Both David Brooks of the New York Times and the Washington Post editorial board ran eerily similar pieces on Friday about the two rival camps within the education reform movement.
Both essays categorize the two major education interests as existing at irreconcilable poles. The Post writes:
The different education factions of the party -- those pushing for radical restructuring and those more wedded to the status quo -- were each convinced during the campaign that Mr. Obama shared their particular viewpoints.
Brooks frames it:
On the one hand, there are the reformers like Joel Klein and Michelle Rhee, who support merit pay for good teachers, charter schools and tough accountability standards. On the other hand, there are the teachers' unions and the members of the Ed School establishment, who emphasize greater funding, smaller class sizes and superficial reforms.
So pick a side. You're either with the bold chainsaw of "reform" or you're a wimpy defender of the stigma-laden "status quo." Wrap your arms around the testing monomania Joel Klein brought to New York, or you're soft on accountability. Embrace Michelle Rhee's nuclear approach to administering schools, or you're a status quo-hugging wuss.
Here's a snippet from this week's Time Magazine cover story on the hard-charging DC schools chancellor:
"The thing that kills me about education is that it's so touchy-feely," she [Rhee] tells me [Time reporter Amanda Ripley] one afternoon in her office. Then she raises her chin and does what I come to recognize as her standard imitation of people she doesn't respect. Sometimes she uses this voice to imitate teachers; other times, politicians or parents. Never students. "People say, 'Well, you know, test scores don't take into account creativity and the love of learning,'" she says with a drippy, grating voice, lowering her eyelids halfway. Then she snaps back to herself. "I'm like, 'You know what? I don't give a crap.' Don't get me wrong. Creativity is good and whatever. But if the children don't know how to read, I don't care how creative you are. You're not doing your job."
I get it. Proficiency in basic skills is essential. Do I get slapped with a status quo label for suggesting that there should be other priorities in school (and childhood) besides basic skills drilling for students at risk? Also, Rhee is working with a particularly horrendous system in Washington, DC; is her scorched earth attitude the kind we need as U.S. Secretary of Education?
The status quo-defending enemy has a face. Both Brooks and the Post editorial board name Stanford professor and top Obama education adviser Linda Darling-Hammond as the personification of the education anti-reformist. This is disingenuous. True, Darling-Hammond doesn't want to blow up America's schools the way acolytes of Klein and Rhee may. She does not always side with privatization of schools. She does not view teachers' unions and collective bargaining as categorically repellent. And in 2005, she co-authored a study that was critical of Teach for America's high attrition rate. However, Darling-Hammond's comprehensive body of work, particularly on teacher quality, is progressive and speaks to improving the realities of life on the ground in American schools.
Thoughtful, incremental reform is still reform, and it may be wiser than the corporate-supported nuclear option. David Brooks and the Washington Post do Americans a disservice by waving a chainsaw and shouting you're either with us or you're with the status quo.
Dan Brown is a teacher and the author of The Great Expectations School: A Rookie Year in the New Blackboard Jungle. He is not a member of a teachers' union.
Follow Dan Brown on Twitter: www.twitter.com/danbrownteacher
What has consistently failed to show any positive effect include 1) making schools accountable for test results, 2) Reading first --making every kid sound out letters before encountering books and 3) vouchers and charter schools. Those "studies" that seem to show positive impact of voucher schools are not credible because they are bought and paid for by right wing think tanks who commission the results of studies and never, never pass the standards of scholarly review.
If Obama picks the neoliberal voucher supporters for SOE, it will be a tragedy for public schools. Read the post about Edison in Philly. This thing has happened whenever schools are turned over to the private sector. Darling-Hammond supports REFORMS THAT ACTUALLY WORK.
Well done.
BTW, charter schools in Arizona consistently lag behind public schools in both NCLB and Arizona Learns. They've had 15 years to get it together, and they haven't done it.
Don't correct the antiquated public school system. We don't know what the jobs of the future are going to be, so we can't pretend to know how to train and what to teach our beloved children. It is their dreams that will create the future, so they should decide (and let us know through an interpreter). What they are observing now will determine their dreams for our future.
It may mean that women return to the home and work from there, if necessary. Women have special gifts, so this has nothing to do with becoming dependents again. We have a bunch of empty houses coming to the market. Maybe they should be the new school houses to reduce class size. I say all this simply to move your mind towards the edges of the box.
We must meet the entire goal of education: imparting our knowledge to the young as they grow up to higher learning arenas and step out into the job market DEBT FREE and without their parents having to pay significant portions (or any) of their salaries.
Poor neighborhoods have a bottom percentage of kids who simply don't do well in the classroom environment, and certainly do not test well, persistently. Their personal & family problems are Legion.
These kids' failures are blamed on Public Schools, which get taken over by Private, for-profit Charters.
Then, the Charter school goes into "secrecy" mode (which public schools can't do, by law), and basically just kicks-out those kids it can't work with (without the Public finding out), and keeps the "workable" kids as
its main source of profit.
Mission accomplished for school privateers.
IS NEARLY ALWAYS DETERMINED BY THE STUDENTS.
Sorry, but that's just the truth.
Public schools are not failing---They are doing their utmost, under horrendous conditions
(in big city schools) to educate the Great Masses of poor, immigrant, gang-involved, broken-families,
etc etc etc etc.
America has failed its People--especially its poor & low-income.
