Archive for the 'Opinion' Category

“Mr. President, Don’t Forget Catholic Schools”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 28, 2009 in Educational Policy and Opinion. 2 Comments

If President Obama wants to address the crisis in America’s urban schools, he could start by acknowledging the contributions of Catholic schools.  In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, William McGurn notes America’s Catholic schools are in the midst of a crisis, with enrollment less than half what it was at its peak. Though doing a heroic job, he notes, they are closing their doors at an alarming rate.

Catholic schools are not for everyone, and they are not the answer for all that plagues our cities. But they are an answer — one answer that is real, less costly, and working for many families desperate for the opportunities these schools provide. With a little imagination, these schools could reach many more such children.

McGurn notes the President spent more time in Catholic school as a child than JFK.  “Simply by acknowledging Catholic schools as a national treasure that should be preserved,” he writes, “Mr. Obama would give them a badly needed shot in the arm.”

The Fordham Foundation weighed in on this issue last year with their report, “Who Will Save America’s Urban Catholic Schools?”

Obama’s Inauguration and the Limits of Symbolism

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 20, 2009 in Opinion. 14 Comments

“We will achieve a just and prosperous society only when our schools ensure that everyone commands enough shared knowledge to communicate effectively with everyone else.” — E.D. Hirsch, Jr., The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them

President Barack Obama spoke to two different groups of Americans today.  One group understood the deep historical significance of the words in his inaugural address and grasped fully the moment in history to which they were bearing witness. A second group, no doubt moved and caught up in the excitement of seeing an African-American take the oath of office, saw merely an historic “first.”  And that’s a shame.

“It’s an amazing event for our students who are under 18 and haven’t fully formed their consciousness,” one school administrator told the Los Angeles Times. ”They see Obama and say, ‘This is a president who looks like me, I can be president.’”  It’s a true and earnest observation that has been made many times in the last few months.  But as uplifting as that sentiment is, it’s bittersweet to consider that many students–indeed, many Americans–lack a full appreciation of the moment and their new President’s inaugural address.  President Obama’s speech was rich in historical, literary, and biblical references, lending meaning, resonance and emotional weight to his words.  Yet these allusions were almost certainly unfamiliar to many of those watching. 

To have endured an education where history was a second-tier subject was to be left to wonder today: Who were these people Obama mentioned, who “toiled for us in sweatshops and settled the West?” Who were these people who “endured the lash of the whip and plowed the hard earth?”  If you were not taught our nation’s rich history, then the President’s description of those who “packed up their few worldly possessions and traveled across oceans in search of a new life” may have failed to move you.   If you do not know what happened at Concord, Gettysburg, Normandy and Khe Sahn, then the sacrifices of those who “fought and died for us” in those places is lost upon you.  As uncomfortable as it is to consider, if our children are ignorant of that history then at least some measure of that sacrifice was, alas, in vain.   

President Obama’s inaugural address placed us — all of us — in the flow of history.  With its references to the “rights of man,” our “common defense,” ideals that “light the world,” and a generation that “faced down communism and fascism,” the address was surely met with either nods or blank stares.  If our children do not know the events and phrases to which Obama referred, they cannot fully appreciate the significance of this moment or even what this President is asking of them.   How is it possible for them to be “the keepers of this legacy” — why should they value it and seek to keep it at all? — unless they understand the  thing they are being asked to keep?  Obama’s most poignant observation was that “a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.”  How many of his younger listeners fully appreciate the price that has been paid to make this moment possible?  How many of our children, instead of seeing mere novelty, comprehend fully and viscerally the improbable closing of a historical loop they have just witnessed?  A black man took the oath of office with his hand on a bible belonging to the President who signed the Emancipation Proclamation.  He turned to deliver his inaugural address facing the site where another great American dreamed out loud of the day when his children would be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. He then delivered his inaugural address to millions of Americans who had rendered that very judgement.   

It in no way diminishes the significance of this day to observe with a touch of sadness that too many of our nation’s children — especially those who look with pride at this President who looks like them — were able to appreciate this day only on a superficial level.  Too many can appreciate the symbolism of the moment, but no more. Some saw history.  Others, poorer by far, saw a symbolic ”first.” 

