Archive for the 'Opinion' Category

History, Hubris and Humility

Published by Robert Pondiscio on October 20, 2009 in Educational Policy and Opinion. 5 Comments

Over at Fordham’s Flypaper, Andy Smarick posts a remarkable piece that should be tacked to the bulletin boards of would-be ed reformers everywhere.  It’s a brief reflection on Diane Ravitch’s 2000 book, Left Back. 

If you’re not in the market for a dose of humility, this probably isn’t your bag. If read with an open mind, it’s sobering stuff for hard-charging reformers chock-full of certainty. But part of me thinks it should be required reading for anyone handing out big philanthropic grants or overseeing massive government education programs, especially those dedicated to innovation, like the much-discussed I3 program.

Hear, hear.  Diane is a friend, and someone whose work I admired long before I met her, so I will not pretend to be unbiased, but I’m happy to see Smarick come to terms with the work of our greatest education historian and apply it to current efforts in education reform, a field intoxicated with triumphalism at the moment.  Blame it on the blogosphere, but it has become too easy for “hard-charging reformers” to dismiss those who decline to ride the bandwagon as in favor of the status quo, ill-informed, enemies or just plain nuts.  Diane has been on the receiving end of  these slings and arrows in disproportionate numbers in recent years.  Just about everyone who blogs on education champions a particular point of view, program or policy.  As a historian, Diane doesn’t play favorites and she isn’t on anyone’s side.  This drives some people over the edge.  That’s their problem, not Diane Ravitch’s

Smarick, to his credit, gets it.  “Ravitch’s lesson is a modest, even sage one: We need to avoid new ‘movements’ like the plague and give ‘more attention to fundamental, time-tested truths,’” he writes.  And while he still doesn’t agree with her take on charters and assessments, after reading Left Back, “I certainly now better understand the roots of her criticisms of the Race to the Top’s favored strategies.”

My father, a first-generation American with deep blue-collar roots, did not suffer fools gladly.  One of his favorite things to tell his son was “I’ve forgotten more than you’ll ever know.”  Diane Ravitch has forgotten more about education than most of us will ever know.

President Obama’s Standards-Based Speech

Published by Robert Pondiscio on September 8, 2009 in Curriculum, Education News and Opinion. 9 Comments

If there’s a bright side to the past week’s uproar over President Obama’s speech to schoolchildren it’s this: when was the last time we had a robust national debate about what our kids actually do in school?  A Niagara of ink was spilled debating whether the speech and a set of recommended classroom activities represented political propaganda, indoctrination or an abuse of presidential power.  But here’s an overlooked, yet indisputably accurate description of Obama’s speech and those controversial lesson plans: 

“Standards-based.”

The draft national standards in reading, writing, speaking and listening worked up by National Governors Associations (NGA) and The Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), specify only the skills our children should be able to demonstrate.  Whether President Obama and the Department of Education realize it or not, they are revealing exactly how empty and meaningless these “standards” are as currently written.  For example, in order to be “college and career ready,” the draft standards hold that students must be able to “listen to complex information and understand what was said, identifying main ideas and supporting details.”  This is a standard you can apply to today’s speech by President Obama, a Glenn Beck talk show rant, the films of Michael Moore, or the conspiratorial ravings of the 9/11 “truth” movement.   So while conservatives can rest assured that Obama’s speech to schoolchildren will not be a part of the emerging national standards, neither is Patrick Henry’s “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” speech, Lincoln’s second inaugural address or Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.   In fact, no speech, book, poem or play is required.  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all speeches are created equal. 

But wait a minute, you might be thinking, “isn’t that what national standards are supposed to do?  Doesn’t it mean that kids from Maine to Montana are learning the same thing?”  No, that’s what a national curriculum would do.   It’s become distressingly clear that even people in education who should know better use the terms “standards” and “curriculum” interchangeably.  Yong Zhao, a distinguished professor of education at Michigan State University wrote in the Detroit Free Press last week that national standards “stifle creativity and reduce diversity of talents by instilling a single view of worthwhile knowledge” thereby doing “irreversible damage” to American education.  There are many criticisms one can level at the national standards movement.  That’s not one of them.

