personal anecdotes, which you give great weight to through argument by authority.
You sanctimoniously question the motivations of those who take Diane’s position by positioning yourself as morally superior: “And I’m in this for the kids, not the adults. Kids simply deserve better and no one lobbies primarily for their interests.” Like we don’t know who you’re referring to here…
But somehow, I am the one taking the “cheap shot”? Because I point out you have a business interest in promoting the idea that American schools and American teachers stink?
Please. It’s hardly a cheap shot to call out a cheap shot.
The American teacher has been taking it on the chin for a good long time now. Yes, there are good teachers and bad teachers, like there are good and bad plumbers and lawyers and education consultants. There is a roughly normal distribution in quality for just about every human endeavor (at least in the way we humans reify it). Yet, as far as I have ever seen, there is no evidence that the OVERALL quality of teaching in this country is so poor that it is even close to being a major cause of the socio-economic inequity that plagues us, nor any evidence that teaching quality can be improved by the imposition of reformy policies.
You urge Diane to choose her words more carefully. I’d suggest you turn that back on yourself. In case you hadn’t noticed, Grant, we live in a world where the American teacher is getting beat down and beat down and beat down. Our compensation is being eroded, our workplace protections are being eviscerated, our work is devalued, we’re being blamed for all sorts of problems we didn’t create, and we are subjected to increasing interference from consultants and policy makers who are little more than educational tourists.
Now you come along and pile on. Did you think folks like me, out there every day in the classroom trying our best against the inanities shoved down our throats, are simply going to bend over and meekly intone: “Please sir, may I have another?”
I have no problem with efforts to improve the overall quality of teaching; in fact, I welcome them. Like every decent teacher, I have no problem with accountability; in fact, I have no problem with the PROPER use of data to ensure that accountability. I have no issues with you or Pearson or any other vendor making reasonable amounts of money as vendors in our school system. Maybe you have something valuable to contribute – great. Go for it.
But please spare me and every other teacher the posturing and the self-righteousness. Please don’t pretend your interests are less self-informed than anyone else’s – especially all these allegedly “bad” teachers. It’s embarrassing.
I take it you ignored all the data I presented. Look, it’s no fun being a teacher now. I know that. And if you know my work and read this blog you know I fight tirelessly on behalf of teachers. I spent 2 frustrating years working for NJDOE on standards clarification, for God’s sake. I have worked for decades to improve teacher work conditions related to planning. But I also have worked tirelessly on behalf of kids, so sometimes teachers get criticized. I am hardly one-sided. If you read all the tweets and comments in this entire blog, you are one of the few painting me in such an absurd way; most people seem to like my intellectual honesty (their word). So, your slash and burn approach to dealing with me may make you feel better but it won’t improve one kid’s life or help both of us improve our craft. Self-righteous? No. Just committed to the cause, like you. Read your words, in cold print, and ask yourself: is this how you wish to be remembered? I think not. PS: I’ll happily come to see you teach if you invite me.
You write a post where you say: “…most schools are not very effective.” You position yourself as in it “for the kids” as a way to imply all those “bad” teachers at those “bad” schools are not.
And yet I’m the one who’s “slashing and burning”? Come on – I didn’t come after you out of the blue, Grant. You deliberately chose your words to evoke a response. Well, now you’ve got it. When you go after the motivations of others, it’s more than fair game for you to get called on your own.
I reread my words all the time. You know what I read? A frustrated teacher who came into this profession only to see it being casually denigrated by folks who throw out irrelevant “evidence” as proof that what he sees every day – committed colleagues giving their best for deserving children – is in truth “not very effective.” Yes I did read the data you presented, and I wasn’t impressed – starting with your blithe dismissal of the Abbott reforms:
http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2012/05/money-does-matter.html
(FYI: It’s SFRA now, not Abbott) If I can find the time, I’ll address some of your other points in a later blog post. And I’ll even put away the snark.
You’re hardly the first person to tut-tut at my tone. But I’m hardly the only teacher out there feeling this way (if my hit counter or Daine’s book sales are any indication). Perhaps you should take a moment to ask yourself why that is. Perhaps you should consider that writing “…most schools are not very effective” is a piece of “slash and burn” rhetoric that will likely trigger a strong response from folks like me who are tired of taking it over and over again.
As to visiting my classroom: it is my place of work, not a circus, and I am not some trained seal. I assiduously keep my blogging and policy work separate from my most important job (aside from being a father). Pass.
The graph you show indicates that SES (socio-economic status) has a huge correlation with reading levels in NY schools. It does not, of course, explain why.
I’ve seen several theories, each of which leads to different policies, none of which seem to make much difference:
1) good teachers go to the higher-SES schools, because they are less painful to teach at. Various incentive policies have been tried to get better teachers to go to lower SES schools, but the lower-performing schools will always be more difficult to teach in, and wealthier parents will always be attempting to get the best education they can for their kids, so the incentive schemes never come close to leveling the playing field.
2) teachers and curricula are more or less the same distribution of quality everywhere, but parents do a lot more teaching at home or in after-school classes in higher SES schools, making the success or failure of the teachers less evident. Various attempts to provide more after-school teaching for poorer kids have been tried—sometimes successfully (like Garfield HS), often not.
3) poverty is associated with drug and alcohol abuse, so kids are more likely to have fetal alcohol syndrome or other neurological damage. This is an insidious form of “blame the kids”—though there is some truth to the assertion that poor urban districts get a higher proportion of special needs kids, the difference is nowhere near enough to explain the differences in outcomes.
4) schools in low-SES districts end up being the most jerked around in terms of educational fads, many of which seem more politically or financially motivated than by any empirical results. I’m not sure I believe this, seeing how rich suburban schools fall for every snake oil technology salesman with a good line of patter. The low SES schools may actually be a bit more insulated from the fads, having less money to attract the con artists, though they are probably more subject to political whims.
