Archive for December, 2008

Poor Kids Shortchanged in Ohio

Published by Robert Pondiscio on December 23, 2008 in Education News. 4 Comments

A new Ed Trust report shows that even though Ohio school districts get additional funding for low-income children, only three of the state’s 14 largest districts have higher teacher salaries in their highest-poverty schools, compared to their more affluent schools.

“Common sense and basic fairness tell us that schools educating low-income students need significantly more—and certainly not less—if we expect them to reach the same high standards and achievement levels as children who have more resources at home,” says Ed Trust’s Ross Wiener, author of the report, No Accounting for Fairness.

Guest Blogger Fred Strine: 1984 Now

Published by Fred Strine on December 21, 2008 in Education Practice and Opinion. 14 Comments

Imagine the widespread panic if doctors nationwide abandoned genuine medical expertise labeling it old-fashioned, out of touch, and insufficient for treating patients. Suppose medical schools focused on patient psychology and beside manner instead of anatomy, diagnosis and prescription therapy. What if your family M.D. suddenly morphed into a wellness facilitator (W.F.) encouraging you to “discover” your own path to better health?  Would you passively accept the change? Would you buy such blithe explanations as, “ We treat the patient, not the disease,” or “Our holistic approach to medicine more thoroughly meets the needs of 21st century patients”?

Before you dismiss the above as demented lunacy, please recognize this is no updated 1984 scenario. In reality we’re not talking about the medical profession of the future. We are talking about the education profession in America NOW. The parallels are frightening but all too true.

Most teachers certified in the last decade or so are teaching subjects they never majored in. Your children are in their classes. Parents expect subject mastery and expertise from today’s educators, but both are sadly missing. It’s outright deception on a massive scale.  Education professors and their required courses brainwash future teachers into believing anyone schooled in child psychology and progressive education doctrine can facilitate learning anything in any discipline.  This notion is recycled rubbish, fermented and fomented in the compost heap of American ed. philosophy. It’s been with us since before the turn of the 20th century, but it’s news to American parents. 

The teaching profession in 2009 is populated with young teachers too inexperienced to know anything different, established teachers too in debt to risk job security, and endangered traditional teachers too rare and too ostracized to be taken seriously. Administrators and union officials entrenched in John Dewey progressive dogma salivate over anticipated government grants using your tax money. Meanwhile parents and traditionalists within the system are ignored and castigated.

Ideologues thoroughly proficient in “edu-speak” euphemisms run American public schools today. They’re public relations experts keeping parents happy but out of touch. I’d call their obfuscation a national swindle. “Child-centered” certainly passes a hoodwinked public’s apple-pie test. “Outcome-based” assures everyone of attainable goals. “Pathways” pacify parents concerned about directionless kids. “Constructivist” no doubt betokens a solid “back to basics” foundation.

But wait. These sound-good sound bites represent updates of a progressive ed. philosophy in high fashion way back in the late 1800s. Thoroughly discredited ever since, progressive ed. has reinvented itself every generation with new “edu-speak” jargon.  Just ask any veteran teacher old enough to have survived the cycles.

These specious catch phrases reflect the views of well-intentioned but wrong-headed utopians who invariably thought socialism would save the world. Their adherents still reside in ivory-tower academia, bad mouthing America and willfully ignoring the horrific lessons of the Soviet Union, Communist China, and Cuba. Worst of all, these education Ph.D.’s are teaching our teachers and have been since the ‘60s.

The shocking truth is today’s public schools don’t even attempt to provide a solid academic foundation for ALL students. It’s what parents expect and what parents thought they were getting. Only students who opt for college prep courses get a shot at solid academics, and practically speaking even these classes have been systematically dumbed down during the 37 years since I began teaching.

Schools don’t promote independent thinking anymore. Even math problem solving routinely becomes a group project. Ninth graders, supposedly algebra ready, still cannot add, subtract, multiply or divide on paper. At 58, I managed simple math in my head before my students figured out which calculator keys to push. They thought I was a math whiz. The difference is 45 years ago I learned my times tables. Memorizing anything nowadays “ist verboten!” in progressive ed. America—has been for decades.

