Obama and Education Reform
Of course I would have loved to have seen Linda Darling-Hammond become Secretary of Education in an Obama administration. She's smart, honest, compassionate and courageous, and perhaps most striking, she actually knows schools and classrooms, curriculum and teaching, kids and child development. These have never counted for much as qualifications for the post, of course, and yet they offer a neat contrast with the four failed urban school superintendents--Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein, Paul Vallas, and Arne Duncan -- who were for weeks rumored to be her chief competition.
These four, like George W. Bush's Secretary of Education, Rod Paige of the fraudulent Texas-miracle, have little to show in terms of school improvement beyond a deeply dishonest public relations narrative. Teacher accountability, relentless standardized testing, school closings, and privatization -- this is what the dogmatists and true-believers of the right call "reform." Michelle Rhee of Washington D.C., the most ideologically-driven of the bunch, warranted a cover story in Time in early December called "How to Fix America's Schools" in which she was praised for making more changes in a year and a half on the job than other school leaders, "even reform-minded ones," make in five: closing 21 schools (15% of the total), firing 100 central office personnel, 270 teachers, and 36 principals. These are all policy moves that are held on faith to stand for improvement; not a word on kids' learning or engagement with schools, not even a nod at evidence that might connect these moves with student progress. But of course evidence is always the enemy of dogma, and this is faith-based, fact-free school policy at its purest.
So I would have picked Darling-Hammond, but then again I would have picked Noam Chomsky for state, Naomi Klein for defense, Bernardine Dohrn for Attorney General, Bill Fletcher for commerce, James Thindwa for labor, Barbara Ransby for human services, Paul Krugman for treasury, and Amy Goodman for press secretary. So what do I know?
Darling-Hammond would not have been a smart pick for Obama. She was steadily demonized in a concerted campaign to undermine her effectiveness, and she would surely have had great difficulty getting any traction whatsoever for progressive policy change in this environment. Arne Duncan was the smart choice, the unity choice--the least driven by ideology, the most open to working with teachers and unions, the smartest by a mile-- and let's wish him well.
But there's a deeper point: since the Obama victory, many people seem to be suffering a kind of post-partum depression: unable to find any polls to obsess over, we read the tea-leaves and try to penetrate the president-elect's mind. What do his moves portend? What magic or disaster awaits us? With due respect, this is a matter of looking entirely in the wrong direction.
Obama is not a monarch -- Arne Duncan is not education czar -- and we are not his subjects. If we want a foreign policy based on justice, for example, we ought to get busy organizing a robust anti-imperialist peace movement; if we want to end the death penalty we better get smart about changing the dominant narrative concerning crime and punishment. We are not allowed to sit quietly in a democracy awaiting salvation from above. We are all equal, and we all need to speak up and speak out right now.
During Arne Duncan's tenure in Chicago, a group of hunger-striking mothers organized city-wide support and won the construction of a new high school in a community that had been underserved and denied for years. Another group of parents, teachers, and students mobilized to push military recruiters out of their high school; Duncan didn't support them and he certainly didn't lead the charge, but they won anyway. If they'd waited for Duncan to act they'd likely be waiting still. Teachers at another school refused to give one of the endless standardized tests, arguing that this was one test too many, and they organized deep support for their protest; Duncan didn't support them either, but they won anyway. If they'd waited for Duncan, they'd be waiting still. Why would anyone sit around waiting for Arne now? Stop whining; get busy.
In the realm of education, there is nothing preventing any of us from pressing to change the dominant discourse that has controlled the discussion for many years. It's reasonable to assume that education in a democracy is distinct from education under a dictatorship or a monarchy, but how? Surely school leaders in fascist Germany or communist Albania or medieval Saudi Arabia all agreed, for example, that students should behave well, stay away from drugs and crime, do their homework, study hard, and master the subject matters, so those things don't differentiate a democratic education from any other.
What makes education in a democracy distinct is a commitment to a particularly precious and fragile ideal, and that is a belief that the fullest development of all is the necessary condition for the full development of each; conversely, the fullest development of each is necessary for the full development of all.