There are, as you say, schools that do much better or worse than one would predict based just on SES, and I agree with you that teachers can have a big influence on whether their school is on the good or bad end of the range given what they have to work with.
The SES graph played to Ravitch. Throw out the top 20% and bottom 20% from each and you have a definite downward trend. Of course, we should try to eliminate the bottom and emulate the top, but the trend is clear and consistent over time.
I never said there was no trend. I said look at the outliers. Jeez.
My takeaway is this: I agree with the points “summed up” in that post you included near the beginning. I also agree that the quality of teaching in America can and should be improved and assert that corporate “reform” is about the worst possible way to do that. My caveat to you is that unfortunately, your language mirrors reformer speak even though your intent and the policies you would see used to advance it are in fact different. The reformer idea of what great teaching and teachers are is not the same as yours even though they use much of the same rhetoric. The best example of this is the reformer idea that a great teacher will always have great VAM scores as a result of being great and if they don’t, multiple measures will correct for that. Your position on VAM and evaluation in general could not be more different than theirs in spite of their allusions to the contrary. Their inclusion of non VAM evaluation components are solely to be a crutch, a camouflage for the primacy of VAM they desire.
The danger I see is that reformers will focus on your words to twist your intent and claim that you agree with them and oppose Ravitch et al when that is not the case. I will go out on a limb here and say that I think that this dynamic of rhetoric vs intent/content is at the core of the disagreement that jerseyjazzman has with you, and for the record I’m convinced he is a stalwart fighter for the cause. As I know that you and Ravitch agree on far more than not, I hope the two of you can correspond and in so doing move us all away from this squabble that to me resembles the story of the 7 blind men and the elephant more than anything else. Thanks for this post.
Well, of course, it is ‘reformer speak’! I have been involved in significant reform for 30 years! It’s the Ravitches of the world who are tarring all reformers, repeatedly, and your comment shows that my concerns expressed in these two posts are spot on. My whole point is that she and i agree on many things – but you would not know it from her current rabble-rousing. Today’s speech, tweeted out doubles down on it – ‘corporatists, reformers, and consultants’.
After reading this latest post of yours I thought I understood your position, but your response to my comment above makes me question that assumption.
So if all involved are “reformers” whether or not their ideas have any merit or any basis in reality, how does one tell the difference? How does one distinguish between those who may best be described as carpet baggers and snake oil salesmen and those like yourself and Ravitch who seek the ongoing improvement of education for it’s own sake? BTW, I fail to see how Ravitch “tars all reformers” or even how any broad brush she might use splashes tar upon those who deserve none.
There is no shortage of evidence about the motives and methods of those who push the false narrative of schools in crisis as in “we have to do something yesterday, I have just the solution for you right here in my pocket (next to the deed for the Brooklyn Bridge)”. What else would you call those, if not profiteers, whose primary, overriding motivation for entering what they describe as the education market place is to profit from it? If the “rabble” are not roused then what chance is there that we may reverse things like VAM and high stakes testing as is happening now? The “reformers” who have purchased a seat at the table that they could not have obtained by merit have repeatedly shown that reason and facts leading to intelligent policy decisions are of no interest to them. Deception, diversion, misrepresentation, ad hominem attacks, campaign contributions, these are but a few of the corrupt levers they regularly, consciously use in their efforts to succeed at obtaining the market share they so desire. Are you really equivocating between those who must deceive to advance their cause and those who are ill served by such methods?
Do you really think that education professionals like yourself and hedge fund managers, ALEC & etc. who know nothing of education are all just reformers with the same good intentions? Do you really think that so very many parents from most all demographics have just fallen victim to an equivalent sales pitch from Ravitch et al that’s just better than the oppositions? And it is Ravitch et al, she is not alone in this fight even with her status as the most visible expert on the topic. There are many other experts, actual education professionals who have independently come to the same conclusions.
“The rabble” see what’s happening in their children’s schools and their children’s lives with their own eyes. Being adults and in many cases well educated ones, they can tell when they are being lied to even if they are not intimately familiar with all the details of the issues in the beginning. Even the poor and very poor know when they are being lied to as for them it can often be a matter of survival. They can all tell the difference. I can tell the difference. To me the difference is very real and obvious. I am unsure about what difference you see here as at times you seem to be attempting to stand on both sides of the fence, a thing I have trouble believing about you as it just makes no sense. It can’t be true. It isn’t true.
So, I go back to the “summed up” post included at the beginning and below it find this: “I am in complete agreement. My point was merely to ask those who speak only of forces outside of our immediate control as educators to attend to what is not only in our control but can make a big difference.”
My response is to point out that I truly believe that Ravitch agrees with this and by her advocacy is trying to make what you want to be done more easily possible. One of the forces outside educators immediate control are the absurd policies you correctly decry that impugn a teachers ability to have the greatest effect on the things they can affect in the classroom. The other is convenient to label as poverty, a thing which as you know is not checked at the school house door like a coat. Ravitch’s position is that teachers and the rest of us must advocate that we as a nation deal with these external issues such that teachers are then correctly “left alone” to teach, to attend to what they can do that will make a difference. Since teachers are the ones who most clearly see these issues in action, who see the negative effects of them, they must advocate against them and not do it alone.
Sorry for the long response, I just thought I should show my work, pedantic though it may be.