Today’s facilitators (edu-speak for teacher) think their job is merely helping kids learn on their own during group “discovery” sessions. In English, my chosen field, I was the only teacher in my department who failed to embrace the facilitator approach. Today’s facilitators have no clue about the expertise a traditional English teacher was expected to display “back in the day.”  (Aside: Good thing my current M.D. memorized the location of my appendix. Glad he didn’t have to operate by the “discovery” method.)

Of my 28 colleagues in the English dept. only one other geezer and I know what a direct object is. My grammar diagnostic test routinely given to 7th graders in the 70s proved way too tough for my current high school TEACHER colleagues. Our Language Arts department has no Standard English textbooks. The facilitators wouldn’t use them anyway. “Besides, nobody cares about stuff like subject-verb agreement anymore,” I’ve been told. Meanwhile glaring errors such as, “Her and me feel the same,” pass muster with both students AND their facilitators.

With group work practically universal, cheating is rampant and registers little social stigma among students. Street-wise “players” within groups dump responsibility on the smart ones, hoping to slide by with the least effort possible. No longer does a high school diploma guarantee even basic subject expertise. Students are, however, well rehearsed in co-operative activities with their peers, and they do feel good about themselves.

If schools and young teachers committed to groupthink activities were truly honest, they’d start granting one group diploma on graduation day. That practice would certainly shorten ceremonies, but would Emily Spitzer, Group Diploma Recipient #247 who plans to become a neuro-surgeon, qualify for a 21st century med. school? Hope she finds some smart lab partners!

Wise up, America. By default public education has declared the earth flat again and fallen off the edge. Somebody please re-discover Pythagoras, and let’s get back to a truly well-rounded, grounded education for all.

Fred Strine recently retired after teaching for 36 years in the Seattle area.

Required Reading

Published by Robert Pondiscio on December 20, 2008 in Weekly Roundup. 0 Comments

A weekly roundup of the week’s most important news, information and blog posts about curriculum, teaching, education policy and other items of interest to the Core Knowledge community.

Core Knowledge

Reform Realism
The Fordham Foundation issues an open letter to the incoming administration advocating “reform realism,” a “vigorous but realistic” federal role in education favoring, among other things, common standards and tests, high-quality data and solid research, and a “first do no harm” approach to ed reform.

The New Stupid
Gone are the days when educators dismissed data as having only a limited utility for improving schools and school systems.  What’s taken its place, argues Rick Hess, is “The New Stupid” — where data-based decision making and research-based practice “stand in for careful thought, serve as dressed-up rationales for the same old fads, or [are] used to justify incoherent proposals.”

The Spillage of Muddy Language
Core Knowledge teacher Diana Senechal on education reform and the terms “conservative,” “progressive,” “reformer,” and “establishment.” Lo and behold, she writes, they mean everything and nothing.

21st Century Skills: The Newest Edufad
Eduwonk Andy Rotherham sees a “false choice between teaching facts and teaching how to approach them.” Writing in U.S. News, Rotherham foresees the potential “to make the 21st-century skills movement another fad leading to little change in American education.”

 

Best of the Blogs

Obama’s Amazingly Un-Amazing Education Secretary
Pajamas Media
It really is amazing how totally uninteresting the choice of Duncan for education secretary is, Greg Forster writes waggishly.  “In fact, the selection has succeeded in fascinating me by achieving such an unprecedented level of anti-fascinatingness. It repels my interest so strongly that I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Teaching and Curriculum

Most Textbooks Should Just Stay On the Shelf
Washington Post
In the classrooms I visit, writes Jay Mathews, it is often a good sign that the textbooks are stacked on a corner bookshelf or window sill, gathering dust. The best teachers have an ongoing conversation with their class, calling on every student, challenging sloth, praising fresh ideas, moving the group beyond the text, which covers only the state’s or the school’s curricular requirements.

A Race Against the Clock: The Value of Expanded Learning Time for English Language Learners
Center for American Progress
Current efforts to promote the expansion of learning time suggest increasing the school day by two hours or lengthening the year by 360 hours—the equivalent of at least 30 percent more learning time. This additional time can be pivotal in closing both the academic and language gap for ELLs.

Education Policy

Obama Pledge Stirs Hope in Early Childhood Education
The New York Times
The $10 billion Mr. Obama has pledged for early childhood education would amount to the largest new federal initiative for young children since Head Start began in 1965. “People are absolutely ecstatic,” says the head of one advocacy group. “Some people seem to think the Great Society is upon us again.”