Democracy, after all, is geared toward participation and engagement, and it's based on a common faith: every human being is of infinite and incalculable value, each a unique intellectual, emotional, physical, spiritual, and creative force. Every human being is born free and equal in dignity and rights, each is endowed with reason and conscience, and deserves, then, a sense of solidarity, brotherhood and sisterhood, recognition and respect.
We want our students to be able to think for themselves, to make judgments based on evidence and argument, to develop minds of their own. We want them to ask fundamental questions---Who in the world am I? How did I get here and where am I going? What in the world are my choices? How in the world shall I proceed? --- and to pursue answers wherever they might take them. Democratic educators focus their efforts, not on the production of things so much as on the production of fully developed human beings who are capable of controlling and transforming their own lives, citizens who can participate fully in civic life.
Democratic teaching encourages students to develop initiative and imagination, the capacity to name the world, to identify the obstacles to their full humanity, and the courage to act upon whatever the known demands. Education in a democracy should be characteristically eye-popping and mind-blowing--always about opening doors and opening minds as students forge their own pathways into a wider world.
How do our schools here and now measure up to the democratic ideal?
Much of what we call schooling forecloses or shuts down or walls off meaningful choice-making. Much of it is based on obedience and conformity, the hallmarks of every authoritarian regime. Much of it banishes the unpopular, squirms in the presence of the unorthodox, hides the unpleasant. There's no space for skepticism, irreverence, or even doubt. While many of us long for teaching as something transcendent and powerful, we find ourselves too-often locked in situations that reduce teaching to a kind of glorified clerking, passing along a curriculum of received wisdom and predigested and often false bits of information. This is a recipe for disaster in the long run.
Educators, students, and citizens must press now for an education worthy of a democracy, including an end to sorting people into winners and losers through expensive standardized tests which act as pseudo-scientific forms of surveillance; an end to starving schools of needed resources and then blaming teachers and their unions for dismal outcomes; and an end to the rapidly accumulating "educational debt," the resources due to communities historically segregated, under-funded and under-served. All children and youth in a democracy, regardless of economic circumstance, deserve full access to richly-resourced classrooms led by caring, qualified and generously compensated teachers. So let's push for that, and let's make it happen before Arne Duncan or anyone else grants us permission.
Loading comments…
Want to reply to a comment? Hint: Click "Reply" at the bottom of the comment; after being approved your comment will appear directly underneath the comment you replied to
I wish you could be Secretary of Education.
Yes, we can't expect a budding human mind to benefit from spending 12+ years sitting still and silent while filling out endless standardized forms in a place that closely resembles a juvenile detention facility. I can't for the life of me understand why people think this is the best we can do. It's all about cost-cutting. Around here they are even eliminating playgrounds at the newly built elementary schools... to save money, but at what cost?
You are so correct, Mr. Ayers. This is why I am unhappy Mr. Obama picked an anti-civil rights activist to give the invocation at his inauguration. Without the understanding that respect and dignity, human and civil rights, justice and freedom are the birthright of every human being, we will get nowhere.
When, we deny these rights to some, we establish the principle that it is OK to pick who receives the basic requirements for a good education and a shot at a successful and fulfilling life and who doesn't.
I have many educators in my family and all of them agree on two thing:
1. If a child finishes the third-grade with a real third-grade education, the child will have the skills to succeed during his entire school career.
2. Good schools aren't sufficient. Universal health care, wages that allow parents to spend time at home caring for their children and being involved in their education are required. School systems have been forced to provide necessary social services because no one else provides them. Either, the schools must be funded to provide these services or they should be provided elsewhere.
Unfortunately, private schools provide excellent educations for the elite, while the public schools are often little more than train serfs to work on corporate plantations - sit quietly in your cubicle, do what you're told, and do not think.
Leave Rick Warren alone! This is about education not your gay agenda.
The worst can be said of him is that he carries an anti-sin ( not civil rights) agenda.
Last time I looked, it was not a SIN to be black - so that is why AA's fight for civil rights..
Brillig-
Coretta Scott King herself called equality for lesbian and gay Americans the next civil rights struggle!
