Over at the Young Guns network (which--eww-- you guys are politicians, not gunfighters, and you aren't all that young), Frederick Hess has asked and answered the question, "What should conservatives be for in education?"
It's a good question. Conservatives have let themselves get boxed into a corner on the new test-driven high-stakes privatization status quo in education. On the one hand, the Obama administration has implemented education policies that are like a conservatives Christmas list. On the other hand, lots of conservatives would not accept a bucket of water from the President if they were on fire. The battle for public education has exacerbated the rifts in conservatism in this country, the great divide between small government conservatives, corporate conservatives, and social conservatives. Consequently, conservatives have ended up (and not just in education) as the Big Voice of No.
So what does Hess (who generally hews to a line somewhere between the very-endagered traditional conservative species and corporate conservatism) think that conservatives should be in favor of in the education world? To what should conservatives say Yes?
A Limited Federal Role
Washington doesn’t run schools. All it can do is write rules for schools. Congress can do little more than enact laws that tell federal bureaucrats to write rules for states, which write rules for school districts, which then give directions to schools. Washington can therefore force states and districts to do things, but it cannot make them do those things well. And when it comes to complex enterprises like public schooling (with 50 million students and nealy three and a half million teachers), whether things like teacher evaluation and school “turnarounds” are done matters far less than how they are done.
I think that's all correct. Conservatives should be for local control with a federal role limited to making local control easy to do.
Yes, some local control situations will result in Poor Choices. Liberals, conservatives, mugwumps, and snapdoodles all have the same problem with freedom-- the nagging certainty that somebody somewhere will use his freedom to make a Poor Choice. But here's the thing. If you're not free to make a Poor Choice, you are not free at all.
Conservatives are supposed to place a high value on personal responsibility. Well, to turn Stan Lee on his head, you can't have great responsibility without having great power. People cannot be responsible for things over which they have no control. Conservatives ought to be saying, "You are smart people. Figure it out," and not "Shut up and do as you're told." Obedience is not supposed to be a traditional conservative value.
So, Conservatives should be in favor of pushing power down to the front lines, to taking the federal foot off the local school board neck.
School Choice
Hess really thinks conservatives should support school choice. I think he's wrong. I used up a bunch of bandwidth explaining why, but the short answer is, school choice is a great imaginary system in the same way that communism is a great imaginary system. But in the real world, it doesn't do any of the things supporters imagine it's going to.
Improving Transparency
I agree that conservatives should support this in the same way that I agree conservatives should support eating and breathing.
Hess thinks we achieve transparency by continuing to release the results of a secret test that nobody is allowed to see, comment on, or offer corrections to. Nope, we should just believe that tests measure exactly what the testmakers say they measure. "You may not look behind the curtain. Just trust the voice of the Wizard of Tests." And there's certainly nothing transparent about the processes used to transform test results into "measures of school quality" such as VAM.
So if conservatives say yes to transparency, let's really say yes. The day after The Test, let's put a copy of the test on line. Let testmakers append an explanation of how the three questions about an armless pineapple determine a child's ability to decode context clues. VAMsters are required to release their special secret formulas to the whole world and then to justify them. And then when it turns out that all of that, from test through data crunch methods, is transparently crap, we can have a transparent conversation about how to do better.
Educational Research
Traditional conservatives have a history of intellectual heft and hardnosed devotion to true facts, so it makes sense for conservatives to support educational research. As long as it's good. Because the problem with educational research is that much of it is bunk, studies that rest on behavior of twenty volunteer sophomores at an ivy league school, or on deep squinty readings of other peoples' research.
But conservatives should be all about getting schools useful data without also telling them how they're supposed to use it.
Constructive Deregulation
Federal and state relationships with educational regulation has always been weird. Representatives who want to plug choice will tout it as a way to escape bad school regulations, but wouldn't another solution be to get rid of the regulations? It's like chaining your dog to the porch and then declaring you need a new dog, because the old one won't run around the yard with you. Just unchain the dog.
So by all means-- conservatives should be at the forefront of opposing and rolling back the giant tide of unfunded mandates that are a-swampin' our schools. (This, sadly, is not what Hess wants to do. Essentially, he advocates restructuring regulation so that it can be used to blackmail states into making choices he likes-- kind of like the current federal administration.)
Teachers and Unions
There are six million adults working in K-12 education in the U.S., and they have an intense, immediate, voting interest in schools. Equally important, teachers are routinely cited as the most reliable source of educational information by parents and voters. Conservatives should not treat
them as simply part of the problem with American education.
And I could quote the rest of this section, too. Clip this puppy and send it to every conservative politician in the country. Teachers are hugely affected by school-related garbage. Teachers really get the frustration of working under fed micromanagement. A great insight here-- teacher participation in unions is driven in large part by a need for protection from a broken system. Teachers are not the enemies of education; they are the front line troops.
Hess does not go so far as to call the union a good thing, but he does recognize that simply attacking it isn't helping anybody. He knows one of the best old anti-union tricks-- people feel far less need for a union when they trust their bosses and feel safe in their jobs.
The Agenda
Hess's conclusion is wrong, but reasoned well, albeit incompletely.
The conservative approach to education should follow the broader pattern of conservative policy thinking: enable the system to experiment with options; enable parents, students, and teachers to choose among those options; and let the failures fall away.
Here he lets his corporate conservative side get the best of him. First, he argues that DC can create an environment in which businessmen and entrepreneurs can create jobs (which is a pleasant, if as yet unproven, premise), so it can do the same sort of marketty magic for schools. Even if we assume that's not paralleling apples and aardvarks, the market can cheerfully slough of failure; it only results in displaced business leaders and out-of-work laborers who, in a perfect world, will find new jobs. But "let the failures fall away" in education means sloughing off students, and that's just not acceptable.
What Hess Missed
I find Hess's work incomplete. I think there are some other values that traditional conservatives can, and should, also say "Yes" to when it comes to education:
Traditional Institutions
The traditional American public school system took on a task that was unheard of and achieved success that was previously unseen in human history. I know we all have to keep saying that public ed in this country is like a brakeless trackless train driven by a drunken blind elephant, but dang-- we educated more of our people than anyone, whether they were rich or not. We created social mobility. We became one of the first nations to ever rise to global leadership without actually conquering other countries. Conservatives are supposed to love our traditional institutions. When people attack them, conservatives are the ones who stand up with love for tradition. Let's apply some of that love to the American public school tradition of success.
Sacrifice
Thomas Paine told a story in The Crisis about a man who, standing with his son, wished for peace in his own time. Paine takes him to task, arguing that we should take the hit now so that our children don't have to. Some conservatives get this, at least rhetorically (e.g. She Who Must Not Be Named's frequent point that we should not make children pay for adult political squabbles).
But when, for instance, we've got corporate interests salivating at the chance to make a buck from education, it should be conservatives saying, "You will not get a cent until you convince us that the interests of our children will be cared for." And no, that doesn't mean simply talking about parental empowerment, because that's just an invitation for the various interests to bury parents under multiple snow jobs.
Does it not bother you, conservatives, that somehow the liberals got custody of the women and children? Be the group that says, "We will take the hit if it's for the good of the next generation. And we expect every corporation interested in education to do the same."
Patriotism
When the Chinese (and a few decades ago, the Japanese) were buying up every chunk of America not tied down or locked in a bank vault (in which case they just buy the bank), it's conservatives who stand up for America and American interests.
So where are conservatives as a foreign country steadily buys up every chunk of American education? Why are conservatives not raising a fuss about how American education is becoming a fully-owned subsidiary of a British company?
Me? I'm not sure what you'd call me. I don't particularly
believe in Big Government, but I think there are some things that can't
get done any other way. Some days I feel like a Libertarian, but then I remember that they would let their friends die because if you're poor, that's on you. I think anybody who is successful owes a huge debt of gratitude to God (or the universe, if you prefer) and that you pay it back by taking care of the people around you.