Ed Secretary Pick Noted for Hands-On Approach
USA Today
If he’s confirmed, Arne Duncan’s first job as education secretary will be hammering out accords on Obama’s top education priorities: college affordability and expanded preschool. His toughest task may be persuading Congress to reauthorize NCLB.  It has been largely forsaken by many congressional Democrats for its heavy reliance on standardized testing — and by many Republicans for its federal intrusion on local education decisions.

No Money, No Child
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
Nine school districts sued the federal government in 2005, arguing that enforcement of NCLB was unconstitutional and illegal, since it requires schools to do things without providing the money. The districts lost in U.S. District Court in Detroit, but the ruling was later reversed.  It seems certain that the case will be decided ultimately by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Geoffrey Canada and Education’s Future
Washington Post
There are no trumpets and violins at the end of Paul Tough’s book Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America.  “Tough makes the vital point,” notes Jay Mathews, “repeated by other urban educators, that if those early years programs can be expanded, there might be less need for the hero teachers working 10-hour days that one often finds in the highest-performing middle and high schools in low-income neighborhoods.”

Happy Birthday, Charter Schools
City Journal
Over the past decade, charter schools have gone from a quaint think-tank idea to a mass movement with broad parental support and bipartisan backing.  On the 10th anniversary of New York’s charter law, Thomas W. Carroll notes failures and missteps along the way also suggest a need for state chartering entities and charter advocates to pause for a moment of reflection. How did we get here, he asks, and where are we headed?

Homeschooling and Parenting

In Defense of Teasing
New York Times Magazine
The reason teasing is viewed as inherently damaging is that it is too often confused with bullying.  Teasing is a mode of play, no doubt with a sharp edge, in which we provoke to negotiate life’s ambiguities and conflicts. And it is essential to making us fully human.

Nut Bans in Schools May Be Spurring Hysteria
Health Day
Peanut and other food allergies are on the rise, with more and more children being diagnosed with potentially life-threatening allergies, and schools are responding by providing nut-free areas. But at least one expert wonders if schools are going too far, even creating hysteria over potential nut exposures. What’s worse, schools may be perpetuating the problem by limiting exposure to nuts in non-allergic children.

Et Alia

The Wheels on the Bus Go Ka-Ching!
NBC News
Three bills have been introduced by New Jersey legislators that would allow school districts to sell ads on the sides of buses they rent or own. The effort would help schools raise money while keeping New Jersey taxpayers a little richer and a lot happier, because they won’t have to pay higher taxes.

Learning the Right Lessons

Published by Robert Pondiscio on December 19, 2008 in Education News. 0 Comments

Finland, widely seen as the top-performing school system in the world, has merit pay and teachers unions and tenure.  It has school choice and a national curriculum.  “American education reformers across the political spectrum have lauded the Finns’ investments in parental leave, early childhood education, and national curriculum standards,” writes Dana Goldstein at the American Prospect. ”Education liberals point to the value the Finnish system places on teacher autonomy, while conservatives and libertarians laud Finland’s ability to coax excellent achievement out of students despite large class sizes and relatively few hours in the classroom.”

A close look at Finland “does more to quiet than to fan the flames” of U.S. education reform debates, Goldstein concludes.

The point of studying other nations’ school systems is not to find the silver bullet but to realize that there isn’t one. In the United States, the education debate has been framed as a zero-sum game. We’ve been told again and again that we need to make hard choices between labor protections and doing what is best for children. But a good education system can include merit pay, as well as strong unions and tenure. It can have relatively short school days and large classes but also national curriculum guidelines. Teachers can have autonomy in lesson planning while simultaneously being held to high professional standards. Universal day care and pre-school on one end of the education spectrum can be matched by a commitment to vocational preparedness on the other.

If the United States committed to taking education as seriously as the Finns do, Goldstein concludes, “the universe of possibilities would open up wider than most of us can imagine. That is a long-range project but one whose goal should remain in the back of education reformers’ minds, even as they fight out the day-to-day political battles sure to come.”