The problem with this reform movement is so much of the power lies outside the classroom and it is rife with corruption at worst’ and misunderstanding and arrogance at best. It is all Etic and no Emic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emic_and_etic
Let me explain. The reformers are the anthropologists and the students and teachers are the native peoples who have no valid point of view. (All Etic) Only with the creation of these terms in the 60’s did Anthropologists get a more complete view of native cultures. Still hasn’t happened in schools, except for these rigged studies used as selling points for the Common Cure. (intentional typo)
My friends are all cheerleading the Common Coleman Core, and I can see the benefits of these standards and its positive aspects at the conceptual level. Then I see assessment people delighting on how hard these tests are and how it will raise the standard of learning. There is no research to support this and a lot to support the opposite. I see ridiculously rigged rigor. All Etic. All smart, powerful people who who are blind to the cultures of schools, developmental needs of children and authentic learning. Our drop out rate is 40% . With all this deadly instruction and sextupling of testing inspired by the Common Core and module learning, pacing guide instruction, we will surely reach 50.
This is what I see daily in New York state : Children throwing up on their daily benchmark test. Teachers stressed with no time to teach because of endless data collection, a 4th grader asking his teacher, that if he just wants to be a waiter when he grows up, does he still have to take these tests. The best teachers leaving the profession. The Standards movement is a failure because it disregards the voices of children and teachers. It is all Etic. Like a child who no one listens too, there will be massive rebellion .. Diane Ravitch is a mouthpiece for this rage. She was created by the arrogance of the school reform movement. I ,for one, am glad she is there with all her gnarly flaws and messy thinking. She at least is a person with power who has pointed out this very undemocratic takeover of our public schools.
Take me back to the 70s when teachers were empowered to teach. We were much better off, because we had our confidence. Today only teachers in fancy private schools and Catholic schools have this luxury.
A great man once said. “What we value is what we assess, therefore what we assess should be what we value.” If we value students and learning If we value the Emic, we should give it a voice and assess the climate in schools.
What to do? In my opinion, we need to have a moratorium on all testing and double down on teaching. That’s what Deming might suggest We need to take the fear out of the profession and work with teachers, not this endless tear down. Ten years from now people are going to look at educators today and say, why did you go along with this nonsense. Why did you act like passive victims and not stand up for children?
.
I am sorry that you choose to put yourself in the same class as the reformers about which Diane Ravitch speaks. You are choosing to be offended and are daring Diane to respond in kind. Perhaps I should be offended since “rabble rousing” implies a rabble to be roused. Teachers? Parents? Students? While Ravitch gives a voice to teachers’ concerns over much of the reform agenda, she is hardly “tarring all reformers.” I believe she is fairly specific about the forces she sees as detrimental to the future of public education. If you choose to identify yourself with that particular brand of reform, you do yourself a disservice.
I agree with you that school is often boring and has been for years and years. My class is boring more often than I care to admit and more often, I am sure, than I realize. I also agree that teachers have flexibility to make changes within the walls of their classroom to improve engagement and understanding. The teachers I know do just that.
Jaime Escalante may actually be an example running counter to your point of focusing on what is under the teacher’s immediate control. If Escalante had arrived at Garfield and simply focused on his class room and taught Calculus to ill prepared students, he would have had a modest amount of success, and no one would have heard of him.
Escalante did not offer a calculus class during his first few years at Garfield. Instead, he first focused on issues outside his classroom in order to develop a “pipeline” of capable students: changing district math curriculum, adding or strengthening Algebra in feeder schools, creating summer school programs through the community colleges, etc. The leadership that he and others were able to offer outside of the classroom is what created the stunning results.
http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/04/21/29lanier.h29.html
http://reason.com/archives/2002/07/01/stand-and-deliver-revisited/3
But I am not saying ignore what’s in your control outside of class! I did the same thing as both teacher and coach: lobbied for my courses and programs. Made proposals in staff meetings. Met with parents and committees. I’m saying do what we can to make school work (better) for kids. We agree.
Grant,
And here in your response is what I see as a major error. What Escalante did in my opinion is to essentially act as a parent to these kids. Spending 3 hours after school and Saturdays to help students with math – when would such a teacher then actually spend time with their own children??
Parental effort is the most important factor in a child’s school performance: http://ideas.time.com/2012/10/24/the-single-largest-advantage-parents-can-give-their-kids/
But here’s a part you’re missing: if schools do more, some parents will do LESS. And it now becomes a downward spiral where the state/school is responsible for the child’s development instead of the family:
“As an economist, I look for reactions to a specific action so it is not surprising to me that parents may scale back their involvement with their child’s education when a school adds resources. As a result, increasing school resources may not be as effective as we expect since they may diminish parental involvement.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080527123852.htm
Teachers are not parents.
You totally missed the point: Within 3 years, Escalante’s colleagues – in history, not just calculus – were having more success than he was! The issue is just as Jay Matthews put it: raised expectations school wide is always the key. The story is NOT about 1 teacher, but about a team approach to expectations which, as I keep saying IS in every educator’s control.
Was it the raised expectations, the additional hours work, the time with a caring adult, a principal who established a supportive environment for teachers, maybe something we don’t know about in the greater community? Who knows?
We used to have a thing that we said- make any change and you’ll see results. It’s got some truth to it too. If you move your attention to something else, you’ll often see that kids respond. What’s the investment? Is it something others can do? Is it part of the teaching job or are we simply confounding our variables?
All of the above! But that’s the point I am making, isn’t it? Work on what’s in your control as a group of educators. The principal was key – he saved their butts many times. As i have often said on this blog, almost nothing happens without excellent leadership.
So, all of the above was necessary to make this dramatic improvement. The next question is can that be replicated? Are you advocating for this? If so, how do you expect to get teachers to stay 3 hours extra each day and work weekends, get principals to create a supportive environment without any funding, get our legislature to apportion funds to increase salaries for this increase in workload, get parents to be supportive of having their kids at school for 12 hours a day x 5 days plus weekend time, somehow add “caring” to the teacher’s job description (and by caring I mean nurturing- not just that they generally care), and some intervention in the greater community?