So I don't believe that conservatives are automatically evil and/or stupid. I do believe that they could be a positive part of the battle for public education but for some (cough $$$$ cough) reason mostly choose not to be (course, that's true of politicians across the entire spectrum). This list is not a bad place to start.
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
#AskArne: Teach To Lead To Lead The Teaching Leaders
Bad news: Arne and the US DOE are back with another scrumdiliicious video interview with his royal Arneness.
Good news: It's not all completely ridiculous. And as always, I'll watch it so that you don't have to. More times than usual, it turns out. I like to watch with the sound off to get a better non-verbal read, but the only captions available are the auto-captions, which are apparently set to "Names of Slavic sports heroes." So a few passes, with and without sound, were called for.
Let's Get Started
So we open on the usual graphic. looks like this time we'll be chatting abut Teach To Lead and --wowsers! We are picking up some terrific glare/distortion from the lights that we are shooting directly into. In fact, there are several production value issues that caused me to notice that this video comes from DOED Studio, unlike our previous entries in the series which came from ED.gov. I have absolutely no idea what that might mean, but this one does not quite come up to the previous standards.
Emily Davis has returned as our hostess, an I'm happy to report is simply setting her notes on the table in front of her instead of making that unnerving eyeflick to the teleprompter or cue cards or whatever they were last time. Like all good crusading bloggers (or roosters crowing at the rising sun), I'm just going to go ahead and take credit for that.
At any rate, Emily is looking a little testy, like she was pulled out of a meeting at the last minute to shoot this puppy. But our Emily is a game girl, so after the pro forma thanking of Arne for showing up at his own gig, she reminds him that he promised last time to talk about Teach to Lead. I am excited. At last we will hear hat this program is about!
Not Just Yet
The first words out of Arne's mouth are to the effect that we are still looking for good ideas for this (according to the captions "So we're still very much working through in need the best ideas some folks around," but that turns out to be inaccurate). And now-- wait-- this deserves its own heading
Arne Says Something That Isn't Entirely Stupid
Arne lays out the problem. If you want to get ahead in the teaching biz, if you want to get ahead either in terms of responsibility and pay, you have to leave the classroom and become an administrator, which isn't so much getting ahead in teaching as leaving teaching. I remember somebody telling me years ago that teaching is a field where you start in the middle and stay there for the rest of your career.
So Arne is thinking that teachers should get a platform from which to lead without having to leave what they love to do-- teach in a classroom.
So Arne has said a true thing here. It takes me back to the days when I was young and happy and thinking that I hadn't used my Presidential election vote on somebody who was going to shaft me. Back then, Arne would say good things and I would think, "Hey, great!" Now I just wait for the other shoe to drop. The big, stupid, disappointing shoe.
So, Can We Know How Teach To Lead Works, Now?
Switching back to audio, because Arne just said "I'm Szekely." No, what he actually said was some Government-speak about driving student achievement by empowering teachers and nurturing the next generation and Emily, God bless her, closes her eyes like trying to will away a piercing headache, then does some spirited nodding. I swear, when and if I ever start behaving like a legitimate journalist, I'm going to hunt her down and interview her.
And Arne is now just spitballing ideas, and I'm beginning to suspect that we haven't done anything about this program except name it. So maybe these Teach To Lead Teacher Leaders will work across department lines, or maybe just half time in the classroom, or work as teacher mentors.
And now I'm distracted again because the color balance just shifted from overly yellow to blue-tinted. Emily she loves how he says that some of this is already happening and we're yellow, and bam, now we're blue, and now I'm wondering just how many takes of this thing Emily had to suffer through, and if that has contributed to her facial expression which seems to say, "If I find your socks on the sofa one more damn time I am going to feed them to you through your nose, sumbitch."
She's actually saying that she's excited to take a look at these people and she kind of bobbles the line and then sticks the landing with "Sowhyareyoudoingths?"
Another Chance To Tell Us What's Going On
Arne is gazing down and to his right and looking kind of like he has pulled an allnighter to learn his lines. Which include "bifurcation"! Nice job, somebody. It makes no sense to him that teaching and leadership are split, and I'm thinking this would be a good thought to have the next time he's convening a gathering of education leaders without calling a single teacher to the infamous table. Cause you know what would give teachers a leadership role?? Being treated like important and experienced experts in their field by the bureaucrats who run education in this country. There you go, Arne-- problem solved.
What (Arne muses) if we had teachers who were so passionate about teaching that they said, "We want to run schools ourselves." Why, Arne wonders, aren't there more of those opportunities. I don't know Arne. Maybe because teachers don't have school-launching piles of cash like your hedge fund buddies.
Emily Amps Up The Pressure
"So how will Teach to Lead work," she asks, with a facial expression that says, "So explain again how the dog ate your homework." Will she get an answer?
This is "very early on" and we want "everyone who's watching to shape this." And he starts talking about a network of board certified teachers and Emily has a steely smile that says, "I am exhausted and tired of doing twelve takes and you have no effing idea, do you." But Arne drones on about extending these opportunities (you know-- the ones he hasn't actually named or described yet) systemically, and we'll be talk to schools and districts and states and what I imagine will be saying is, "So, have you guys got any ideas of how to pull this off?" No-- he's going to say "How will you extend these opportunities? And if you don't have anything to extend, how will you create it?" And I think there is no longer any doubt that there IS no Teach To Lead program-- just a title, and somebody else is supposed to figure it out.
But he's convinced that "this" will keep great teachers in the profession longer and will provide great support, somehow, for somebody. And mentoring, and student achievement. And-- honestly, he speaks pure garble for a second and emerges on "there should be no natural enemies." It'll be a win-win-win. And I am thinking, Good heavens, what do the takes they didn't keep look like?
Emily Is From Earth, Arne Is From Bizarro World
Emily says she likes leading from the classroom, but she can imagine the teacher-leader role being abused by an administrator (her example-- admin hands her a walkie-talkie and says "Go run bus duty.") This strikes me as a legitimate concern.
Arne's answer, however, is one more piece of evidence that he has never spent any time inside a school other than as a Visiting Dignitary. "A teacher's voice has to be heard," he says, and so he advises in that sort of situation "teachers have to say no, that is not acceptable."
Arne is in luck, because we already have a word for that kind of teacher voice, and it is "insubordination," and in most if not all school districts it is rewarded by something we like to call "firing." Arne, let me give you the same talk we give teachers who complain to the union about their job assignment: During the school day, by contract, we are "subject to assignment." If your principal says your job is to pick up gum wrappers in the hall, that's your job. It's a dumb use of you, but that's your job. And if he tells you to do that, you comply first and grieve later. Because refusing direct orders is insubordination and grounds for dismissal.
But Arne says this can't be business as usual, must break the mold, and can you break the mold if you don't even know what the mold is, if you can't even find the mold, and should you break the mold if you don't even know what the mold is for? Some places have an "intuitive sense" of how to do this, which is good because clearly nobody is going to get direction from the USDOE, but they aren't doing it "at scale" and one of our mold-breaking unusual business principles at the USDOE is that it's no good unless everybody can do exactly the same thing.
Arne's Wandering Again
"We just need to create many more different types of career ladders," says Arne, "or lattices, to use a different word" (and he's correct-- that is a different word). And Emily is nodding her head with her eyes closed and lips pulled tight and I imagine she's thinking "Sweet mother of God can I please go back to my classroom now?"
But Arne rolls on to some sweet, sweet reiteration about how talent shouldn't have to become an administrator when it doesn't want to. And then we fade out, because after the audible jump click that we heard earlier (seriously, I wasn't going to mention it, but this thing gets sloppier and sloppier) we're just throwing up our hands and fading cuts together.
Flipping the Script!