Reform Realism

Published by Robert Pondiscio on December 18, 2008 in Educational Policy, No category, Opinion and accountability. 5 Comments

In the year that this blog has been observing and commenting on the passing education scene, we have often favored the sensible center–understanding the need and urgency behind genuine education reform, but clear-eyed about the unintended consequences and deleterious effects of various accountability efforts and reform schemes.  Thus it’s heartening to see one of the 800-pound gorillas in ed reform, the Fordham Foundation, issuing an open letter to the incoming administration advocating “reform realism” — a “vigorous but realistic” federal role in education. 

In a refreshing step away from the tendentious “reformers vs. status quo” argument that has characterized much education debate of late, Fordham sees three camps, not two.  1)  “System Defenders” who believe that public education is fundamentally sound but needs additional resources in order to be more effective; 2) ”The Army of the Potomac” which Fordham argues has “generally sound instincts about reform” but suffers from its “boundless faith in Washington’s ability to accomplish significant positive change in K-12 education”; and 3) “Local Controllers” who want the Feds to ”butt out of K-12 education-but to keep sending money to states and districts.”

Fordham is calling for a fourth approach, dubbed ”Reform Realism,” which favors, among other things common standards and tests, high-quality data and solid research, and protecting the civil rights of individual students and educators.   Advocating a “first do no harm” approach to ed reform, “Reform Realism” also favors eliminating federal oversight of state testing and reporting systems, and mandated school sanctions, as well as loosening rules on teacher credentials. 

As Reform Realists, we favor a vigorous but realistic federal role that respects what is best done from Washington and for the entire nation while dismissing federal programs, policies and practices that have not and cannot succeed,” said Fordham president Chester E. Finn, Jr. “We hope others will join our small but feisty band.”

There’s a lot to like here, even if the open letter is not perfect.  For example describing one camp as “System Defenders” is needlessly antagonistic. It’s a nuance-averse take that does a disservice to many (not just unions, but frontline teachers) who can and do play an important and productive role in school reform.  Likewise, I wonder if it’s fair or accurate to describe the “Army of the Potomac” as occupying the political center, as Petrilli does in a video on Fordham’s blog.  What unites these groups, I think, is a laserlike (if sometimes too rigid) focus on accountability and measurable results, which both defies and transcends political labels. 

Indeed, my only misgiving about Fordham’s smart and welcome contribution is framing it terms of left, center and right.  As Alfie Kohn’s recent piece in The Nation unwittingly demonstrated, it’s not that simple. Efforts to assign particular reform elements to political parties hinder progress. There are Democrats who favor charters, vouchers and muscular accountability, for example.  There are conservatives who welcome national standards.  There is a broad tradition in American politics that says in times of crisis, partisanship stops at the water’s edge.  Perhaps the time has come to ask – even demand –partisanship to stop at the schoolhouse door.

Education’s Person of the Year?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on December 17, 2008 in Education News. 1 Comment

To the surprise of exactly no one, Time Magazine has named Barack Obama it’s person of the year.   Here at the Core Knowledge Blog, we’ve been quietly asking education pundits this week to list the five people they believe have had the biggest impact–for good or for ill–on education in 2008 (well, it was quiet until Nancy Flanagan outed us on her blog). 

Between Christmas and New Years Eve we’ll count down the top five, one each day, based on the consensus rankings of our blue-chip panel of experts.  Nancy’s picks: Jay Mathews of the Washington Post, Eduwonkette, Michelle Rhee, Linda Darling-Hammond and — shades of Time naming “You!” as person of the year a few years back — “Every Teacher” in the top slot. 

One thing can be said with certainty:  Our list of the most influential people in education will be a little less predictable that Time’s POY.  Stay tuned.  And click comments to add your picks.

The New Stupid

Published by Robert Pondiscio on December 17, 2008 in Education Leadership and Research and Reports. 10 Comments

Gone are the days when educators dismissed data as having only a limited utility for improving schools and school systems.  What’s taken its place, argues Rick Hess, is “The New Stupid” — where data-based decision making and research-based practice “stand in for careful thought, serve as dressed-up rationales for the same old fads, or [are] used to justify incoherent proposals.”

In an article in Education Leadership, Hess describes first encountering the tendency to “energetically misuse data” during a presentation to a group of aspiring superintendents.