Good luck with that Grant.
Sigh. You either believe in change or you don’t; you either do what you can or you don’t. I am incapable of the kind of fatalism your comment suggests. Nor am I naive, having seen good things happen when people unite for cause. We are either part of the solution or part of the problem. Far too many educators, to quote John Mayer, are waiting on the world to change. All significant change requires dedicated change agents who simply refuse to accept what all the naysayers say. The choice is mine, yours, and everyone else’s. If I believed what you are saying I never would have advocated that all teachers use rubrics and models. People then, like you, told me this was impossible. It’s now the norm. Any number of people told me it was ludicrous to think that performance assessment would take root: too complicated, no one has training…
I have made a small contribution in this field because I did not accept nor do I accept now such fatalism. It’s the first phrase out of teachers’ mouths in every workshop after i have laid out the changes I am speaking to: YES, BUT…
How about: WHAT IF…?
Wow- I don’t see how you missed my point. I hate the word “naysayer” – it’s ridiculous. I’ve made comments (on this and other blogs) that have suggested changes that should be made. I’m serious about wanting to see change. Just because I disagree with your point that reform means teachers all have to do what Mr. Escalante did doesn’t make me one who against change. Please! I have “change” tattooed on my forehead.
But I don’t believe in this kind of change:
The kind of change that relies on teachers to do MORE work. Better work? Yes. More education and more rigorous coursework to become a teacher? Yes. Valid evaluations for teachers? Yes. But additional work? Nope. I don’t agree with that type of change.
In pointing out Mr. Escalante as your example of what we should do that works you have not clearly pointed out why this worked (confounding variables all over the place); how you think this can be applied by other teachers at other schools (should they also add to their workday?); what was valuable in his program (was it the extra hours, the way he taught- if so how?); how his principal ‘had his back’ (support personnel? pat on the back periodically? what worked); and how the other teachers used this to help their students (observed him? , borrowed ideas?, students were better because they worked 3 extra hours a day?).
How can we learn from your example in moving forward on change that will really work? Because I do not see it in your blog. The details with your example do not enlighten us to what change would be best.
That’s my only point.
Matt, we are on the same page. Grant, I was trying to go to a place where we see education in the larger context of having a good and balanced life in a healthy society. While we are all focused on education and “reform” here, I think it is perilous to isolate it from the context where it takes place. Not surprisingly this is also the point made by those like myself who want us to focus far more on the full array of things leading to diminished and unrealized educational outcomes for those living in poverty. The “sliding scale” aspect of this remains of interest to me and it seems like we have to go farther and farther up the income scale these days to see examples of education as a joyfully demanding pursuit rather than the punitive set of carrot and stick consequences all too common in the Taylorist education factories that certain factions of reform have transformed some of our schools into.
In that regard, read the classic piece called The Pedagogy of Poverty from 25 years ago.
Matt, has it occurred to you that while home life is an important predictor of student outcomes, the home should not be thought of as a full blown extension of school? Shouldn’t the primary job of parents be to make sure kids show up at school ready willing and able to learn? Parents have to be involved in schooling at some basic level to be sure, and this varies with what grade the kid is in, little ones needing more from their parents than HS kids, but is viewing parents as their children’s second school teacher rather than their first life teacher wise? At the end of the day are we not risking leapfrogging past the point of diminishing academic returns by expecting the family to focus on school above all else? I look at Finland where they don’t begin to teach reading till 7 or 8, where even high school kids have little homework to deal with and envy their free time. Their society seems much saner than ours and their social safety net is part of what makes their families more resilient. This seems to be the formula for efficient and cost effective academic success without all the stress we impose on ourselves, stress that has it’s roots in wrongheaded policies and values.
I’m a little unclear where you are going here. Surely the data and common sense are clear: in societies, cultures, and sub-cultures where education is greatly prized in the family, kids do better in school. That is arguably key to the longstanding observation that kids from Jewish and Asian families tend to outperform other groups. By contrast, a number of sub-groups are either indifferent to the power of education for social advancement or, in some cases unhelpful – think of how long girls were kept down by this attitude.
I agree that the parent is not the teacher. Indeed, reform is often hindered by parent-teachers, as shown by the backlash from many parents to numerous positive reforms of the last 50 years. But surely we can do a better job of getting parents on our side.
The best example of this at a small scale that I ever saw: in a rural district the first grade teachers sent out a newsletter every 2 weeks saying – here’s what we are doing now, here’s how you can help at home. Here is what is upcoming, here are some questions you might ask or things you might prepare to do.
Imagine if all schools did this routinely.
CitizensArrest,
I agree – I was not trying to imply that parents should be an extension of schools. Family provides the support and structure. It is when that this is lacking that a child’s performance at school often becomes an issue.
I think what you are getting at is that poor schooling outcomes is more of a societal problem than just a school problem. If this is your line of thought, I agree.
The problem with your assertions are not that you are completely wrong. You are not. You post support for your opinions and show that, indeed, a teacher can make a difference. I don’t think anyone has said otherwise. The teachers like Mr. Escanlante make a difference in so many ways. But, as I’ve said before, the devil is in the details. Let’s see what Mr. Escalante had to do (from your post) that made that difference:
1. You state that if anyone slipped at all, they had to stay for 3 hours after school getting extra help. If every teacher added 3 hours of instruction to their day- wow, that would make a difference. There is a huge cost- teachers would then get home at 7pm (our teacher day here is 7am -4pm roughly). They’d miss out on family time, have to figure out about how to get their kids homework, practices, etc done. Have to get dinner, do chores- you get the idea here. That’s a 12 hour workday and when do they grade papers then??
2. Saturday work. So, you want teachers to be 24 x 7 employees who have no home life and get paid the same $40,000 per year. Really? Do you think there are a lot of teachers who would be willing to do this as Escalante did?