When we return, it's Crazy Times, because Arne is going to ask Emily a question! He refers to "you guys," the second reference to some sort of team that Emily belongs to. But Arne asks Emily (who is now leaning back in her chair as if she smells something) to describe what teacher leadership looks like today, and, if we're successful (at doing this thing with the stuff by the guy in the place) blurggle blufgle look like three, five years from now.
Emily feels that unfortunately teacher leadership right now feels like volunteering (and that is directly at Arne, then she looks off wistfully) and she would like it to be synonymous with leadership. Her example-- currently her principal sends her to a conference and she comes back and is told to talk to her peers, and she envisions coming back to talk to the principal about changes that could be made in the school, and BAM, twelve points for Emily, because how many of us have brought back transformative (even in tiny ways) ideas from conferences that die because for them to truly flourish, admins would have to take steps, and they don't.
But Emily would like to bring things back and talk to adminis and teachers and community members and actually change how the school works. She talks about this for a while, and wit animation and intensity that suggests she's been thinking about this and talking to people about it and getting exactly nowhere. Arne sits like a statue, specifically a statue of Homer Simpson thinking "Umm, Donuts."
Arne Is a Boy
Arne loves that (yeah, whatever, girl), although he doesn't say anything else except to dis conferences as outdated ideas and teachers should be getting their PD from other teachers, and Emily looks down at her paper and bites her lip like "Yeah, effing ignored on this yet again."
She hops back on after some spirited nodding to indicate that this is why she's excited because teachers can look at their own context and create action-oriented leadership and build those structures within their own schools.
And We're Out
The ending has the same rushed, harried feeling as the beginning, like we're trying to nail this last take at midnight so that the DOED video guy can stay up till three editing it. Emily is excited about this and that and she thanks Arne for showing up and also, thanks for his leadership (after which Arne unaccountably says "actually hard work" though so many clauses just piled on that it's hard to say what exactly he thinks the hard work is.)
No We Still Don't Know
And six minutes after we started, we still have no idea what, exactly, the Teach To Lead Leader Teachers Teaching Leaders To Teach program is supposed to be. The website (teachtolead.net) offers some examples, but mostly more smoke and mirrors and the kind of empty rhetoric that is a Duncan specialty. It's possible that the world may just never know.
But this clip did underline one aspect of teacher leadership-- in most cases, it still rests on the permission of the administration. You can only be a leader if your principal okays it. Arne has talked about more money and more career advancement. What he hasn't talked about is a mechanism for getting teachers more power. Until they solve that mystery, Emily will nod her head in vain.
Good news: It's not all completely ridiculous. And as always, I'll watch it so that you don't have to. More times than usual, it turns out. I like to watch with the sound off to get a better non-verbal read, but the only captions available are the auto-captions, which are apparently set to "Names of Slavic sports heroes." So a few passes, with and without sound, were called for.
Let's Get Started
So we open on the usual graphic. looks like this time we'll be chatting abut Teach To Lead and --wowsers! We are picking up some terrific glare/distortion from the lights that we are shooting directly into. In fact, there are several production value issues that caused me to notice that this video comes from DOED Studio, unlike our previous entries in the series which came from ED.gov. I have absolutely no idea what that might mean, but this one does not quite come up to the previous standards.
Emily Davis has returned as our hostess, an I'm happy to report is simply setting her notes on the table in front of her instead of making that unnerving eyeflick to the teleprompter or cue cards or whatever they were last time. Like all good crusading bloggers (or roosters crowing at the rising sun), I'm just going to go ahead and take credit for that.
At any rate, Emily is looking a little testy, like she was pulled out of a meeting at the last minute to shoot this puppy. But our Emily is a game girl, so after the pro forma thanking of Arne for showing up at his own gig, she reminds him that he promised last time to talk about Teach to Lead. I am excited. At last we will hear hat this program is about!
Not Just Yet
The first words out of Arne's mouth are to the effect that we are still looking for good ideas for this (according to the captions "So we're still very much working through in need the best ideas some folks around," but that turns out to be inaccurate). And now-- wait-- this deserves its own heading
Arne Says Something That Isn't Entirely Stupid
Arne lays out the problem. If you want to get ahead in the teaching biz, if you want to get ahead either in terms of responsibility and pay, you have to leave the classroom and become an administrator, which isn't so much getting ahead in teaching as leaving teaching. I remember somebody telling me years ago that teaching is a field where you start in the middle and stay there for the rest of your career.
So Arne is thinking that teachers should get a platform from which to lead without having to leave what they love to do-- teach in a classroom.
So Arne has said a true thing here. It takes me back to the days when I was young and happy and thinking that I hadn't used my Presidential election vote on somebody who was going to shaft me. Back then, Arne would say good things and I would think, "Hey, great!" Now I just wait for the other shoe to drop. The big, stupid, disappointing shoe.
So, Can We Know How Teach To Lead Works, Now?
Switching back to audio, because Arne just said "I'm Szekely." No, what he actually said was some Government-speak about driving student achievement by empowering teachers and nurturing the next generation and Emily, God bless her, closes her eyes like trying to will away a piercing headache, then does some spirited nodding. I swear, when and if I ever start behaving like a legitimate journalist, I'm going to hunt her down and interview her.
And Arne is now just spitballing ideas, and I'm beginning to suspect that we haven't done anything about this program except name it. So maybe these Teach To Lead Teacher Leaders will work across department lines, or maybe just half time in the classroom, or work as teacher mentors.
And now I'm distracted again because the color balance just shifted from overly yellow to blue-tinted. Emily she loves how he says that some of this is already happening and we're yellow, and bam, now we're blue, and now I'm wondering just how many takes of this thing Emily had to suffer through, and if that has contributed to her facial expression which seems to say, "If I find your socks on the sofa one more damn time I am going to feed them to you through your nose, sumbitch."
She's actually saying that she's excited to take a look at these people and she kind of bobbles the line and then sticks the landing with "Sowhyareyoudoingths?"
Another Chance To Tell Us What's Going On
Arne is gazing down and to his right and looking kind of like he has pulled an allnighter to learn his lines. Which include "bifurcation"! Nice job, somebody. It makes no sense to him that teaching and leadership are split, and I'm thinking this would be a good thought to have the next time he's convening a gathering of education leaders without calling a single teacher to the infamous table. Cause you know what would give teachers a leadership role?? Being treated like important and experienced experts in their field by the bureaucrats who run education in this country. There you go, Arne-- problem solved.
What (Arne muses) if we had teachers who were so passionate about teaching that they said, "We want to run schools ourselves." Why, Arne wonders, aren't there more of those opportunities. I don't know Arne. Maybe because teachers don't have school-launching piles of cash like your hedge fund buddies.
Emily Amps Up The Pressure
"So how will Teach to Lead work," she asks, with a facial expression that says, "So explain again how the dog ate your homework." Will she get an answer?
This is "very early on" and we want "everyone who's watching to shape this." And he starts talking about a network of board certified teachers and Emily has a steely smile that says, "I am exhausted and tired of doing twelve takes and you have no effing idea, do you." But Arne drones on about extending these opportunities (you know-- the ones he hasn't actually named or described yet) systemically, and we'll be talk to schools and districts and states and what I imagine will be saying is, "So, have you guys got any ideas of how to pull this off?" No-- he's going to say "How will you extend these opportunities? And if you don't have anything to extend, how will you create it?" And I think there is no longer any doubt that there IS no Teach To Lead program-- just a title, and somebody else is supposed to figure it out.
But he's convinced that "this" will keep great teachers in the profession longer and will provide great support, somehow, for somebody. And mentoring, and student achievement. And-- honestly, he speaks pure garble for a second and emerges on "there should be no natural enemies." It'll be a win-win-win. And I am thinking, Good heavens, what do the takes they didn't keep look like?
Emily Is From Earth, Arne Is From Bizarro World
Emily says she likes leading from the classroom, but she can imagine the teacher-leader role being abused by an administrator (her example-- admin hands her a walkie-talkie and says "Go run bus duty.") This strikes me as a legitimate concern.