President Obama called upon us today to enter a “new era of responsibility.”  It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.  For educators, perhaps the noblest duty that we might accept ”not grudgingly but seize gladly” is to ensure that in the very near future our nation’s children are able to judge this President not by the color of his skin, or even the content of his character, but by the full weight of his words.

A Call for Direct Instruction

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 16, 2009 in Education News, Opinion and Research and Reports. 22 Comments

A solution for the achievement gap was discovered four decades ago, writes John McWhorter in The New Republic, and it has nothing to do with raising low expectations, improving parental involvement, or demanding accountability.  Starting in the late 1960s, he writes, Project Follow Through compared nine teaching methods and tracked their results in more than 75,000 children from kindergarten through third grade:

It found that the Direct Instruction (DI) method of teaching reading was vastly more effective than any of the others for (drum roll, please) poor kids, including black ones. DI isn’t exactly complicated: Students are taught to sound out words rather than told to get the hang of recognizing words whole, and they are taught according to scripted drills that emphasize repetition and frequent student participation.

Subsequent studies found similar results, says McWhorter, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute. Indeed, he notes, ”a search for an occasion where DI was instituted and failed to improve students’ reading performance would be distinctly frustrating.”  So why no discussion of Direct Instruction as a means of addressing the achievement gap?

Schools of education have long been caught up in an idea that teaching poor kids to read requires something more than, well, teaching them how to sound out words. The poor child, the good-thinking wisdom tells us, needs tutti-frutti approaches bringing in music, rhythm, narrative, Ebonics, and so on. Distracted by the hardships in their home lives, surely they cannot be reached by just laying out the facts. That can only work for coddled children of doctors and lawyers. But the simple fact of how well DI has worked shows that “creativity” is not what poor kids need.

Matthew Yglesias describes McWhorter’s piece as “somewhat overblown but essentially correct” and nails an even larger issue:

It’s both strange and unfortunate that the education system is so unresponsive to this research and also strange and unfortunate that “education reform” efforts have so much focus on administrative structure of school systems and so little on these kinds of curriculum issues.”

McWhorter meanwhile urges Arne Duncan, the next Ed Secretary to consider “taking the blinders off and forcing America’s urban school districts to teach poor kids to read with tools that we have known to work since the Nixon Administration.”

 

“The Last Laugh Belongs to Bush”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 15, 2009 in Educational Policy and Opinion. 4 Comments

School accountability driven by disaggregated data is “not just George W. Bush’s education legacy; it’s the jewel of any domestic achievement,” writes Richard Whitmire on Politico.  The president of the National Education Writers Association says finding shortcomings in the law is not difficult, but he dismisses the idea that the new administration will eviscerate No Child Left Behind.

The notion that Obama would gut a law exposing the maleducation of millions of black children is a fantasy. That’s why Democrats won’t break NCLB. They’ll start by changing the name of the law, ridding its association with the much-despised Bush. But the last laugh belongs to Bush, because his Texas-style accountability will survive. And that’s what makes No Child Left Behind, regardless of any name change, Bush’s lasting legacy.

Solution to Ed Policy Skirmishes “Bafflingly Obvious”

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 13, 2009 in Educational Policy, Opinion and accountability. 4 Comments

Fix schools or fix communities?  “From an outsider’s perspective, one of the most frustrating aspects of the education policy debate is that both sides are right,” notes The Atlantic Monthly’s Clay Risen.  “It seems bafflingly obvious that change must come both inside and outside the classroom,” he writes on the Democrats for Education Reform blog.  It’s a must-read.

A backstory is required.  Risen wrote a major profile of Washington, DC Chancellor Michelle Rhee in last November’s Atlantic Monthly. In the new issue, there’s a letter from the University of Michigan’s Susan Neuman, a former Bush administration education official, arguing that Risen’s piece “left readers with the mistaken impression that [Rhee and other school leaders] must make a false choice between quality teachers and ‘extras.”   She also writes ”there is only so much a quality teacher, adequate classroom supplies, and caring administrators can accomplish.” 