3. Summer work- Again, if you spend more time teaching, students will improve. If they show up and do this work, they’ll learn. This requires teachers to work more. What will you recommend along with this to get them to agree to it? Or will you be recommending what was done in the “good old days” where they had single women without families work 24 x 7 as needed?
Another concern is all the time demanded for the students. I have a problem with a student leaving the house at 7am and not coming home until 7pm from school. They need time to play. They need time to be in a sport or read a book. They need time to be home around family. The solution to the needs of high poverty schools is not and should not be more instruction time .
Another couple of comments:
1. This isn’t a situation of either Ms. Ravitch is right or you are right. We should look and listen to the messages of both and try and find a path that would work- to attract more and better teachers, to improve student interest and motivation, and to have kids better prepared for a career or for an academic life.
2. AP scores should not be the marker of teacher success (or lack thereof).
3. Urging teachers to do what Peyton Manning does for millions of dollars each year without suggesting that they too should earn high salaries is just ridiculous.
Here is an informal write up I did for graduate school on Escalante’s demands – it was comparing his work to other movie characters (Yes, I know he is real.):
I gather I was supposed to pick Stand and Deliver above, but I just can’t based on math. Now, if my math is correct, over five hours a school day was spent taking calculus and then more time on Saturdays? Talk about Race to Nowhere before there was a Race to Nowhere. I don’t even buy into the Race to Nowhere, but five hours of any course every day for 180 days is too much. I am glad he was successful, but he had the students for over 30 days of their lives – this does not include homework! If two other teachers at his school did this – that would mean 90 days of their lives, when factoring in sleep and eating lets say conservatively 8 hours a day we are up to 180 days and they have not done anything else – no activities, no family get-togethers, no other classes! Meanwhile, for my AP world course I have my students for 5 days. Seems more reasonable since they also take other courses – all taking up 5 days of their young lives – and do homework, and play sports, and do clubs.
Grant, you said “I agree that the parent is not the teacher. Indeed, reform is often hindered by parent-teachers, as shown by the backlash from many parents to numerous positive reforms of the last 50 years. But surely we can do a better job of getting parents on our side.”
But your statement is statement in the middle sentence works strongly against your last sentence. It is not helpful to tell parents or teachers that parents resist positive changes, and then expect parents to back up whatever change you propose.
Teaching kids should be a partnership between teachers and parents, with each providing what knowledge and expertise they can. If you dismiss the “parent-teachers” as obstructionists, then you have not set up conditions for fruitful collaboration.
Of course, it may be your belief that parents have nothing to add to student education—that they should just be doing whatever work the teachers tell them to do “here’s what we are doing now, here’s how you can help at home.” If you sincerely believe in this top-down direction of learning, with the teacher always in control, then you are unlikely to see fruitful collaborations.
Not my point. I didn’t express it clearly. The parent is not always right and many parents are unaware of what best practice is – that’s my only point. (Since I so roundly criticize poor teaching, why would you conclude that I am in favor of having whatever the teacher says, goes?) It does not follow that there is no partnership. Indeed, there must be on between kid-teacher-parents-admins. The parent is an ‘expert’ about the many facets of their kid. But most parents do not know what math goals demand in instruction, as an example. That’s really my only concern, protecting the right of the teacher to use professional judgment. Alas, in my experience, teachers do a poor job of helping parents understand what they are up to and enlisting the parents as partners. We are not as far apart as you are making it sound.
Yet we see that teachers are prevented from using their professional judgment by all the scripting and edicts that passes for reform these days. I think the single most important thing we can do to protect the right of the teacher to use professional judgment is to stop excluding teachers from the tables where policy is discussed and decisions are made. I refer you back to the fact that the National Association for the Education of Young Children was not sought out for their expertise when the CCSS was being constructed. To me, this is a blunder of epic proportions and emblematic of the exclusion of teachers from the table.
Well, careful – I don’t know that the NAEYC is a ‘teacher’ led group. Nor is it clear to me why setting standards needs to have such a group at the table. I am not singling out one group or another. I would raise the larger question: who gets a seat at a table? By what criteria? Alas, many of us feel that our voices aren’t heard, mine included. I’d be careful of saying, for example, that the ‘teacher’ voice is represented by NAEYC, AERA, ASCD, or NEA. I think I can represent the ‘teacher’ voice’ better than many groups, given my career (and given the failure of some of these groups to represent teachers adequately.
In the context of CCSS, the question of whether or not NAEYC is “teacher led” is less important by far than the fact that the preeminent organization on what it means to be a little kid was not sought out for inclusion. There seems to have been no effort or even awareness of the need to have some entity with their expertise involved from the start. The leadership of the NEA and AFT are too compliantly politicized to properly represent many of their memberships positions in my view, and have not yet moved toward being more like a guild as I think they should. AERA and ASCD are groups that abut teacher centric ones, like the salt/fresh water boundary that Steelhead go back and forth between when returning to the places of their birth. We can dispense with the part of that story where they swim upstream to spawn and die, though these days I think there’s a sardonic joke in there somewhere awaiting our groans.
Forgot to add that having the NAEYC at the table would have served to represent the little kid voice, and that students are the last ones we ask about anything when we even think of asking in the first place. Obviously there are limits as to what the student voice can contribute, but at the same time they have some information that is not available anywhere else. With all the stories I have seen about stressed out kids who no longer are excited about school, we’re overdue for allowing their experience to appropriately help inform adult discussions.
Yeah, jumped the shark on labeling NAEYC as teacher led, that’s what I get for trying to do too many things at once on the way to getting out the door. Please accept this as a correction.