Arne's answer, however, is one more piece of evidence that he has never spent any time inside a school other than as a Visiting Dignitary. "A teacher's voice has to be heard," he says, and so he advises in that sort of situation "teachers have to say no, that is not acceptable."
Arne is in luck, because we already have a word for that kind of teacher voice, and it is "insubordination," and in most if not all school districts it is rewarded by something we like to call "firing." Arne, let me give you the same talk we give teachers who complain to the union about their job assignment: During the school day, by contract, we are "subject to assignment." If your principal says your job is to pick up gum wrappers in the hall, that's your job. It's a dumb use of you, but that's your job. And if he tells you to do that, you comply first and grieve later. Because refusing direct orders is insubordination and grounds for dismissal.
But Arne says this can't be business as usual, must break the mold, and can you break the mold if you don't even know what the mold is, if you can't even find the mold, and should you break the mold if you don't even know what the mold is for? Some places have an "intuitive sense" of how to do this, which is good because clearly nobody is going to get direction from the USDOE, but they aren't doing it "at scale" and one of our mold-breaking unusual business principles at the USDOE is that it's no good unless everybody can do exactly the same thing.
Arne's Wandering Again
"We just need to create many more different types of career ladders," says Arne, "or lattices, to use a different word" (and he's correct-- that is a different word). And Emily is nodding her head with her eyes closed and lips pulled tight and I imagine she's thinking "Sweet mother of God can I please go back to my classroom now?"
But Arne rolls on to some sweet, sweet reiteration about how talent shouldn't have to become an administrator when it doesn't want to. And then we fade out, because after the audible jump click that we heard earlier (seriously, I wasn't going to mention it, but this thing gets sloppier and sloppier) we're just throwing up our hands and fading cuts together.
Flipping the Script!
When we return, it's Crazy Times, because Arne is going to ask Emily a question! He refers to "you guys," the second reference to some sort of team that Emily belongs to. But Arne asks Emily (who is now leaning back in her chair as if she smells something) to describe what teacher leadership looks like today, and, if we're successful (at doing this thing with the stuff by the guy in the place) blurggle blufgle look like three, five years from now.
Emily feels that unfortunately teacher leadership right now feels like volunteering (and that is directly at Arne, then she looks off wistfully) and she would like it to be synonymous with leadership. Her example-- currently her principal sends her to a conference and she comes back and is told to talk to her peers, and she envisions coming back to talk to the principal about changes that could be made in the school, and BAM, twelve points for Emily, because how many of us have brought back transformative (even in tiny ways) ideas from conferences that die because for them to truly flourish, admins would have to take steps, and they don't.
But Emily would like to bring things back and talk to adminis and teachers and community members and actually change how the school works. She talks about this for a while, and wit animation and intensity that suggests she's been thinking about this and talking to people about it and getting exactly nowhere. Arne sits like a statue, specifically a statue of Homer Simpson thinking "Umm, Donuts."
Arne Is a Boy
Arne loves that (yeah, whatever, girl), although he doesn't say anything else except to dis conferences as outdated ideas and teachers should be getting their PD from other teachers, and Emily looks down at her paper and bites her lip like "Yeah, effing ignored on this yet again."
She hops back on after some spirited nodding to indicate that this is why she's excited because teachers can look at their own context and create action-oriented leadership and build those structures within their own schools.
And We're Out
The ending has the same rushed, harried feeling as the beginning, like we're trying to nail this last take at midnight so that the DOED video guy can stay up till three editing it. Emily is excited about this and that and she thanks Arne for showing up and also, thanks for his leadership (after which Arne unaccountably says "actually hard work" though so many clauses just piled on that it's hard to say what exactly he thinks the hard work is.)
No We Still Don't Know
And six minutes after we started, we still have no idea what, exactly, the Teach To Lead Leader Teachers Teaching Leaders To Teach program is supposed to be. The website (teachtolead.net) offers some examples, but mostly more smoke and mirrors and the kind of empty rhetoric that is a Duncan specialty. It's possible that the world may just never know.
But this clip did underline one aspect of teacher leadership-- in most cases, it still rests on the permission of the administration. You can only be a leader if your principal okays it. Arne has talked about more money and more career advancement. What he hasn't talked about is a mechanism for getting teachers more power. Until they solve that mystery, Emily will nod her head in vain.
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Arguing with Your Brother-in-Law (about ccss)
"I'm arguing with my brother-in-law (or uncle or cranky neighbor or postal delivery person) about the Common Core, and I need some points to really shut him up."
Can we help? Lots of folks have answered this need, and done it well (in particular, I recommend Anthony Cody's "Ten Colossal Errors.") But your brother-in-law may require something a bit more pithy. Let me offer some suggestions.
1) College and Career Ready Is Not Enough
In its very first sentences, Common Core redefines the purpose of education. It declares that the one and only purpose of education is to get students ready for a job (because in CCSS-world, college is just a way to get higher-level job training). That's it. Anything else we ever thought education was for-- fostering well-rounded humans, preparing good citizens, allowing students to reach better understanding of themselves and their place in the world-- that is all thrown out. Education has one purpose- to prepare students for work.
Not only that, but CCSS also redefines what "college and career ready" means-- it means English and math. That's it. Want to be a musician or a lion-tamer or a physical therapist or a nurse or a machinist or a advertising executive? Your preparation is exactly the same as every other profession, and it's all about English and math.
"College and career ready by studying English and math," is a sad, tiny redefining of what it means to be an educated person.
2) There Is No Flexibility
"Well, teachers will just adjust. After all, the Core are a floor, not a ceiling. They may not be perfect, but I'm sure they'll get better."
But CCSS allows no flexibility. no adjustment, no room to move. There is no process for review and revision, no number to call with your suggestions. The Core will not get better. They will not change. The only improvements will be made outside the system; the only teachers who tweak the Core will be those who go rogue.
The Core are copyrighted. Nobody is allowed to change them, ever. You will need to remind your brother-in-law of this may times.
3) The Standards Are Bad
Amateur-hour bad. I can point you at long, involved explanations of exactly what is wrong with them, but the short explanation is that we know many things about how different humans at different stages of development learn how to read and write, and the Core ignores all of them. "Well, just add in all that stuff you know," your BIL says? Go back and reread #2, I say.
4) Standards Don't Do Anything
Some folks keep saying that CCSS will help us close the achievement gap. They have no evidence. Not only do we not have evidence that standards close the gap, but we also have evidence that they don't.
Lots of states, most states, have had standards in place for a while now, and this achievement gap that we keep talking about inside the state. Every single state has a pocket of urban poor and a pocket of suburban wealth. If standards helped with that gap, would we not see that within states?
In other words, if Dunlevania had no, or poor, standards, we would expect to find a huge gap between its urban poor and its wealthy. That could be compared to South Borgia with its super-duper states standards, and a much smaller gap between its lower and upper student achievers. But we don't see that. If there is a secret formula for using state standards to shrink the achievement gap, nobody has discovered it yet.
Or, we could look at international achievers and see that, hey, this nation with great test results also has high strict standards, and this country with lousy scores has none.
The international scene and the fabled fifty-state standards hodge podge should have provided ample opportunity to demonstrate real linkage between standards and educational achievement. And yet, chirping crickets. There is absolutely no reason to believe that national standards will improve a thing.
5) The Core Turns Schools Backwards
Under the Core, students exist to serve schools. A school needs a student to put out certain numbers, show certain results, perform in a manner that serves the needs of the school itself. Witness who schools have tried to enforce the taking of The Test-- not because they think Junior will have his growth stunted if he doesn't take the PARCC, but because the school needs his numbers. What a student wants or needs, what a student expects to get out of education-- none of that matters. The student has to show that the school is succeeding, and that can only happen if the student performs as the state says he must. What the student wants is simply unimportant under the Core.