You should pray to overcome your prejudice so you do not continue embarassing yourself like Joe-the-Af
Here is what research (and common sense) says works to educate children:
small school population (so that everyone knows everyone else's name)
low teacher to child ratio in the classroom (1 to 12)
mixed grade classes
individualized instruction
no external rewards- intrinsic motivation instead
hands-on learning
minimal emphasis on standardized testing
Is that so hard? No. Why don't we do it? Because no one makes money doing these simple things that do not require expensive curriculum, computer labs or even credentialed teachers. Thousands of small independent private schools are doing it right all over this country with limited budgets (my own included: www.thenew
Going to have to disagree with you on some of those:
1. Small school population has worked in some circumstances but not in others, as Bill Gates has found out. He's done quite a bit of experimenting with smaller schools, and some have been successful and some have not.
2. Low teacher to child ratio is good if the teacher knows how to teach. No matter how small the classroom is, a teacher who can't teach still can't teach.
3. Mixed grade classes have been proven to work? Are you saying that children of different ages are all working on the same material, or they are working on different materials, like Montessori?
4. No external rewards I agree with, if the external awards are given out frequently. But, hey, sometimes is fun, and the kids like it. I do agree that it is overused, and it can backfire. My son came home from third grade, put one hand on his hip, and angrily held a box of popcorn in the air with the other hand, while explaining, "Look! A box of stale popcorn for those twenty books I read! Who cares? I did allll that work and alllll I got was a box of stale popcorn!" Bless his heart. I should add that he has dyslexia, so reading is WORK.
5. Personally, I hated hands-on learning. I didn't like building, painting, or constructing. I wanted open discussions, great lectures, interesting texts, and plenty of paper to write on.
Here is the link for small school research: http://www
Bill Gates is putting tons of money behind this idea because he believes in the research, even if all of his experiments aren't working (yet) there are a lot of other factors which must be taken into account.
Here is the one for "Punished by Rewards" by Alfie Kohn: http://www
Mixed grade classes with children working on different material- individualized.
When a teacher is at the board teaching prepositions , for example, a third of the kids already know it so they are bored; a third don't even know what a noun is and so are completely lost; and a third are maybe right there with the teacher ready and able to learn the new topic. That means on any given day, in any given class, with any given lesson, two-thirds of the kids are bored or lost.
Finally, we divide our school day into morning time which is very pencil, book, and paper based and afternoons where we offer hands-on projects. But in the afternoon we also offer study hall for all ages and those like you, even the 5 year olds, come to study hall by choice instead of doing the projects. So don't worry-at my school you would never be forced to build, paint or construct :)
Finally here is my blog: http://the
BRAVO Bill Ayers! As an educator, I revere your insights.
My questions would be:
How is is possible to actually accelerate learning for kids from disadvantaged environments? What experiences, curriculum, and teaching strategies would allow these kids to catch up and even surpass their "advantaged" peer-group? Is it even possiblel? (I think so.)
I'd like to see Dr Duncan fund and put in place a nationwide set of thousands of Charter Learning Labs... preK, K-2, 3-5, 6-8. These pods would need to think outside the box and limit their student numbers... 8 or 10 : 1. Replicate and refine when successful. Start over with new ideas or abandon when they are not.
Link these Charter Learning Labs to universities, open up what's going on with a web-network so people can see what is being tried and discuss. Make it a grant program. Open it up to real teachers with classroom experience to write up their ideas and implement their vision based on what they wish they could do and feel would work. Use the information to inform other program development.
Unfortunately, for all the research we have, we have very little knowledge about what actually works to jump start and engage the brain and maintain academic success for educationally disadvantaged kids. If we knew these answers, we'd have somewhere to go. Right now we're in a circular firing squad.
What does it mean to be "disadvantaged"? Living in poverty? Having a learning disability? Speaking English as a second or other language? Having parents, who are illiterate or don't have a formal education? Living in the inner-city and attending dilapidated high schools that are gang and drug infested? Defining the "disadvantage" is at the heart of finding a program that works. Again, it speaks to Mr. Ayers belief that change has to come from the community, for the community must address the challenges it finds within. What will work in one community, may not work, at all, in another. This is why I do not believe there is AN answer to the educational difficulties we face, but there are answerS.