Perhaps we are closer than I thought. But it is certainly the case in our community (a university town with a lot of professors and a bedroom community for Silicon Valley engineers), that many of the parents know a lot more math—and sometimes more about teaching math—than the elementary school teachers. Many of these “parent-teachers” do, in fact, know more than the teachers both about the subject matter and about best practices. But your previous comment implied that parent-teachers were almost invariably obstructionists and should be treated as such.
Not my view; didn’t mean to imply it; agreed about math.
On California standardized tests, Garfield High scores almost exactly the same as the state average for economically disadvantaged students. They score significantly worse than the state average for non-disadvantaged students (roughly 20% less of their students reaching advanced or proficient). Links are below. So, do you consider Garfield to be an outlier school?
People with less academic ability, on average, make less money – it follows that lower income would be associated with lower ability (and test scores absent interventions). But, isn’t it possible that a few schools could have students with higher than average academic ability that are also are low income? How do you know whether a school is an “outlier” because of school factors like instruction and extra supports or because of student factors like ability?
http://star.cde.ca.gov/star2012/ViewReport.aspx?ps=true&lstTestYear=2012&lstTestType=C&lstCounty=19&lstDistrict=64733-000&lstSchool=1933381&lstGroup=1&lstSubGroup=1
http://star.cde.ca.gov/star2012/ViewReport.aspx?ps=true&lstTestYear=2012&lstTestType=C&lstCounty=&lstDistrict=&lstSchool=&lstGroup=3&lstSubGroup=111
Not sure of your point, since the years in question are over two decades ago, not last year. And as Hattie notes and I have repeatedly said, within-school variance is significant.
More to the issue, your last two questions overlook the point of the data from 20 years ago: Garfield had an exceptional yield of AP passing scores, in multiple subjects, only after teachers starting expecting more from (roughly) the same sub-set of students. Look at your language: you are focusing on kid ‘higher than average academic ability’ as if that was the key determinant while discounting ‘teacher ability’ by inference; why?
For sure, there are ‘outlier’ teachers in most schools as well as outlier schools, but in education we rarely learn from them – that’s my point. Until and unless teachers are held accountable against ‘best practices’ and there are incentives and opportunities to gain such know-how as part of the job, there is little hope of anything but outlier successes. On that point you and I agree; and when that happens kid native ability will be a bigger factor, won’t it? Again: we either believe and act on the belief that good teaching makes a big difference and that weak teaching is improvable or we don’t. Those who keep referring to poverty are in the unenviable position of – in effect – believing that neither kids not teachers can really improve their performance under better conditions, that it’s all a question of what everyone brings into school as a given. Given that most teachers never learn best practices, are not held accountable for them, and work in utter isolation from those who are truly effective, it’s easy to see why such fatalism sets in but that doesn’t make it logically defensible. Go back and look at the list of powerful effect size practices from Hattie, the ones in my post: few teachers are in control of this set of abilities (yet those practices do not require genius or unusual gifts). From that we should conclude that it’s not possible to cause great learning in less than our best students? Illogical and defeatist; doing wrong by kids. I will never accept such fatalism as a defensible stance for an educator or a professional in general. It’s like saying that poor people get sick and die younger than rich but there is little that I as a doctor can do about the particular poor people I serve. Maybe by definition a professional is not so defeatist?
Perhaps I was not clear. My second paragraph had nothing to do with Garfield. Please don’t lump me in with the fatalists.
I did not attribute Garfield’s success on the AP tests to student ability. Just the opposite actually! Garfield is a school with typical state test scores for a high poverty school, so probably academically typical students for a high poverty school, yet they have had a lot of success on the AP exams for a couple of decades. They are achieving much more than is typical. There is probably much to learn from that school and their teachers.
My point is that your graphic of SES vs state test scores doesn’t necessarily show which schools are worth studying. How do you decide which schools are successful? Garfield would not be an outlier on that graph (low state test scores), but most would say it is a successful school. On the other hand, outliers on that graph need to be investigated carefully to see why they are outliers. Is it something about the teaching at the school or is it something else – high ability students, unusual community (other than high scores & low SES), selective admission, self selected students, etc, etc. This isn’t being fatalistic. It is analyzing data in an open minded and responsible manner.
The recent state test scores for Garfield are relevant because they have more passing AP scores today, and many more test takers, than they did in the Escalante years (see the Mathews article below which I mixed up with the one you referenced). They have unusual success on the AP test but not the state tests. That was true in 1998 (earliest year I could find) and very likely true in the Escalante years. I wonder if the state tests are more like the SAT – largely measures of ability and difficult to improve dramatically. Whereas the AP tests are more a measure of learning.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/class-struggle/2010/04/the_dangerous_myth_about_garfi.html
http://star.cde.ca.gov/star98/reports/19-64733-1933381.html
http://star.cde.ca.gov/star98/reports/00-00000-0000000.html
My bad; sorry. Never a good idea to do one’s blog on a Sat. night after a few glasses of wine…
You raise important points about what counts as an ‘outlier’ school. It is particularly relevant insight of Hattie’s observation – which I almost never see discussed – that the ‘school’ is the measure of SES most often used, not the individual student. Because there are few studies looking at individual students in terms of SES.
This is germane to my thinking about all this. If schools are highly variable AND the school is very high SES it is unlikely that the school will perform well. So sub-groups of students may be more interesting, be it AP or students that have had particular teachers. Put differently, it is far more likely that there are a few really good teachers in a school than that an entire school is coherent and functioning as a total outlier.
I am in the process of trying to get funding for an outlier study. AIR has drafted a proposal for me and we are now trying to interest foundations in it. So, your thinking is very helpful. Again, my apologies for not getting your point!
No worries. It will be interesting to see what you come up with should the funding come through.
I’ll keep you informed and seek assistance if funding does come through!