1) Wacky assignments
We really need to leave this one behind. Bad math problems, confusing readings, misprints-- these have been around since the dawn of time. If CCSS went away tomorrow, there would still be terrible number line problems and writing assignments that asked students to imagine things that their parents disagree with. Do not offer that up as a reason to revolt unless you want the revolution continuing in your classroom long after CCSS have been swept away.
2) CCSS Was Created By Corporations and Profiteers
Yes, that aspect burns my toast, too. But it's not a winner in arguments with civilians, unless you want to try to argue that you would reject the best education program in the world if it came from non-teachers. Diane Ravitch-- not a classroom teacher. Founders of BATS-- not classroom teachers.
The origin story of CCSS is important because it explains why the standards are such a hash, and because understanding the purpose of CCSS (making a buttload of money) helps make sense of how it unfolded. But something civilians seem to get that teachers are reluctant to admit-- all that stuff about profiteering and backroom deals and underhanded double deals could be true AND it could also be true that the standards are great. So don't argue that the Core has a bad pedigree-- argue that it is bad education. The pedigree just explains where the suck came from.
3) Federal Overreach
Again, I agree that this is a problem with the Core, but it's not necessarily a winner when arguing with your BIL.
The two political wings are united in one opinion-- federal power should be used to make people act as they should. Conservatives and liberals alike get this. Tea Partiers are perfectly happy with federal overreach that keeps The Gays from being, you know, all gay and stuff. Liberals hate activist judges unless they are reaching the correct conclusion.
"Federal overreach" is an argument add-on. It will get people more steamed about something they already hate, but it will never make them turn against something they actually like.
Good luck. You have till the Fourth of July family picnic to get your arguments in order.
Can we help? Lots of folks have answered this need, and done it well (in particular, I recommend Anthony Cody's "Ten Colossal Errors.") But your brother-in-law may require something a bit more pithy. Let me offer some suggestions.
1) College and Career Ready Is Not Enough
In its very first sentences, Common Core redefines the purpose of education. It declares that the one and only purpose of education is to get students ready for a job (because in CCSS-world, college is just a way to get higher-level job training). That's it. Anything else we ever thought education was for-- fostering well-rounded humans, preparing good citizens, allowing students to reach better understanding of themselves and their place in the world-- that is all thrown out. Education has one purpose- to prepare students for work.
Not only that, but CCSS also redefines what "college and career ready" means-- it means English and math. That's it. Want to be a musician or a lion-tamer or a physical therapist or a nurse or a machinist or a advertising executive? Your preparation is exactly the same as every other profession, and it's all about English and math.
"College and career ready by studying English and math," is a sad, tiny redefining of what it means to be an educated person.
2) There Is No Flexibility
"Well, teachers will just adjust. After all, the Core are a floor, not a ceiling. They may not be perfect, but I'm sure they'll get better."
But CCSS allows no flexibility. no adjustment, no room to move. There is no process for review and revision, no number to call with your suggestions. The Core will not get better. They will not change. The only improvements will be made outside the system; the only teachers who tweak the Core will be those who go rogue.
The Core are copyrighted. Nobody is allowed to change them, ever. You will need to remind your brother-in-law of this may times.
3) The Standards Are Bad
Amateur-hour bad. I can point you at long, involved explanations of exactly what is wrong with them, but the short explanation is that we know many things about how different humans at different stages of development learn how to read and write, and the Core ignores all of them. "Well, just add in all that stuff you know," your BIL says? Go back and reread #2, I say.
4) Standards Don't Do Anything
Some folks keep saying that CCSS will help us close the achievement gap. They have no evidence. Not only do we not have evidence that standards close the gap, but we also have evidence that they don't.
Lots of states, most states, have had standards in place for a while now, and this achievement gap that we keep talking about inside the state. Every single state has a pocket of urban poor and a pocket of suburban wealth. If standards helped with that gap, would we not see that within states?
In other words, if Dunlevania had no, or poor, standards, we would expect to find a huge gap between its urban poor and its wealthy. That could be compared to South Borgia with its super-duper states standards, and a much smaller gap between its lower and upper student achievers. But we don't see that. If there is a secret formula for using state standards to shrink the achievement gap, nobody has discovered it yet.
Or, we could look at international achievers and see that, hey, this nation with great test results also has high strict standards, and this country with lousy scores has none.
The international scene and the fabled fifty-state standards hodge podge should have provided ample opportunity to demonstrate real linkage between standards and educational achievement. And yet, chirping crickets. There is absolutely no reason to believe that national standards will improve a thing.
5) The Core Turns Schools Backwards
Under the Core, students exist to serve schools. A school needs a student to put out certain numbers, show certain results, perform in a manner that serves the needs of the school itself. Witness who schools have tried to enforce the taking of The Test-- not because they think Junior will have his growth stunted if he doesn't take the PARCC, but because the school needs his numbers. What a student wants or needs, what a student expects to get out of education-- none of that matters. The student has to show that the school is succeeding, and that can only happen if the student performs as the state says he must. What the student wants is simply unimportant under the Core.
POINTS NOT TO BRING UP
1) Wacky assignments
We really need to leave this one behind. Bad math problems, confusing readings, misprints-- these have been around since the dawn of time. If CCSS went away tomorrow, there would still be terrible number line problems and writing assignments that asked students to imagine things that their parents disagree with. Do not offer that up as a reason to revolt unless you want the revolution continuing in your classroom long after CCSS have been swept away.
2) CCSS Was Created By Corporations and Profiteers
Yes, that aspect burns my toast, too. But it's not a winner in arguments with civilians, unless you want to try to argue that you would reject the best education program in the world if it came from non-teachers. Diane Ravitch-- not a classroom teacher. Founders of BATS-- not classroom teachers.
The origin story of CCSS is important because it explains why the standards are such a hash, and because understanding the purpose of CCSS (making a buttload of money) helps make sense of how it unfolded. But something civilians seem to get that teachers are reluctant to admit-- all that stuff about profiteering and backroom deals and underhanded double deals could be true AND it could also be true that the standards are great. So don't argue that the Core has a bad pedigree-- argue that it is bad education. The pedigree just explains where the suck came from.
3) Federal Overreach
Again, I agree that this is a problem with the Core, but it's not necessarily a winner when arguing with your BIL.
The two political wings are united in one opinion-- federal power should be used to make people act as they should. Conservatives and liberals alike get this. Tea Partiers are perfectly happy with federal overreach that keeps The Gays from being, you know, all gay and stuff. Liberals hate activist judges unless they are reaching the correct conclusion.
"Federal overreach" is an argument add-on. It will get people more steamed about something they already hate, but it will never make them turn against something they actually like.
Good luck. You have till the Fourth of July family picnic to get your arguments in order.
Test (In)Security
One of the features of High Stakes Testing is a level of security usually associated with large bales of money, important state secrets, and the recipe for Bush's Baked Beans. On facebook, in the category of "Ethical Dilemmas Nobody Ever Thought She'd Face," teachers are arguing about whether it's okay to photograph or copy any of the PARCC or SBA exams. I have a thought-- but first, let me tell you a story.
Forty years ago I took a biology course called BSCS. That stands for "Biological Sciences Curriculum Studies," though we generally interpreted it as "BS College Style." To this day, the tests from that course are the toughest tests I've ever taken. I still remember sections of those tests (a village where they make pottery compared to a single-celled organism, an experiment on a kangaroo rat) because they were so challenging. And these very tough, very challenging tests came with zero security.
In fact, we took the tests as take-home tests. People called their college siblings, friends who were taking college biology. We had test parties, and everybody came and hammered out the answers. And then, on the due date, we handed the test in. And then we took the same test (with questions rearranged) in class.