America uses school as a band-aid for social problems that need MUCH MORE
than test-scores and politician's bromides to heal.
Charter schools just throw out all the rules and run
kid-warehouses for-profit on the taxpayer'$ dime.
Charter Schools are just LEGALIZED ROBBERY.
Private schools only succeed for one reason, they can keep out anyone they don't feel like teaching and thus can cherry-pick the children of highly motivated (and highly compensated) parents.
They don't have to deal with kids with disabilities, drug problems, broken homes, lack of health care, inability to speak English, etc.
Public schools on the other hand MUST accept and accommodate EVERYONE.
I am constantly amused by the "Privatization" push in PRIMARY schools, but no one ever talks about it at the COLLEGE level, where it already exists. I would bet good money that every one of the "Privatization" pushers kid's when to PRIVATE COLLEGES (at $75K/semester.) Hows that working out for you eh? Got your kid into William and Mary this year? I thought so.
This is another in the long, sad, list of symptoms of the breakdown in American Society. The stratification of Education. The wealthy get all the good schools, the poor can go pound sand.
This is NOT the fault of the Teachers Union, or the State either, it is the fault of the PARENTS who use schools as a big baby-sitter, and when little Tommy or Suzy don't turn out the way they want, they blame the Schools.
Good parents create good schools, which turn out good students.
No amount of money or mandates is going to change that.
I have never understood why teachers would object to merit pay for high performers, measured by how well their students learn what they're supposed to learn. Back in the Jurassic, when I was a student, we had these "grades" that told us how well or not we had grasped the subject matter. I don't see why these grades are invalid. Or tests. That's how we determined our grades.
And let's not repeat the formula that some kids' are the victims of dysfunctional family life. This is code for "black and Hispanic." Odd that Catholic schools can take these same kinds of kids (not necessarily self selected) and produce college-bound graduates in large numbers. With smaller budgets and lower pay than many public schools.
Seems to me there are two parts of the American scene where people can be rewarded for bad performance: corporate boardrooms and under the mantle of tenure. Can you imagine how anyone would react if incompetent corporate executives excused their fumbles by claiming that executive leadership requires some ineffable, non-quantifiable, semi- mystical qualities that can't be measured?
What nonsense.
Well done.
Yes there are things that public schools could do better. Teach real science not religious hoo-haa, ... economics, managing your money, balancing a check book. Make the kids and their parents take a stake. Education is not a product, it is a process. Pay teachers like professionals.
When kids take pride in learning, and parents insist they learn, ... our schools will get better.
"Smart is the new Rich" as they would say. They can take your house and your car, but they can only take your mind if you give it to them willingly!
In every progressive movement ever, the teacher's unions have been at the forefront of the action. Part of every teacher's mission is to fight ignorance and encourage critical thinking, i.e. "preparing students to become citizens in a participatory democracy," The other part is to bring basic literacy and math skills to a marketable level, Neither part of this mission is dispensable.
This mission requires teachers who are adequately prepared, compensated, and supported. Creating job insecurity by always threatening to privatize public schools detracts from this mission. People who actually care about students MUST care about teachers, and MUST support reform from the grassroots up, which requires unionized teachers.
Change imposed from the top down never works. If there is no buy in and ownership, change is resented, and is subject to the fashion whims of education - every teacher knows that there is a 3 year cycle for sweeping education reforms within their district, corresponding to the Superintendant's election cycle.
I hope that Darling-Hammond or another person who believes in public education and does not demonize teacher's unions is Obama's pick for Education Secretary. The bad old days of branding hard-working teachers as terrorists, demons, lazy, etc, are hopefully gone with the Bush administration.
Get rid of the criminals who horde plasma TVs and DVD players in secret rooms that should be used for teaching ... waiting until they can be written off and taken home brand new in the box. Eliminate the principals who lie about ESL student enrollment and use the excess funds for ... plasma TVs (I don't know what it is about NY school officials ... but they love them some Plasma screens!!!).
We don't need another battery of tests designed by well-connected contractors for millions that can be used to justify eliminating teachers who don't tow the line. We need to clean house and establish a system of accountability that includes teachers and administrators. One that views education in terms of individual improvement vs. the artificial construct of aged-based proficiency.
1. Gather a panel of educators who face the bone-crunching reality of teaching on the front lines every day. This sort of advisory network would keep the SOE grounded in reality.
2. There are teachers out there who are at the top of their pedagogical game, but weary of the struggle. Pair them with new teachers for a truly meaningful mentorship program. State budgets have trimmed and/or eliminated such programs.
3. Class size in urban districts is the emblem for society's glaring disdain for our kids. Why should students languish in a 40-student classroom when administrators get huge pay increases and countless perks? Trim the bureaucratic fat and reroute the funds to the students.
4. This is admittedly a utopian whim, but it's just a thought: why do so many Ivy League grads eschew public education? Lack of upward mobility and financial reward. Make it a lucrative profession, and hold teachers such as myself (13 years in Los Angeles) highly accountable. The creative, dynamic minds of this generation will come if they see there is both inspiration and solvency in the job.
5. Teachers in my school donate at least 15 hours a week unpaid to help their students. Last year we chose to forego an hour's pay to highlight our concern about class size. We do care.
True story. She was also the yearbook and newspaper sponsor.
Sadly good supervision in American schools is a rare beast.