Sure, pretty much what you listed above, minus serious learning disabilities. Language issues are part and parcel with the challenge in some places, but not as relevant in others. Defining the disadvantage is a part of the process but provides no actual answers. We know that broken homes, overworked parents, undereducated parents, drugs, gangs, etc. are a part of the landscape. But whatever the disadvantage, academic performance parity is the goal.
Techniques, methodologies, and curricula need to be tried out that have not been. One example: Technology has not been used effectively. There's no money to be made in Educational Software development, hasn't been for years. When multimedia was first touted the hardware couldn't keep up with the software, and then the wells went dry (and the software wasn't much to begin with). That's all changed... except for the well having run dry.
But here's the deal: If you can get in there and make big changes early, you are very much ahead of the game, because life gets oh-so-complicated come middle-school and beyond.
Henry Levin's Accelerated School model has shown that given the right --advanced curriculum and teaching methods, the "disadvantage" largely disappears. His idea is that kids who are behind the norm for a variety of reasons now get the worst teachers and the worst curricular experiences and the most concentration on standardized tests. The answer is not more "remedial" work but the best educational opportunities.
As you all can plainly see education's impact is on a personal level this implies that the people who spend the most time with students (ie teachers and advocates) are the most responsible for outcomes in the classroom (and outside). Aside from actual identification response relationships you have assumptions and expectations which frame school experience and taint human investment so that caricarture and disaffectedness make vulnerable personal investment and mutuality in my sense of the"success" I deserve or am able to procure.
There is a direct connection between good teaching and productive and healthy students. To embellish a learning environment is provide ample opportunity which also translates to "success" as investment in learning or as producing a product (ie an education) and affirming aptitude. Child neglect is abuse and disenfranchisement doesn't just happen. A new system of equal funding can help (it would probably cost some brain grease from some pretty smart people). People need to stop listening to auto-suggestion like it makes everything alright. Great change can take time and fortunately America has a great history of both change and education. it would be a shame if we didn't live up to either (not to mention our children). Discuss
The volume of responses that Ayers' piece has generated speaks to the level of dissatisfaction that exists with the education model we have had under conservative administrations, and here I include Clinton since his policies were in line with them.
Our first order of business should be to re-define what it means to be educated today, and to begin to discuss how to assess our effectiveness as educators. It does mean change but not the kind of change that we have been led to believe is the "answer" by individuals like Rhee and others. We'd be much better off having broad discussions after considering the work of Tony Wagner, Howard Gardner, and others who have the "big picture" in mind.
Read "The Global Achievement Gap, Why Even Our Best Schools Don't Teach the New Survival Skills Our Children Need - And What We Can Do About It," by Tony Wagner. Then ask Arne Duncan how he plans to address that gap and hold HIM accountable along with the rest of us (educators
My thanks to Bill Ayers for speaking out forcefully and articulately against a weak appointment, that may be politically expedient, but won't bring about meaningful change. As an educator I know the work of Linda Darling-Hammond and I was shocked that a person of her qualifications was passed over. I admit that its not the first time I have felt this way...
I have been and Illinois resident for all of my adult life. I have watched, experienced and cringed at a failed public school system here in Peoria. Socialists love to force the power elite view of far left government on the people. The only way that works is to remove freedoms, which we are doing and B. Hussein Obama will do with reckless abandonment.
I am not a PHD from a privileged family or an extreme political movement. I have watched with great concern and interest as my sons went through private and public schools here in Peoria. You can take away all of the money workers earn through sweat and toil, give it to government agencies and still will not make a damn bit of difference if the kids enter school with no family unity, no parents, no hope and a supremely bad attitude that they carry through to adulthood and failure. No amount of money or faceless, nameless bureaucrat can ever replace the feeling of love we can get from our parents. In short, it's all money and time washed down the drain. Listening to people like Ayers is the wrong move. Listen to parents, not the people who profit from government intervention like Ayers and
Gore.
I would ask you to look at what you have done to make your life the way it is then I would ask you to look at those kids and ask what they have done to make their lives the way they are and then be strong and ask yourself if there is not room to discuss hope for change now when it means something or in the future when real opportunities are easier to identify but harder to come by.