Your own tone and phrasing can be quite harsh, unnecessarily so. You do yourself great harm when you slip into that. You lose quite a few people of those you’re trying to reach at that point..
Perhaps so. But it pales with Diane’s and those people attacking me, no? Most people here – if you read all the posts – thank me for my honesty. Sometimes honesty has to be blunt. Obviously I don’t wish to lose potential allies. But sometimes the truth hurts. I’m always concerned about being too harsh and/or unhelpful – every single time I speak or write. So, your feedback is welcome. But I trust you see my side: there is too little honesty in education discourse, as if the problems either are viewed as unsolvable or solvable by simplistic means or no teachers are ever to blame. None of that is true.
Grant, as an educator I am disappointed that you don’t go further in distancing yourself and your reforms from those of the privatize and capitalize group which is currently in the process of destroying our education system. When you say that Diane is attacking you, are you in the camp of ‘reformers’ that she is talking about? Unfortunately we can only control our own classrooms directly, however we all have a responsibility to weigh in on the bigger picture. Are you on the side of the pro-business, pro-privatize education community? Or are you with the majority of educators who feel that it is a bit worse than idiotic to believe the market can solve all problems if left unattended?
I have no interest in market driven solutions but I don’t see that as the dominant issue in school reform. She has attacked any and all ‘reformers’ and in so doing sets up a straw man. Some of us think the world is not so either-or and that schools do indeed need significant reform. My record is clear and consistent (unlike hers): students deserve better schooling, and many of the changes needed are do-able now. My message for 30 years. To say that only ‘corporatists’ are calling for reform is both inaccurate and unhelpful.
Grant, Ravitch has not attacked “any and all reformers” the straw man in this case is all yours. In addition, Ravitch does not, as you imply, think that schools have no problems and have no need of ‘reform’ or improvement. Like you, she is convinced that “students deserve better schooling, and many of the changes needed are do-able now”. She singles out false, corporate ‘reformers’ for imposing policies that are contrary to that goal while at the same time claiming to have cornered the market on silver bullets. Respectfully, if you do not see the aggressive incursion of market driven anti-‘reforms’ by those who know nothing of education except what profit they can extract from it as the major distraction and destruction that it truly represents, you have not been paying attention. I remain mystified by the contradictions inherent in your statements on Ravitch’s position since her positions are mostly congruent with yours, and by the seemingly interchangeable definitions of ‘reform’ I perceive you using. The corporatists lie to us all when they call themselves reformers. They are in reality profiteers and exploiters. I’m all for not allowing them the wolf in sheep’s clothing cover story of calling themselves reformers since to me, they obviously are not.
We disagree. My position is consistent – students deserve better schooling now – and her words have set up a false Mancichean dichotomy about reform, spilling over now into Common Core.
I would add one further thought. You said “I have no interest in market driven solutions but I don’t see that as the dominant issue in school reform.” You are technically correct that it is not THE dominant issue. However, the ‘market driven’ ersatz reforms and those pushing them are the biggest single threat to any hope of real progress being made by those like yourself and Ravitch who know what the actual problems in education are and what needs to be done to solve them. As such, they are the dominant threat to real reform.
Here is a perfect example of why I think the Ravitch thing is out of control: http://www.salon.com/2013/12/06/what_a_pisa_garbage_sorry_michelle_rhee_but_our_obsession_with_testing_kids_is_all_about_money/
This is simply bad logic. The testing companies are filling a need that states and the Feds have built up. Unless someone can show me lots of examples of graft and political pressure fueling this, I’m not buying this rhetoric. For one, I know personally some of these people and their motives have nothing to do with money. For another, there are no known conflicts of interest here. By contest, when I worked with a few states 10 years ago, there were HUGE conflicts of interest in who got the contract, and those rules were tightened.
So a general anti-corporatist rant goes nowhere with me. I think it’s been way overplayed as an issue. It’s like saying all charter schools are ‘corporatist’ and seek the destruction of public schools. Nonsense! I have worked with over a dozen and charters and many are run by idealistic disaffected educators from the public system who were tired of the district andy noon runaround.
I disagree. The dominate threat to school reform is backlash from educators and parents who want to keep their schools as they are. And that has been the dominant threat for 30 years.
I’ve never, ever met a parent nor an educator who wants to keep their schools as they are. Again…… “us” vs “them” arguments fail- and should fail to convince (either side). And “Salon” as a reference? Tsk tsk! They are not an objective source for information and I’d never accept someone using an article from Salon to prove anything but that there is bias and opinion. This is an opinion piece that you cite. And funny- nothing by or about Dr. Ravitch in that article.
Sometimes I think you work extra hard to find an inference that doesn’t reflect my views. If current schools are poorly serving many children – as they are – then the problem is NOT corporatists or Arne Duncan or FCAT. Period. And the Salon piece, despite your snark, is representative of the line of attack – and surely influenced by the line of attack – in Ravitch’s endless tirades.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say or imply – as Ravitch does and many of critics do – that the problem is external forces only (i.e. schools could be so much better if only x, y, and z external forces were changed). Every serious educational thinker I know, with a track record of actual change, like myself, can show sizable gains from changing current habits practices and policies. That’s the view here. Period.
I disagree that anyone has ever said: “The problem is external forces only.”. Never seen that, heard that, read that. Not me, not you, not Diane Ravitch, not Michelle Rhee. That proves my point.
Also “infer”? Wow, I don’t have to work hard to make the jump – really. Here’s what you said: “I disagree. The dominate threat to school reform is backlash from educators and parents who want to keep their schools as they are. And that has been the dominant threat for 30 years.” My leap of inference that you are so surprised by is that you think parents and educators do not want significant change. I’ve never heard that, seen that, read that. Everyone I hear from thinks we do need change. I don’t know where you get that. Sorry if I incorrectly “inferred” that when you say parents and educators want to keep their schools the same that this means you think they want to keep them the same. Hmmmm. Now, yes, I’m being snarky. But really? Am I missing something here?