The tests were so perfectly built around the ability to think and reason scientifically, to interpret data, to build useful analogies, that no security was needed (and no, everybody did not get an A every time-- not even close). So here's what I think about high stakes test security:
If your test needs super-secret high-and-tight lock down security, it is a crappy test.
This applies to classroom teachers as well. The better I get at assessment, the less I need test security. My students pass on year after year, like tales of the Loch Ness Bigfoot, tales of various assignments that may crop up in my class (though the assignment list does vary from year to year). It doesn't matter. If I've done my job well, there is no place on God's green earth to go look up The Answer.
The PARCC and SBA make a lot of noise about how tight security must be in order to protect the validity of the test. Baloney. Aren't these tests supposed to be impervious to test prep, completely inaccessible to the world of memorization and rote? What these folks want to protect is their delicate ears and eyes, protect them from the onslaught of outrage and ridicule that would follow if the general public and professional educators got a good look at the test.
If your model of a test is a surprise, a moment in your course when you jump out from behind a bush a try to play "gotcha" with your students, you are doing it wrong. Tests should be an opportunity to apply knowledge, to ramp the whole process up one final step that really seats the knowledge or skill in the students' brains.
But the underlying assumption in the high-stakes test-driven movement is that there are skadzillions of bad teachers and the students they have failed to teach out there, skadZILLIONS of them, and somehow they are sneaking by and we are going to have to outsmart them so that we can catch them in their consummate suckiness. The high-stakes test-driven movement is not about education-- it's about finding proof, somehow, that public schools are failing. It is nothing but a game of "gotcha."
The super-duper secret security that surrounds the assessments is further proof of their suckiness. And, for what it's worth, the ethical dilemma of copying one of the exams is about the same as the ethical dilemma of photographing a policeman who is beating a suspect.
Forty years ago I took a biology course called BSCS. That stands for "Biological Sciences Curriculum Studies," though we generally interpreted it as "BS College Style." To this day, the tests from that course are the toughest tests I've ever taken. I still remember sections of those tests (a village where they make pottery compared to a single-celled organism, an experiment on a kangaroo rat) because they were so challenging. And these very tough, very challenging tests came with zero security.
In fact, we took the tests as take-home tests. People called their college siblings, friends who were taking college biology. We had test parties, and everybody came and hammered out the answers. And then, on the due date, we handed the test in. And then we took the same test (with questions rearranged) in class.
The tests were so perfectly built around the ability to think and reason scientifically, to interpret data, to build useful analogies, that no security was needed (and no, everybody did not get an A every time-- not even close). So here's what I think about high stakes test security:
If your test needs super-secret high-and-tight lock down security, it is a crappy test.
This applies to classroom teachers as well. The better I get at assessment, the less I need test security. My students pass on year after year, like tales of the Loch Ness Bigfoot, tales of various assignments that may crop up in my class (though the assignment list does vary from year to year). It doesn't matter. If I've done my job well, there is no place on God's green earth to go look up The Answer.
The PARCC and SBA make a lot of noise about how tight security must be in order to protect the validity of the test. Baloney. Aren't these tests supposed to be impervious to test prep, completely inaccessible to the world of memorization and rote? What these folks want to protect is their delicate ears and eyes, protect them from the onslaught of outrage and ridicule that would follow if the general public and professional educators got a good look at the test.
If your model of a test is a surprise, a moment in your course when you jump out from behind a bush a try to play "gotcha" with your students, you are doing it wrong. Tests should be an opportunity to apply knowledge, to ramp the whole process up one final step that really seats the knowledge or skill in the students' brains.
But the underlying assumption in the high-stakes test-driven movement is that there are skadzillions of bad teachers and the students they have failed to teach out there, skadZILLIONS of them, and somehow they are sneaking by and we are going to have to outsmart them so that we can catch them in their consummate suckiness. The high-stakes test-driven movement is not about education-- it's about finding proof, somehow, that public schools are failing. It is nothing but a game of "gotcha."
The super-duper secret security that surrounds the assessments is further proof of their suckiness. And, for what it's worth, the ethical dilemma of copying one of the exams is about the same as the ethical dilemma of photographing a policeman who is beating a suspect.
Conservatives Don't Really Like School Choice
Conservatives often claim they are big fans of school choice. I think they're wrong. I don't mean that I want to disagree with them using fluffy progressive liberal arguments. I mean that in the world of conservative values and goals, school choice really doesn't fit. Let me explain.
Resources and Inefficiency
One of the assumptions of every choice system is that a choice system can operate for the same amount of money-- or less-- than the current system. This is clearly false.
Which will be more inexpensive and efficient-- educating 100 students in one school , or educating them in ten separate ten-student schools, each with its own group of administrative employees and each with its own physical plant and infrastructure. "We're in serious financial trouble, so let's take our set of elementary schools and break them into even more elementary schools," said no school board ever.
There are some functions that government can perform more efficiently. Nobody suggests that we open the door to any contractor who wants to set up a competing system of interstate highways. Nor do we open up each new war to bids from any private army that wants to go in there. Okay, actually that one does happen a little, and you'll notice that when it does, things get even more expensive really quickly. And when government does allow a spirit of competition, it doesn't work out all that well. We are still trying to fix the massive disconnect between competing intelligence agencies that made it easy to pull off the 9/11 attacks.
I agree that given infinite resources, a multiple service provider system would look a lot different. But that's not what we've got and it's not what we're ever going to have. School choice requires multiple school systems to live as cheaply as one, and they can't. Yes, there are charters who claim they can do it. So far, they are all liars; any lower operating costs they purport to achieve are the result of simply tossing high-cost students out of the system, and if we're willing to throw away the expensive children, we can make public schools run way cheaper tomorrow.
No, a school choice system is no financial winner. We end up with waste and inefficiency and duplication of services, and we end up with school systems that either don't have enough resources, or we simply soak the taxpayers for more money.
Big Government
Because there are not enough resources to go around, we will need some Wise and Powerful Wizard to divvy them all up. That wizard is going to be the state or federal government. For better or worse, under current market conditions starting a new competing school system to compete with the public system will be like starting a new software company to compete with Microsoft Windows. The cost of admission is way too high unless Big Government gets involved.
The only way to extend the reach of choice schools will be to extend the reach of big government. And since the choice schools will be accepting government money, they will be accepting government oversight. Yes, I know they've battled it back for now, but they will lose that war. The government will declare, as it has with public schools, that it has a responsibility to see that it's money was spent appropriately. Some choice school will get caught doing something spectacularly egregiously stupid, and big gummint will have its opening.
You know what a good example of small, local government is? Locally elected school boards. Yes, many are less than perfect. But at what point did conservatives join the chorus of, "We need to just tell the electorate what to do. It's for their own good."
Competition Does Not Foster Quality Products
I've written about this before, comparing charter schools to cable channels. The big money is in the big markets, so the big players compete for the muddled middle. Education has two particular problems-- there's not much product differentiation, and a big chunk of your market is people who don't really want your product.
The lack of product differentiation (particularly if all schools are using the same CCSS to teach to the same Big Tests) means that the game will belong to the person with the best marketing. Trot out your own examples here (I like Betamax vs. VHS) of superior products that did NOT win the marketplace because they were out-marketed by somebody else.
In a choice system, schools will compete, but not by being the highest quality educators. They'll offer programs that appeal to students who don't find school appealing ("Welcome to No Homework High!!"), and they will offer really cool and glitzy marketing. You may say, "Fine. Let the jerks send their kids to crappy schools and that will just leave my kids at Really Quality High with the other cool kids."
Except. First of all, Really Quality High has to accept you. Every admission's decision will be a marketing decision. If your child is too expensive, we don't want him. If he is going to screw with our scores, we're sending him back to you. Here's your competition-- you will compete with other parents to pull strings, make it rain, and otherwise score your kid a seat at Exclusive High (pro tip: you won't compete by making your kid suddenly smarter or a better student, because you can't do much about those things, and I bet you won't say, "Oh well, you're just not as smart as the Smith kid, so we'll settle for Average Shmoe High.")