Hi Mr. Palkojj--
I agree with you that home life and parenting is very important. Parents need to be involved with their kids and their school work. I think we can emphasize that and have policies to help families--helping workers helps families, for example. At the same time, we can also work to improve our schools and how our kids learn to think. Perhaps a debate on socialism and its pros and cons would be a good project for school kids--let them think about it for themselves, so they understand the various ideologies and can interpret policies. Our kids leave the school system without knowing what capitialism or socialism is, they do not know how to "interpret" what politicians say. They are told by adults what to think about either one, instead of thinking about it.
This is the whole point of Mr. Ayer's article, I do believe--he wants people to learn to think.
"Socialists love to force the power elite view of far left government on the people"
I am impressed.
I call them Republican Power Rangerisms.
--Socialist
( I guess anything a government provides for the people in public services could be considered 'socialist
Are they all socialists if they don't subsidize private schools as well?... ....)
(how about public toilets is the 'socialist' too if they don't require a $.25 admission token ? )
--power elite
( do you mean our elected officials who actually act smart and don't wink at the cameras and name their supporters with childish homey little phrases like 'Tito the Builder' or 'Joe the Plumber' ?)
--far left
( who is in the near left or just 'the left' ? are you automatically 'far left' if you are a Democrat and are black, LGBT, moral but secular, against the War in Iraq ? )
oh please.
It's the big conundrum, isn't it? Aside from the different levels of natural aptitude each child has, kids of the same age have different maturity levels and degrees of emotional intelligence too. While I agree with Ayers' basic premise about what education in a democratic society should include, but how can any one teacher, even in ideal circumstances, hope to provide each of his or her students with the care and attention the kids need?
Right now, many of our nation's best and brightest aren't becoming teachers. The reasons vary, but the bottom line is the relatively low salary that a math or science teacher, for example, might receive relative to what he or she might earn elsewhere. To some extent, teachers are expected to be authority figures and role models. How can they impress upon children the importance of civic responsibility, and basic values of honesty, hard work, and open-mindedness when the teachers themselves don't exemplify these qualities? The students can tell when their teachers are shlubs.
There needs to be a massive reallocation of funds into our schools to provide ingredients towards successful education, such as providing decent student-teacher ratios, arts education, and sports to combat child obesity in addition to supporting Ayers' stated interests in creating worldly high school graduates. I don't know much about Arne Duncan, but I'm going to trust Obama to have directed the former towards these goals.
Study afte syudy has proved that more money does not mean better education. There has already been a massive reallocation of funds into our school establishments (who in the world do you think pays these ignoramus professors who study and teach about education in Chicago and then produce the abysmal results that Illinois has produced?) The best indicator of a child's success in school is his parents' level of education (actual, not on paper) and his parents and family's support of that child's efforts. Teachers are irrelevant, curriculum less so - except on the macro level where such massive gaps in instruction have occured and families are unable to make up the gaps at home. For the last 50 years, since the inception of the Dept of education and the powerful (and counter-ac
Wrong or meaningless on all counts. Money doesn't matter? Cite me some of those study after studies. "Massive reallocation of funds" to our schools? Depends on the state you're in, I suppose, but it sure hasn't happened here in California. I don't know what you mean (and suspect you don't either) by parents actual level of education, "not on paper." Teachers irrelevant? Hardly. Any dilution of the curriculum comes mainly from textbook publishers catering to the moronic right, downplaying evolution from biology texts, for instance. "Social justice" isn't crud, it's necessary to figure out what part everyone has played in the building of our country, not just rich white men. Hopefully we'll get better at integrating more of the information in the future, but anything's better than spending a good chunk of every fall hearing about the Puritans and the first Thanksgiving -- again -- then skipping from war to war and giving no time to immigration, social changes, the labor movement, etc, as was my elementary education. Not to mention other cultures! At least the schools now acknowledge that societies like China and Meso-America have long and interesting histories.
If education seems chaotic, it's because society and our view of not just where we are but where we've come from is chaotic nowadays. If we can ever get to some kind of consensus, the schools can teach it.