Ravitch and others do not say or imply that external forces are the only problem schools face. That is quite simply not the truth, period. Why you continue to insist on this straw man argument is beyond me at this point. The Ravitch you imagine into existence and then place yourself in opposition to does not exist. If schools are poorly serving children and have no freedom let alone time to adjust their methods due to externally imposed mandates, that is not a problem with the teachers but with the system, a thing Deming understood the truth of decades ago, an understanding that is just as relevant and accurate today. Removing top down external policy failures is a first step in creating an environment where teaching can improve from within, especially where those policies are contrary to improving the quality of instruction, VAM and scripted curricula being but 2 examples. Here is a link where Ravitch lauds a program that has great success in helping teachers improve their practice and removing those that can’t or won’t. http://dianeravitch.net/2012/09/07/what-is-peer-assistance-and-review/ There is even more detail provided by reader supplied links in the comments.
“The testing companies are filling a need that states and the Feds have built up. Unless someone can show me lots of examples of graft and political pressure fueling this, I’m not buying this rhetoric. ”
Here are some general examples:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/01/30/e-mails-link-bush-foundation-corporations-and-education-officials/
http://capitalroundtable.com/masterclass/CapitalRoundtableEducationPEConference2013.html
http://deutsch29.wordpress.com/2013/04/19/john-whites-hidden-memorandum-of-understanding-with-inbloom/
http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2011/03/gates-document-details-plans-for.html
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2304695/The-Corporate-Surge-Against-Public-Schools
http://www.theinvestigativefund.org/investigations/corporateaccountability/1580/selling_schools_out/
Here are some specific to testing:
http://www.citypages.com/2011-02-23/news/inside-the-multimillion-dollar-essay-scoring-business/
http://www.empowertexans.com/features/half-billion-for-virtually-useless-test/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alan-singer/pearson-education-new-york-testing-_b_1850169.html
If these don’t convince you of the incestuous nature and corrupt practices of corporate reform, then nothing will.
This last one is just for you as a math guy. http://ccssimath.blogspot.com/2013/03/godzilla-vs-consortia.html
And, if you want a snapshot of the kind of corruption and lies being told to further the corporate profiteers agenda, here’s a single example posted on her blog but not written by Ravitch. http://dianeravitch.net/2013/12/06/ellen-lubic-corrects-ben-austin/
The fact that you personally know some and have met other people who have nothing but the best of intentions is irrelevant. I believe that many do have good intentions, but that’s exactly what the road to hell is paved with. Very bad policy fueled by good intentions is a recipe for major levels of denial on the part of those implementing said policy while collecting a paycheck from those at the top who have no such delusions. What better way is there for those at the top of the scheme to insulate themselves from scrutiny and consequences than by buying politicians and surrounding themselves with employees who have a cult like belief in what they are doing? And no, the politicians really do not have any deep or meaningful understanding of the policies they are lobbied to impose. They do understand campaign cash and political support, and that’s enough for them.
You miss my point and paint me as naive which is something I am decidedly not. Many genuine reformers – Marzano, Schlecty, Slavin, Tucker, Meier, etc. – are not in this ‘corporatist’ camp at all. Nor am I proposing a straw man; I am responding to one.
I debated as to whether I would post all your comments because it’s all way too much from one person, one voice. I get tired of responding to claims about what I supposedly said that I never said. I never said there was no corruption in education; I said there was no evidence that the ‘corporatist’ agenda was fueled by deals between anti-school people and test companies; your many links are off topic, therefore. In the interest of dialogue, I am posting your comments. However, I am done with this broad-brush 30,000 feet-level debate for now. Readers can judge for themselves who is taking an even-handed look at these matters and who isn’t; who is interested in reasoned discourse and who isn’t; who is open to other ways of looking at things and who isn’t. Most of the current debate won’t help a single kid; it’s just politics. What matters is improving learning and the school experience for every child.
“I said there was no evidence that the ‘corporatist’ agenda was fueled by deals between anti-school people and test companies; ” OR “The testing companies are filling a need that states and the Feds have built up. Unless someone can show me lots of examples of graft and political pressure fueling this, I’m not buying this rhetoric. ” Which is it, anti-school people (whatever that is, wherever that came from) or graft and political pressure? The link about the leaked Bush emails are strong evidence of the corrupt link between business interests and politicians vis a vis education policy, one example among many out there of how business interests seek to be the primary drivers of ed policy. Then there’s the smoking cannon of ALEC. http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/07/12175/cashing-kids-139-alec-bills-2013-promote-private-profit-education-model
I agree with the contents of your short list of genuine reformers and am glad that you say that they are different than the almost-admitted-to-exist ‘corporatist’ camp. There has never been any doubt in my mind that you have always placed the best interests of students at the top, just that you accept others who don the cloak of reform as doing the same when it is obvious to me at least that they do not.
Thanks for including Mr. Lubar posts. I think that all of this just supports my assertions that when we have discussions where we debate who says what, us vs. them and using vocabulary that is inflammatory- we go nowhere.
I intend to move forward, discussing policy in an objective manner. I hope you all will join me as I’m tired of reading how “those people” “make noise” or “conspire” or “ignore” , etc.
i had intended to have that last post be the last, but this excellent example of the corrupt link between corporate reformers and politicians just showed up. Whether or not you choose to post this, I hope you read it for it’s own sake. Ritz was elected with the overwhelming support of parents and teachers against huge financial outlays by her opposition who supported Tony Bennett, the same guy who lost his next job as a superintendent in FLA due to corruption. http://muncievoice.com/9488/indiana-mike-pence-vs-glenda-ritz-important/