The Atlantic typically allows its writers to respond to letters and Risen replied in print that Neuman is “undoubtedly correct that improving teacher quality and improving a student’s social milieu are not mutually exclusive, and are both important means to improve student outcomes. However, education policy is not made in a vacuum, and cannot be. This is where so much of education policy breaks down: there is, sadly, a broadening gulf between teacher-quality advocates and those aligned with ‘A Broader, Bolder Approach.’ Arguably, the answer lies in a mixture of the two. Whether we can find that answer depends much more on improving our education politics than on improving our edu­cation policy.” (ital mine)

Risen’s reply caught the attention of former newspaperman Joe Williams, now head honcho of Democrats for Education Reform.  Knowing that space is at a premium in print, Joe asked Risen to expand on his reply in the Atlantic’s letters section.  Risen notes that the “Broader, Bolder” group and the Joel Klein and Al Sharpton led Education Equality Project are both working toward the same goal and with policies that should be mutually compatible, yet find themselves at odds politically. Says Risen:

Rhee and Co. are, in my view, too eager to reject policies that addresses anything other than teacher quality and too hostile toward anything that smacks of establishment thinking, from unions to teacher colleges. And they’re not entirely wrong–I fear that while many of the signatories to EPI’s “A Broader, Bolder Approach” manifesto are well-intentioned (the list, after all, includes Education Secretary Arne Duncan), too often this wing of the education sector falls into the role of stalking horse for those who prefer the status quo to the disruptive changes that true reform would bring.

Thus a painful paradox: At a moment when education policy is making real strides, our education politics is stuck in a narrow, short-sighted, antagonistic framework in which each side would rather paint the other as anti-student than admit that it might actually have something to contribute. That’s the irony of Michelle Rhee: As a policy thinker and a force for change she is precisely what Washington needs, but she is so politically untuned, so antagonistic toward unions and teacher colleges and the City Council and anything else that might require negotiation and compromise, that she is preventing her policy vision from being realized.

Sound familiar?  In selecting Arne Duncan, who signed on to both ed manifestos as his Education Secretary, President-Elect Obama “understands the need to bring all sides to the table,” Risen believes, “not to minimize dissent but because everyone has something to contribute.”  But each side, he says will have to “concede certain policy principles.”

While teacher accountability is a vital element of reform, for example, it is vital to recognize that teachers are also workers, parents, and taxpayers, not automatons who can be expected to sacrifice everything to student achievement. Nor should we expect them to build lasting relationships with their students if they are spending all their time worried about their job security. While some aspects of teacher tenure and job protections should be relaxed, making them at-will employees is asking too much.  On the flip side, teachers need to recognize that they are not just another class of workers, and that they cannot always make the same demands that, say, teamsters do. Districts need the flexibility to demand a little extra from them, even if it means longer hours.

It’s a political truism that conservatives seek out converts, while progressives hunt down heretics.  The party labels notwithstanding, it sometimes seems the same is true in education debates–too much concern with heresy, not enough with efficacy.  Risen’s “bafflingly obvious” perspective deserves a hearing.  And kudos to Joe Williams and DFER for giving Risen the space to say what needed to be said.

Prez Dispenser

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 12, 2009 in Opinion. 1 Comment

“J.F.K. took us to the moon. Let B.H.O. take America back to school,” says New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.  His column “Tax Cuts for Teachers” is a bit of a sausage–a melange of gee-whiz ideas on how to stimulate the economy by getting “as much money injected as quickly as possible” into the economy while favoring investments in knowledge over infrastructure. ”Our stimulus needs to be both big and smart, both financially and educationally stimulating,” Friedman argues.  In a single giddy paragraph, he encourages Obama to reach into the trough with both hands, throwing dollars at education.

One of the smartest stimulus moves we could make would be to eliminate federal income taxes on all public schoolteachers so more talented people would choose these careers. I’d also double the salaries of all highly qualified math and science teachers, staple green cards to the diplomas of foreign students who graduate from any U.S. university in math or science — instead of subsidizing their educations and then sending them home — and offer full scholarships to needy students who want to go to a public university or community college for the next four years.

A bridge is just a bridge, Friedman notes. Once it’s up, it stops stimulating. While investing in education could get us “the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. They create good jobs for years.”

That’s Edutainment!