What conservative critics like Beck, Michelle Malkin and others might have focused on but did not is that the Administration’s suggested activities meet literally every one of the draft common core standards.  In order to be “college and career ready” students should be able to “sustain focus on a specific topic or argument through careful presentation of essential content;” “support and illustrate arguments and explanations with relevant details and examples;” and “represent and cite accurately the data, conclusions and opinions of others” among other skills.  Even the “inartfully worded” suggestion, that students ”write letters to themselves about what they can do to help the president” is not in conflict with such standards. 

This is the dilemma of process standards:  they are aggressively, adamantly agnostic on the content of a good education.  Anything goes.  What speeches and texts are important to know?  Right now, the official answer is “none.”   Perhaps that’s a silver lining in this otherwise strange and irritating controversy that has greeted the President’s speech to school children.  If you don’t think that listening and responding to a Presidential address is a productive use of school time, the question you need to address is, “What exactly do you think your child should be reading and listening to all day?”

It’s a debate that is worth having.  At present, 46 states and the District of Columbia are close to answering the question “What should children learn in school” with “whatever.”    If you don’t think “whatever” is a good or helpful answer, then your choices quickly narrow to two:  You can fight to define what is (or is not) the appropriate content of a sound, well-rounded public education.  Or you can keep your child home every time he or she is assigned a text that you don’t like.

Update: Jay Greene comes at this from a similar angle.  “Parents sense a lack of control over what their children are taught in school,” he notes. “This is as true of every day’s social studies lesson as it is of Obama’s speech.”

No Excuses

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 17, 2009 in Opinion, Parents and Students. 3 Comments

One of the biggest applause line in President Obama’s speech to the NAACP Thursday wasn’t in his prepared remarks–it came when he exhorted parents and children to take full advantage of their educational opportunities and make “no excuses.”

We have to say to our children, Yes, if you’re African American, the odds of growing up amid crime and gangs are higher. Yes, if you live in a poor neighborhood, you will face challenges that someone in a wealthy suburb does not. But that’s not a reason to get bad grades, that’s not a reason to cut class, that’s not a reason to give up on your education and drop out of school. No one has written your destiny for you. Your destiny is in your hands – and don’t you forget that.  That’s what we have to teach all of our children! No excuses! No excuses!” 

The “Your destiny is in your hands…no excuses” bit was not in the President’s prepared remarks, but both Fox News and the Huffington Post put it in their respective headlines.

In education circles, of course, the “no excuses” meme has become shorthand for schools–and especially teachers–making no excuses for poor student achievement.  It reflects the deeply held conviction by some that a school can, should, must overcome all deficits in the children it serves, regardless of outside circumstances.  It remains an excellent rallying cry, if not a realistic standard by which to measure teacher performance. 

It’s refreshing to hear the standard applied to all actors in the process, not just teachers.  The response to Obama’s off-the-cuff remark clearly demonstrates the wisdom of crowds.

An Unhelpful Development

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 15, 2009 in Curriculum, Education News and Opinion. 6 Comments

The persistent battles over school curriculum in Texas have turned into a debate over how much faith belongs in American history classrooms.  It’s an unhelpful development for anyone who wants to see kids get more history in school.

The Texas Board of Education is revising the state’s social studies curriculum, the Wall Street Journal reports.  “Three reviewers, appointed by social conservatives, have recommended revamping the K-12 curriculum to emphasize the roles of the Bible, the Christian faith and the civic virtue of religion in the study of American history”  reporter Stephanie Simon notes.  

The conservative reviewers say they believe that children must learn that America’s founding principles are biblical. For instance, they say the separation of powers set forth in the Constitution stems from a scriptural understanding of man’s fall and inherent sinfulness, or “radical depravity,” which means he can be governed only by an intricate system of checks and balances. The curriculum, they say, should clearly present Christianity as an overall force for good — and a key reason for American exceptionalism, the notion that the country stands above and apart.