The group had recently read a research brief high-lighting the effect of teachers on student achievement as well as the inequitable distribution of teachers within districts, with higher-income, higher-performing schools getting the pick of the litter. The aspirants were fired up and ready to put this knowledge to use. To a roomful of nods, one declared, “Day one, we’re going to start identifying those high value-added teachers and moving them to the schools that aren’t making AYP.”

Now, although I was generally sympathetic to the premise, the certainty of the stance provoked me to ask a series of questions: Can we be confident that teachers who are effective in their current classrooms would be equally effective elsewhere? What effect would shifting teachers to different schools have on the likelihood that teachers would remain in the district? Are the measures in question good proxies for teacher quality? What steps might either encourage teachers to accept reassignment or improve recruiting for underserved schools?

My concern was not that the would-be superintendents lacked firm answers to these questions,” Hess recalls.  “It was that they seemingly regarded such questions as distractions.”

The key is not to retreat from data, Hess counsels, ”but to truly embrace the data by asking hard questions, considering organizational realities, and contemplating unintended consequences. Absent sensible restraint, it is not difficult to envision a raft of poor judgments governing staffing, operations, and instruction—all in the name of ‘data-driven decision making.’”

This is smart, even heroic stuff. 

 

21st Century Skills: The Newest Edufad

Published by Robert Pondiscio on December 16, 2008 in Core Knowledge and Curriculum. 0 Comments

Credit to Eduwonk Andy Rotherham (and his Ed Sector colleague Elena Silva) for continuing to describe the “false choice between teaching facts and teaching how to approach them.” Writing in U.S. News, Rotherham foresees the potential “to make the 21st-century skills movement another fad leading to little change in American education.”

Critical thinking and problem solving, for example, have been a component of human progress throughout history, from early tools and agricultural advancements to gunpowder, vaccinations, or exploration. And while “global awareness” has historically been as much a martial talent as an economic one, interconnectedness is not new nor is information literacy among elites. Likewise, the idea that there is a hierarchy of knowledge from facts to complex analysis is not a new one. Plato, for example, wrote about four distinct levels of intellect. Perhaps these were considered ‘3rd-century B.C. skills’?

As Andy notes, some of those advocating 21st-century skills believe such skills should replace the teaching of content.  “While students should leave school with more than just facts in their head, facts do matter, too,” Rotherham writes. “Content undergirds critical thinking, analysis, and broader information literacy skills….It’s impossible, for instance, to critically analyze the American Revolution without understanding the facts and context surrounding that event. Unfortunately, state, national, and international assessments show that despite a two-decade-long focus on standards, American schools still are not delivering a content-rich curriculum for all students.”

Rotherham also credits Core Knowledge founder E. D. Hirsch in the piece for fighting the good fight lo these past two decades that “giving all students a common framework of knowledge is a key strategy for increasing civic equality.”

The Honeymoon Begins

Published by Robert Pondiscio on December 15, 2008 in Education News. 2 Comments

The choice of Education Secretary is the edublog equivalent of American Idol, and Chicago’s Arne Duncan is Fantasia.  Lord, but I do love the blogs.

Fordham’s Checker Finn pronounces Duncan a “terrific pick….a proven and committed and inventive education reformer, not tethered to the public-school establishment and its infinite interest groups.”  Joel Klein likes the pick, while Democrats for Education Reform reminds everyone they touted Duncan weeks ago.  A-Rus at This Week in Education credits Duncan for longevity and being an early critic of NCLB testing, tutoring, and transfer requirements, while noting “Chicago has never been a finalist for the Broad education prize for urban school reform.”  Eduwonk is happy. Fred Klonsky’s not, but says “we could have done better and worse.”   Edweek’s Campaign K-12 points out what was almost certainly be the Tuesday morning spin:  He makes everybody in the ongoing fight for Obama’s educational soul reasonably happy

Duncan may also help the bridge the divide over education in the Democratic Party. He was the recommended choice for education secretary of Democrats for Education Reform and has won praise from American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten.

It’s Arne Duncan

Published by Robert Pondiscio on December 15, 2008 in No category. 0 Comments

Obama has scheduled a press conference tomorrow morning at a Chicago school.  It must mean Arne Duncan is the education secretary, no?

Update:  The New York Times confirms it:

President-elect Barack Obama will name Arne Duncan, the superintendent of schools in Chicago, to be his Secretary of Education, a senior Democratic official and a second person close to the decision said.