Raise the Age for Compulsory Ed?

by Robert Pondiscio
June 8th, 2009

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Posted in Higher Education, 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”

by Robert Pondiscio
March 30th, 2009

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Posted in Education Theory, 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

by Robert Pondiscio
March 17th, 2009

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Posted in Education News, 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

by Robert Pondiscio
February 16th, 2009

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Posted in Educational Policy, 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…

by Robert Pondiscio
January 29th, 2009

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Posted in Education News, 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.”

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

by Robert Pondiscio
January 28th, 2009

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Posted in Educational Policy, 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

by Robert Pondiscio
January 20th, 2009

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Posted 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

by Robert Pondiscio
January 16th, 2009

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Posted in Education News, Opinion, 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”

by Robert Pondiscio
January 15th, 2009

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Posted in Educational Policy, 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”

by Robert Pondiscio
January 13th, 2009

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Posted in Educational Policy, Opinion, 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.

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