Simon has more to say on the WSJ blog The Juggle, describing history class as “a new front [that] has opened in the curriculum culture wars.”  If so, it’s a most unwelcome and unhelpful one.  Core curriculum is already starved for oxygen in too many schools.  Fear that history is a stalking horse for religious instruction offers one more reason to downplay its importance, eliminate it from the school day, or reduce it to mere pabulum, as one commenter observes:

At this point, I don’t even care about the culture wars any more. I just wish the schools would teach a lot more history. My kids get so little history, and what they do get is mainly in the form of little nuggets of usually incorrect information. They do Columbus in October, Thanksgiving in November (and yes, they do mention God, and the kids color some pictures of Indians, usually in completely wrong attire, and that is about it). In January they learn that “Martin Luther King was a great man who got everybody together.” No mention of Jim Crow, no mention of civil disobediance, no mention of slavery. It is horrifying. My son just finished third grade and doesn’t know about slavery or the Civil War. What sense does Martin Luther King make if you don’t know about slavery? My sense is that the schools here are so scared they might offend someone, both conservatives and liberals, that they just don’t teach anything at all.”

Hard to disagree with that common sense perspective.  And even harder to see how emphasizing the “Christian character” of the U.S. is going to make secular teachers–or parents–more enthusiastic about teaching history.  It’s just what the effort to beef up core curriculum doesn’t need–turning history into the next “intelligent design” debate.

The Most Overpraised Kids Books Ever

Published by Robert Pondiscio on July 7, 2009 in Opinion. 21 Comments

Pick a list of 15 books, call it “The Best Kids’ Books Ever,” and you’re spoiling for a fight.  Especially when you publish your list in the New York Times and leave off beloved authors like Roald Dahl and Beverly Cleary in favor of Little Lord Fauntleroy.   Timesman Nicholas Kristof’s frozen-in-time list includes Anne of Green Gables, The Prince and the Pauper and the Hardy Boys series.  With the exception of the Harry Potter books, Kristof’s list is composed almost entirely of books by authors who now decompose.   Times readers put down the crossword puzzle long enough to fire off angry emails–over 2,000 of them–defending Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Cleary’s Ramona books, The Secret Garden, the Narnia series, Little House on the Prairie and hundreds of others. 

Since Kristof has already incited a near riot over the best kids’ books ever, let me propose a sequel:  The most overpraised kids books ever. 

I’ll start with one on Kristof’s “Best” list, and add a four more:

1.  Anne of Green Gables (I tried so hard, so very very hard, to love the plucky little orphan.  I failed.)
2. A Wrinkle in Time  (ponderous, inscrutable, dull)
3. From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler  (see A Wrinkle in Time, above.  Add “pretentious”)
4. The Phantom Tollbooth  (it makes kids laugh, but they laugh at SpongeBob, too.)
5. The Hobbit (First it’s Tolkien, then Dungeons and Dragons, next thing you know you’re Jeff Spicoli)

I will now proceed directly to my bunker in an undisclosed location.

Raise the Age for Compulsory Ed?

Published by Robert Pondiscio on June 8, 2009 in Higher Education and Opinion. 7 Comments

Memory fades, but there were New York City schools chancellors before Joel Klein, and the guy who had the job most recently takes to the New York Times op-ed page with five ways to fix education.  The first suggestion on Harold Levy’s list, however, is an eyebrow-raiser. He wants to raise the age of compulsory education.

Twenty-six states require children to attend school until age 16, the rest until 17 or 18, but we should ensure that all children stay in school until age 19. Simply completing high school no longer provides students with an education sufficient for them to compete in the 21st-century economy. So every child should receive a year of post-secondary education.