The only study after study that proves more money doesn't translate into better education is done by right wing think tank hacks.
Why would Obama - whose own background is noticably lacking in actual working experience in any of the tasks required of a presidet (military, diplomatic, foreign affairs, economic, managerial etc. etc.)-
be concerned about real experience for this post? He simply thinks theory is good enough.
Let's see... Bush had military, foreign affairs (considering the work he had to do with Mexico as Governor of a border state), economic and managerial experience. That's done us a heap of good. And as for "tasks required" Obama has a working understanding of the Constitution which has been sorely lacking as of late. I'd rather have a thinking person who knows the Constitution than a failed CEO as my President. At the root of all of our problems today is the serious deisregard and avoidance of the Constitution and it's intent for this country.
Jennifer
Then you'd want someone like Sarah Palin as president. She lives and breathes the Constitution for her state as governor. She calls it her bible and have referenced it several thousand times to her people and lawmakers until they were sick of hearing her recite it. She said it's the only way to keep it simple.
http://www
"Educators, students, and citizens must press now for an education worthy of a democracy, including an end to sorting people into winners and losers through expensive standardized tests which act as pseudo-scientific forms of surveillance; an end to starving schools of needed resources and then blaming teachers and their unions for dismal outcomes; and an end to the rapidly accumulating "educational debt," the resources due to communities historically segregated, under-funded and under-serv
Thank you, Dr. Ayers, for taking the time to write this. I'm a BA & MA alumnus of UIC and did part of my studies in your department (though unfortunately I never got to take a class from you).
"not a word on kids' learning or engagement with schools, not even a nod at evidence that might connect these moves with student progress" - AMEN! I too am an educator and have had it with the lack of focus on empowering students to meet the necessary standards (both in knowledge AND performance) to carry our country forward. So much administration is about appearance rather than substance.
"We want our students to be able to think for themselves, to make judgments based on evidence and argument, to develop minds of their own." AMEN AGAIN! However, it seems we have a terrible deficit of these qualities in our adults already.
I'm with you on the Chomsky and Goodman picks, too.
We will see what happen with what got.
Yeah. Well, Ayer's line of BS might play outside of Chicago. Having the inmates run the asylum has put every school district into the red in Illinois. Duncan made some tough calls and held some teachers feet to the fire, and made principals responsible for their schools. He's closed the ones that don't work, and opened ones that do. We still have hundreds of under performing public schools, and mopes like Ayers have done, despite their rhetoric, less than zero to truly advance teaching our children more effectively to compete, having diverted away millions of dollars for pet projects that could have bought chalk, paper, and pencils; maybe even a good teacher or two.
Our universities do not adequately teach teachers how to teach, there are no best teaching practices spread methodically, and enforced. What we do get are self proclaimed experts like Ayers advancing their own agenda and vision of what education should be.
No thanks.
Isn't this a bit of an oxymoron? Dr. Ayers is a Professor of Education and therefore not a self proclaimed expert. Rather, Duncan with his drill and kill efficiency standards (tied to a factory model of education and time on task --- check your history) does nothing to foster intellectual growth, critical skills, and provide the tools to live in a democratic nation.
The notion of best teaching practices ripped off from medicine (btw many physicians are rallying against since it is tied to insurance standards and not to patient care) ... a singular methodology (a one size fits all cookie cutter notion of schooling ... certainly NOT education) is absurd when dealing with human beings and human interactions.
It's a matter of philosophy. I read Bill Ayer's books and said, yes, yes..this is true. It's how you view education.
" I would have picked Noam Chomsky for state, Naomi Klein for defense, Bernardine Dohrn for Attorney General, Bill Fletcher for commerce, James Thindwa for labor, Barbara Ransby for human services, Paul Krugman for treasury, and Amy Goodman for press secretary. So what do I know?"
Exactly.
Good choices Poldolino, but with Obama I think we get a sampling of all the people you suggested, he has already made it clear that Cabinet officers are not to set policy, they will merely be implementing the polices of our new intellectual president unlike the former administration who allowed crazy right wing government hating fanatics to rule our country.
You must be logged in to comment. Log in or connect with