And second of all, Really Quality High has to exist. In the early days of cable, there were some really classy channels. I liked Bravo for broadway shows and Arts&Entertainment for its highbrow culture offerings. But there wasn't enough of me to make those approaches profitable, so now Bravo and A&E broadcast the same basic sort of dreck as every other channel.
Competition Does Not Foster Competition
One of my favorite history books is The Robber Barons, a history of the great money-grubbers of the 19th century written by a 1930s-era socialist. Matthew Josephson really wants to hate these guys, but at the same time, he clearly admires them because they are economic collectivists. Rockefeller, Carnegie, et al didn't really have a beef with centralized control of an entire industry, as long as they were the people in charge.
Unbridled competition leads to centralized control. Let, say, the phone company just suck up every other phone company, and you get the telephone monopoly of the 1970s, run by a corporation just as impersonal, uncaring, inefficient, unresponsive and insulated from competition as any sector ever run by Big Gummint. What does it take to keep such monopolistic centralization from happening? Why, hello there Big Gummint!
You think this won't happen in choice schools? Of course it will-- it already is. Pearson is already assembling a vertically integrated powerhouse of Rockefellerian proportions (and do I need to remind you that they aren't even American, that as upset as we were when the Chinese were buying up America bit by bit, Pearson has already done much the same with American education), and in may states, the only charter players are the big players. And like every power centralizer before them, they did not conquer their world simply by being so much better than everyone else. They use money and influence and, when necessary, the tool of Big Government to get their way.
This is not meritocracy in action. This is corporations and big government teaming up to display exactly why conservatives who rail against Big Government have a point.
Caveats and Etc
Are there pockets of charter schools who have avoided all these pitfalls? Absolutely. But look at today's corporate-dominated landscape and tell me if you really think there's room for a small, creative edupreneur.
Do I have ideas for alternatives? You know I do, but this is already running long. But conservatives-- you need to stop promoting school choice, because you don't really want it. You just haven't figured that out yet.
Resources and Inefficiency
One of the assumptions of every choice system is that a choice system can operate for the same amount of money-- or less-- than the current system. This is clearly false.
Which will be more inexpensive and efficient-- educating 100 students in one school , or educating them in ten separate ten-student schools, each with its own group of administrative employees and each with its own physical plant and infrastructure. "We're in serious financial trouble, so let's take our set of elementary schools and break them into even more elementary schools," said no school board ever.
There are some functions that government can perform more efficiently. Nobody suggests that we open the door to any contractor who wants to set up a competing system of interstate highways. Nor do we open up each new war to bids from any private army that wants to go in there. Okay, actually that one does happen a little, and you'll notice that when it does, things get even more expensive really quickly. And when government does allow a spirit of competition, it doesn't work out all that well. We are still trying to fix the massive disconnect between competing intelligence agencies that made it easy to pull off the 9/11 attacks.
I agree that given infinite resources, a multiple service provider system would look a lot different. But that's not what we've got and it's not what we're ever going to have. School choice requires multiple school systems to live as cheaply as one, and they can't. Yes, there are charters who claim they can do it. So far, they are all liars; any lower operating costs they purport to achieve are the result of simply tossing high-cost students out of the system, and if we're willing to throw away the expensive children, we can make public schools run way cheaper tomorrow.
No, a school choice system is no financial winner. We end up with waste and inefficiency and duplication of services, and we end up with school systems that either don't have enough resources, or we simply soak the taxpayers for more money.
Big Government
Because there are not enough resources to go around, we will need some Wise and Powerful Wizard to divvy them all up. That wizard is going to be the state or federal government. For better or worse, under current market conditions starting a new competing school system to compete with the public system will be like starting a new software company to compete with Microsoft Windows. The cost of admission is way too high unless Big Government gets involved.
The only way to extend the reach of choice schools will be to extend the reach of big government. And since the choice schools will be accepting government money, they will be accepting government oversight. Yes, I know they've battled it back for now, but they will lose that war. The government will declare, as it has with public schools, that it has a responsibility to see that it's money was spent appropriately. Some choice school will get caught doing something spectacularly egregiously stupid, and big gummint will have its opening.
You know what a good example of small, local government is? Locally elected school boards. Yes, many are less than perfect. But at what point did conservatives join the chorus of, "We need to just tell the electorate what to do. It's for their own good."
Competition Does Not Foster Quality Products
I've written about this before, comparing charter schools to cable channels. The big money is in the big markets, so the big players compete for the muddled middle. Education has two particular problems-- there's not much product differentiation, and a big chunk of your market is people who don't really want your product.
The lack of product differentiation (particularly if all schools are using the same CCSS to teach to the same Big Tests) means that the game will belong to the person with the best marketing. Trot out your own examples here (I like Betamax vs. VHS) of superior products that did NOT win the marketplace because they were out-marketed by somebody else.
In a choice system, schools will compete, but not by being the highest quality educators. They'll offer programs that appeal to students who don't find school appealing ("Welcome to No Homework High!!"), and they will offer really cool and glitzy marketing. You may say, "Fine. Let the jerks send their kids to crappy schools and that will just leave my kids at Really Quality High with the other cool kids."
Except. First of all, Really Quality High has to accept you. Every admission's decision will be a marketing decision. If your child is too expensive, we don't want him. If he is going to screw with our scores, we're sending him back to you. Here's your competition-- you will compete with other parents to pull strings, make it rain, and otherwise score your kid a seat at Exclusive High (pro tip: you won't compete by making your kid suddenly smarter or a better student, because you can't do much about those things, and I bet you won't say, "Oh well, you're just not as smart as the Smith kid, so we'll settle for Average Shmoe High.")
And second of all, Really Quality High has to exist. In the early days of cable, there were some really classy channels. I liked Bravo for broadway shows and Arts&Entertainment for its highbrow culture offerings. But there wasn't enough of me to make those approaches profitable, so now Bravo and A&E broadcast the same basic sort of dreck as every other channel.
Competition Does Not Foster Competition
One of my favorite history books is The Robber Barons, a history of the great money-grubbers of the 19th century written by a 1930s-era socialist. Matthew Josephson really wants to hate these guys, but at the same time, he clearly admires them because they are economic collectivists. Rockefeller, Carnegie, et al didn't really have a beef with centralized control of an entire industry, as long as they were the people in charge.
Unbridled competition leads to centralized control. Let, say, the phone company just suck up every other phone company, and you get the telephone monopoly of the 1970s, run by a corporation just as impersonal, uncaring, inefficient, unresponsive and insulated from competition as any sector ever run by Big Gummint. What does it take to keep such monopolistic centralization from happening? Why, hello there Big Gummint!
You think this won't happen in choice schools? Of course it will-- it already is. Pearson is already assembling a vertically integrated powerhouse of Rockefellerian proportions (and do I need to remind you that they aren't even American, that as upset as we were when the Chinese were buying up America bit by bit, Pearson has already done much the same with American education), and in may states, the only charter players are the big players. And like every power centralizer before them, they did not conquer their world simply by being so much better than everyone else. They use money and influence and, when necessary, the tool of Big Government to get their way.
This is not meritocracy in action. This is corporations and big government teaming up to display exactly why conservatives who rail against Big Government have a point.
Caveats and Etc
Are there pockets of charter schools who have avoided all these pitfalls? Absolutely. But look at today's corporate-dominated landscape and tell me if you really think there's room for a small, creative edupreneur.
Do I have ideas for alternatives? You know I do, but this is already running long. But conservatives-- you need to stop promoting school choice, because you don't really want it. You just haven't figured that out yet.
Monday, May 26, 2014
I'm Not Blogging Today
I realize that title launches me into some sort of post-modern metablogging fogbank, but hey-- it's the 21st century.