College entrance is still something largely driven by interest and merit.  Might that have something to do with the generally sound state of U.S. higher ed and the relatively poor state of our K-12 system?   Curiously, Levy’s fifth fix is to produce more qualified applicants to college.  “Half of the freshmen at community colleges and a third of freshmen at four-year colleges matriculate with academic skills in at least one subject too weak to allow them to do college work,” he complains. ”Unsurprisingly, the average college graduation rates even at four-year institutions are less than 60 percent.”  Surely, compelling college attendance will only exacerbate this issue, and make remediating the failures of K-12 education the problem of our colleges and universities. 

Levy’s piece is a good example of what might be termed credentialism–favoring the prize over the accomplishment it represents.  While high school graduates may earn more and enjoy better health than dropouts, the diploma does not magically confer these benefits.  The person who has reached this level of achievement is also more likely to live a productive, stable life.  People with health club memberships might be in better shape than those without.  But it doesn’t follow that the key to health and longevity is to give every American a health club membership.  You have to be inclined to work out.  Likewise, married people live longer, healthier lives.  Where’s the op-ed in favor of compelling marriages? 

It’s hard to see how flooding colleges with unprepared and unwilling students will do anything other than damage a productive higher ed system.  Levy favors the federal government paying for the extra year, noting it would be a turning point at least as important as “the 1944 G.I. Bill that made college affordable to our returning service personnel after World War II.”  Fine, but the G.I. Bill created the opportunity for veterans to attend college.  It didn’t conscript them to go.

The Slippery Slope of “Content”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on March 30, 2009 in Education Theory and Opinion. 9 Comments

The 21st Century Skills debate is back on again.  Lynne Munson of Common Core caused a ruckus at a P21 event at the NEA last week.  That sparked a response by Paige Kuni of Intel, who chairs the P21 board, over at Flypaper.  I won’t rehash the debate, but reading it and thinking about the ongoing dustup prompted a flashback.

Back when the World Wide Web was the Next Big Thing, I worked at TIME Magazine when it became the first major magazine to make its complete contents available each week on a then little-known service called America Online.  The project was regarded within the House the Luce Built with anything from amusement to irritation.  Those of us who were mixing it up online with readers were dismissed by some ink-stained colleagues as wasting our time on a fad, one that had more in common with CB radio than publishing.  But one criticism had merit then and still rings in my ears today.  It bothered many reporters and writers that we referred to their magazine pieces as “content.”  The very word connoted a commodity, something cheaply made, processed and packaged, sold by the ton and shipped in containers. 

So it is with P21.  I’ve come to conclude that they are genuinely bewildered by those of us who complain they are soft on rigor and academics.  Ken Kay and Co., I think, earnestly believe that they support “world class skills and world class content.”  But it’s the word content that causes the disconnect.  By referring to history, art, science, math, and literature as “content,” it seems to betray an orientation that dismisses the best of our accumulated knowledge, thought and expression as simply a bunch of stuff.  P21 is by no means alone in this.  Lots of people who favors a rigorous curriculum throw the word content around as convenient shorthand, present company included.   

Many of my erstwhile print colleagues adamantly — and in retrospect, correctly — refused to see themselves as “content providers.”  They were White House correspondents, investigative reporters, bureau chiefs, editors, writers and photojournalists.  They were probably right, even as they ended up on the wrong side of history.  One of the problems bedeviling print media today is precisely that newspapers and magazines have allowed themselves to become commoditized.  The reader doesn’t see the value (and doesn’t want to pay) for commodity news, cheaply available everywhere.   There’s a lesson in here for education somewhere.  It concerns who we are, what we do, and what–if we’re not thoughtful–we will allow ourselves to become. 

Over in the comments sections in Flypaper, Diana Senechal responding to Paige Kuni, nails the reductive nature of viewing everything as content. 

“I question the value of the sort of analogies you describe. The life cycle of the butterfly is fascinating in itself. The transformation from egg to butterfly is not just a story of “success”—it has intricate processes and startling beauty. There is no need to make superficial analogies with business. There is much of interest right here, in the subject, and it becomes more interesting with deeper study….Making connections is very important, but we have to be judicious about the kind of connections we make, lest we trivialize the subject. I am not a biologist, but I believe many a biologist would agree.