Published by Robert Pondiscio on January 5, 2009 in Education Practice, Opinion and Teaching. 6 Comments

“Why did the amoeba cross the microscope?  To get to the other slide!!  Hey, you’ve been a great class, thanks for coming!  I’ll be here all week. Don’t forget to tip the classroom aide.  I love you!  G’night!!”

Believing that poor classroom behavior indicates of a lack of stimulation, the official British education watchdog organization, Ofsted, is planning a “crackdown on boring teaching” in the mother country, the Guardian reports.  Chief inspector of schools Christine Gilbert tells the paper,

“People divorce teaching from behaviour. I think they are really, really linked and I think students behave much better if the teaching is good, they are engaged in what they are doing and it’s appropriate to them. Then they’ve not got lost five minutes into the lessons and therefore started mucking around. Behaviour in our schools is generally very good. But there’s what I would describe as low-level disruption where children are bored and not motivated, so they start to use their abilities for other ends. That then can lead to other children being distracted in lessons and so on.”

The response from teacher’s unions?  “With comments like that, the chief inspector fuels the view that every lesson of every day for every minute has got to be packed with excitement,” said Chris Keates, the general secretary of the NASUWT.  “Quite frankly, life isn’t like that and education isn’t like that. Comments like this make teachers fair game for everyone, including pupils.” This British teacher, however, seconds the motion:

In schools that serve poorer areas, where many students’ attention spans are decimated by a diet of sugary snacks, video games and 20 channels of fast-edited crud on the cathode ray tube, pupil engagement is not just an issue; it is the issue. The teacher who is not able to induce open mouths expressing awe and wonder within the first 10 minutes of a lesson is likely to witness the jaws of those mouths slacken as one, when class behaviour heads quickly in the direction of “off-task”.

No one will argue that engagement doesn’t matter.  It’s a way to get and hold a student’s attention, which is a prerequisite to learning.  Still, it’s hard to unravel all that is troubling about this. First, there’s the idea, per Keates, that a day in school is made up of non-stop entertainment.  Next there’s the devaluing of seriousness and reflection–plenty engaging for some–a point made in teacher Diana Senechal’s essay yesterday on accountable talk.  Then, perhaps most obviously, there’s how exactly to define a “boring lesson.”  I can trace my love of history and literature to a pair of middle school teachers, who knew their subject inside and out.  But they were strict, demanding, a little intimidating, and most decidely not engaging to many of my classmates.  I feared and adored them both.  On the other hand, my 9th grade earth science teacher was a laugh riot, but I wouldn’t know an igneous rock if it hit me between the eyes.  All three were well-regarded teachers, and rightly so. 

One student’s engagement rubric is not another’s.  Life is made up of dealing successfully with all kinds of people, and all manner of personalities. Vive le difference!

Class Discussion For Sale

Published by Diana Senechal on January 4, 2009 in Literacy and Opinion. 19 Comments

I teach in New York City, ostensibly one of the most successful districts in the nation. Our reforms are second to none. Test scores soar year after year. We buy the best new products and quickly toss out the old. When I began teaching in Brooklyn, I thought I would teach literature and writing. I quickly learned that literature was outmoded and “accountable talk” all the rage. It was once a phrase in lowercase. How it has grown!

You attended school in the bad old traditional days. Don’t deny it. Back then, the teacher lectured while you took notes, read dead authors, and regurgitated dry facts. There was no class discussion. You were never encouraged to think for yourself. It’s a miracle that you read the paper now-or read at all, for that matter.

Today, you would not have to suffer. Schools across the country have purchased and mandated an exciting new type of classroom conversation called Accountable Talk®.

“Purchased classroom conversation?” you might gasp. Hold it! Your question doesn’t conform to Accountable Talk® format. You must phrase your question thus: “It seems to me that you said that schools have purchased their own classroom conversation. Is that what you meant?” Yes, that was my drift.

Coined in the 1990s by the Institute for Learning at the University of Pittsburgh, the phrase “accountable talk” refers to a mode of classroom conversation that emphasizes (you guessed it) accountability: justifying one’s statements, responding to others, and staying within the boundaries of the topic. Beyond that, it is now a brand name and a product. In 2007, the Institute for Learning began displaying a service mark (SM) next to the phrase. In 2008, Accountable Talk® became a registered trademark. In other words, we must now purchase our own classroom conversation-or rather, our district purchases it for us and requires that we place it on our tongues.