Shortly I'll head out the door to march with a 158-year-old community band in a small town Memorial Day parade, followed by a program in the city park. Because this is all within walking distance, my wife and I will stroll home afterwards, stopping to visit her family.
Along the way I will see and talk to friends, neighbors, family, students, parents of students and people I know in the community (some will fill multiple roles on that list). We will pause to honor those soldiers who have passed (and who, regardless of the arguable historic truth of events, did what they thought was right), and we will honor veterans like my brother-in-law (because you shouldn't have to wait to be appreciated until after you're dead). There's talk of steak and a grill. And then I'm going to psyche myself up for the last two weeks of school.
It's good, I think, to mindfully step out of one corner of one's life and into another, to remind yourself what you want your life to be like, to be about, and to plug solidly, fully, into each community to which you belong. So today I'm stepping away from the computer and into this small town post card that I live in. You enjoy your day, too. I will see you tomorrow.
Shortly I'll head out the door to march with a 158-year-old community band in a small town Memorial Day parade, followed by a program in the city park. Because this is all within walking distance, my wife and I will stroll home afterwards, stopping to visit her family.
Along the way I will see and talk to friends, neighbors, family, students, parents of students and people I know in the community (some will fill multiple roles on that list). We will pause to honor those soldiers who have passed (and who, regardless of the arguable historic truth of events, did what they thought was right), and we will honor veterans like my brother-in-law (because you shouldn't have to wait to be appreciated until after you're dead). There's talk of steak and a grill. And then I'm going to psyche myself up for the last two weeks of school.
It's good, I think, to mindfully step out of one corner of one's life and into another, to remind yourself what you want your life to be like, to be about, and to plug solidly, fully, into each community to which you belong. So today I'm stepping away from the computer and into this small town post card that I live in. You enjoy your day, too. I will see you tomorrow.
Sunday, May 25, 2014
CAP Serves Some CCSS Baloney
The Center for American Progress came down hard for the Common Core last week, providing yet another field test for the 100% baloney sandwich that is the Core's urban poor talking point menu.
In "The Common Core Is An Opportunity for Educational Equity,", CAP asserts, "The Common Core State Standards hold promise for low-income students, students of color, English language learners, and students with disabilities, who traditionally perform significantly worse than their peers." And you know that this is a serious position paper because it has footnotes and stuff. What it doesn't have is sense.
Quality Control
The standards will act as a "quality-control check," and let's just stop right there, because do you know, CAPsters, how a quality control check works? Because this seems to be a point on which many CCSS supporters are really fuzzy.
Quality control does not mean that every piece that rolls down the assembly line is now suddenly up to standard. What quality control means is that we check every piece on the line, and when we find pieces that don't meet the standard we throw them away. Quality control does not mean every toaster will be perfect-- it means that every toaster that makes it out of the factory will be perfect.
Using Common Core standards as quality control can only mean one thing-- we will find the students who don't meet the standards and we will throw them away. This is really, really wrong and completely counter to the point of American public education and I can't believe I even have to type that out, but apparently I do.
Out of the Stone Age
Students will explore concepts deeply, work together to solve complex problems, and engage in project-based learning—instead of focusing on worksheets and rote memorization.
Yes, because no teacher in the history of teacherdom ever knew how to teach concepts or cooperative learning or anything except worksheets before CCSS.
Highlighting Educational Gaps
In this section, CAP notes that low-income students and students of color are less likely to have access to higher-level courses, are more likely to have inexperienced or out-of-area teachers, and along with ELL and students with disabilities are less likely to graduate on time. They have footnotes, and I have no reason to doubt that these are all true facts.
Students of Color and Low Income Students Have Lower College Outcomes
Fewer of these students attend college and a high percentage of them need remedial courses. Again, I believe that by and large this is all true.
And Now That We've Wound Up, The Pitch!
So having established the need, I expect we're now going to make a case for how the implementation of CCSS will help address these issues and-- wait! What? Ummm... no, this is the whole conclusion, verbatim:
The Common Core will improve education quality for all students—particularly traditionally underserved students. Raising standards and preparing all students for college and careers will help reduce the disparities identified for low-income students, students of color, ELLs, and students with disabilities.
But-but-but--HOW!! Fairy dust! Magic beans! I mean, hell, I can type "Eating a baloney sandwich every day will make me grow tall, handsome and wise," but that doesn't make it so! Are you not even going to TRY to explain how Common Core will help? Not even try a teensy weensy bit??
Because-- and I don't think you need me to tell you this, but I want you to know that I know-- those are serious issues that you've laid out. Inequality of opportunity, of education, of employment, or health care-- this is a bit of a national shame. The fact that schools intended for the urban poor are underserved, underresourced, underfunded, understaffed-- I mean, all those things you listed as gapos and problems are things that we really ought to be trying to fix.
But here we are in the hospital ER looking at a patient who has been hit by a truck, who is broken and bleeding, and you want to offer him a magical baloney sandwich??!! Come on, CAP. You can do better than this.
In "The Common Core Is An Opportunity for Educational Equity,", CAP asserts, "The Common Core State Standards hold promise for low-income students, students of color, English language learners, and students with disabilities, who traditionally perform significantly worse than their peers." And you know that this is a serious position paper because it has footnotes and stuff. What it doesn't have is sense.
Quality Control
The standards will act as a "quality-control check," and let's just stop right there, because do you know, CAPsters, how a quality control check works? Because this seems to be a point on which many CCSS supporters are really fuzzy.
Quality control does not mean that every piece that rolls down the assembly line is now suddenly up to standard. What quality control means is that we check every piece on the line, and when we find pieces that don't meet the standard we throw them away. Quality control does not mean every toaster will be perfect-- it means that every toaster that makes it out of the factory will be perfect.
Using Common Core standards as quality control can only mean one thing-- we will find the students who don't meet the standards and we will throw them away. This is really, really wrong and completely counter to the point of American public education and I can't believe I even have to type that out, but apparently I do.
Out of the Stone Age
Students will explore concepts deeply, work together to solve complex problems, and engage in project-based learning—instead of focusing on worksheets and rote memorization.
Yes, because no teacher in the history of teacherdom ever knew how to teach concepts or cooperative learning or anything except worksheets before CCSS.
Highlighting Educational Gaps
In this section, CAP notes that low-income students and students of color are less likely to have access to higher-level courses, are more likely to have inexperienced or out-of-area teachers, and along with ELL and students with disabilities are less likely to graduate on time. They have footnotes, and I have no reason to doubt that these are all true facts.
Students of Color and Low Income Students Have Lower College Outcomes
Fewer of these students attend college and a high percentage of them need remedial courses. Again, I believe that by and large this is all true.
And Now That We've Wound Up, The Pitch!
So having established the need, I expect we're now going to make a case for how the implementation of CCSS will help address these issues and-- wait! What? Ummm... no, this is the whole conclusion, verbatim:
The Common Core will improve education quality for all students—particularly traditionally underserved students. Raising standards and preparing all students for college and careers will help reduce the disparities identified for low-income students, students of color, ELLs, and students with disabilities.
But-but-but--HOW!! Fairy dust! Magic beans! I mean, hell, I can type "Eating a baloney sandwich every day will make me grow tall, handsome and wise," but that doesn't make it so! Are you not even going to TRY to explain how Common Core will help? Not even try a teensy weensy bit??
Because-- and I don't think you need me to tell you this, but I want you to know that I know-- those are serious issues that you've laid out. Inequality of opportunity, of education, of employment, or health care-- this is a bit of a national shame. The fact that schools intended for the urban poor are underserved, underresourced, underfunded, understaffed-- I mean, all those things you listed as gapos and problems are things that we really ought to be trying to fix.
But here we are in the hospital ER looking at a patient who has been hit by a truck, who is broken and bleeding, and you want to offer him a magical baloney sandwich??!! Come on, CAP. You can do better than this.
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