Biology teachers, who clearly see themselves as teaching science not content, would doubtless agree too.  Indeed, I doubt there are too many great teachers who view what they do in class as teaching “content.”  Those of us who worry that a skills orientation dulls academics need to find a better word to describe what we value if we want others to prize it as highly as we do.

PETA Protest Targets Elementary School

Published by Robert Pondiscio on March 17, 2009 in Education News and Opinion. 5 Comments

Regardless of how you feel about animal rights, this move by PETA to show up unannounced and uninvited at a Long Island elementary school to convince children that circuses mistreat their animals simply feels wrong-headed.  Protesters reportedly handed out coloring books to children leaving for the day with stickers that read, “Circuses are no fun for animals” according to Newsday.  “I just think targeting children this age is inappropriate, in my opinion,” Rodney Gilmore, Hempstead district assistant interim superintendent for elementary education tells the paper.

PETA assistant director Kristie Phelps defended the group’s actions, saying there was no harm done to children by showing up at a school to inform them about abuses endured by circus animals. She said that with the circus using “glittery” ads and ticket discounts, children and adults “deserve to know that elephants don’t naturally stand on their heads and bears don’t ride bicycles.”

Others disagree.  “These children might go home and be very anxious,” Phyllis Ohr, a clinical psychologist at Hofstra University, tells the paper. “Children are less mature in their cognitive process.”

And of course, no sooner do I write this than I realize that doing so merely rewards this kind of attention seeking, ends-justify-the-means behavior….

Randi Weingarten Wants National Standards

Published by Robert Pondiscio on February 16, 2009 in Educational Policy and Opinion. 5 Comments

With support from Arne Duncan, the editorial board of the New York Times and now AFT President Randi Weindgarten, the push for national standards can now be called a movement.  Weingarten has an op-ed in the Washington Post this morning noting “the countries that consistently outperform the United States on international assessments all have national standards, with core curriculum, assessments and time for professional development for teachers based on those standards.”  In the U.S. states like Massachusetts and Minnesota that have set high standards have fared well, but standards for the rest of the country, she writes, are a mixed bag. 

Imagine the outrage if, say, the Pittsburgh Steelers had to move the ball the full 10 yards for a first down during the Super Bowl while the Arizona Cardinals had to go only seven. Imagine if this scenario were sanctioned by the National Football League. Such a system would be unfair and preposterous.  But there is little outrage over the uneven patchwork of academic standards for students in our 50 states and the District of Columbia. And the federal government has tacitly accepted this situation by giving a seal of approval to states that meet the benchmarks for improved achievement established by the federal No Child Left Behind Act — even if their standards are lower than those of other states.

“Education is a local issue, but there is a body of knowledge about what children should know and be able to do that should guide decisions about curriculum and testing,” Weingarten observes.  “I propose that a broad-based group — made up of educators, elected officials, community leaders, and experts in pedagogy and particular content — come together to take the best academic standards and make them available as a national model. Teachers then would need the professional development, and the teaching and learning conditions, to make the standards more than mere words.”

If Caroline Kennedy Is Looking For Work…

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 29, 2009 in Education News and Opinion. 3 Comments

She won’t have the chance to be New York’s senator, but Diane Ravitch has another job in mind for Caroline Kennedy. “She can save New York City’s Catholic schools, which are in the throes of a fiscal meltdown,” Diane writes in a smart op-ed in the NY Daily News.

The research on Catholic education is overwhelmingly positive. Children who attend Catholic schools get a superior academic education. They also get a strong foundation in social and moral values. The four-year graduation rate at Catholic high schools is 99.5%; 98% of the high school graduates enroll in college. Most of the Catholic schools serve students who are predominantly African-American and Hispanic. (And, we must remember, many of them enroll students who are not Catholic.)

Few people are better suited to ride to the rescue than Kennedy, Ravitch observes, noting Kennedy helped raise almost $240 million for the city’s public schools.  “If the same amount had been raised for the city’s Catholic schools,” she notes, “not a single one of them would have to close.”