What kind of talk have we purchased? Accountable Talk® embraces conventions of so-called academic conversation: starter phrases, social cues, and habits of referring to the text. The basic principle–that we must substantiate what we say-has generally been part of any good class discussion, but Accountable Talk® makes the conventions explicit and requires total compliance with its rules. It is intended especially for children who lack exposure to such conventions of speech. In moderation, it makes sense. But does it really reproduce academic conversation? Or does it require us to give up an element of intellectual freedom: our choice of wording and phrasing, within reason?

Suppose I decided to hold a class discussion without Accountable Talk®. If I admitted openly that it was not Accountable Talk®, I would be flouting district mandates. If I called it Accountable Talk® but didn’t conform to its protocol, I would break trademark law. In other words, teachers are now bound by both district regulations and trademark law to acknowledge and adhere to a particular kind of classroom talk. This should raise some concern and questions if not outright alarm. Our speech, of all things, should be protected from branding and marketing. The Founding Fathers did not foresee that someone might appropriate, sell, and mandate a style of speech.

Trademark concerns aside, I object to a mere three aspects of Accountable Talk®: the accountability, the talk, and the poor prose resulting from the two.

In education, “accountability” suggests a wrongdoing: we are made “accountable” so that we can no longer slip by with poor practice. Why, then, must a good class discussion be called “accountable”? Shouldn’t it be driven by something deeper, like desire for truth, curiosity about the subject, and respect for others? Accountability should not be our highest ideal; it has value and meaning only when higher principles are in place. Those principles present, a class discussion needs no special name. Accountable talk could help us out of a bog; but once we can breathe and walk, we should make full use of our faculties, using the words and phrases that seem best. One does not have to be “accountable” at every moment; there is room, in a good class discussion, for exclamations, tangents, and incomplete ideas.

As for talk, there is too much of it in our classrooms already. Students must constantly “turn and talk”; “peer-edit,” “engage in group work,” and “share out.” They sit facing each other, so that teachers won’t distract them. Students rarely learn how to listen, take in ideas and language, and think independently. Consider, for instance, the “turn and talk” technique. Instead of taking in a story that the teacher is reading aloud, students are instructed periodically to turn and talk about it with a partner. This breaks up their private thoughts and requires them to consult with someone else. One recalls David Riesman’s observation in The Lonely Crowd regarding “that rapid circulation of tastes which is a prelude to other-directed socialization.” Contemplation cedes to buzz. The buzz, in turn, creates a market for talk products, which require services, consultants, and a brand.   

Of course there should be some discussion in the classroom, but now it has risen to the status of a petty god. Teachers and students alike must be trained in this sort of talk so that they will practice it correctly. As a consequence, the emphasis is often on the talk itself. Administrators conducting spot-checks want to see evidence of it; they are pleased when they see students turning and talking to their partners. It matters little whether they can recite and interpret Yeats’ “Sailing to Byzantium” or give a thoughtful definition of democracy. What matters is that they are talking. This makes careful, sustained thought difficult if not impossible.

Let’s be reasonable, though. If we disregard the accountability, talk, and trademark, Accountable Talk® is a fine idea-except that it isn’t. Its emphasis on process results in bad prose. In a typical Accountable Talk® discussion, students put great effort into their beginning and ending phrases. A student might comment: “I would like to add on to what Jeremy said by saying that the picture shows a covered wagon. Does anyone care to concur, challenge, or add on?” The student thus conveys: “the picture shows a covered wagon” but adds twenty-two extraneous words for the sake of compliance. No one notices; it all sounds good. Checklist conditions have been met. The sentences, replete with verbiage, sound “academic.” We can all go to sleep. But some of us stay up late remembering the fiery, pithy, lovely language we love. Such memory offers hope: it has no trademark yet.

Diana Senechal teaches theatre and ESL at P.S. 108, an official Core Knowledge school in New York City.  She has a Ph.D. in Slavic Languages and Literatures from Yale. Her translations of the Lithuanian poetry of Tomas Venclova appeared this fall in a new volume, The Junction.

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.

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.