Mercedes Schneider is pissed.
There are many things that come through in her book A Chronicle of Echoes, but what's most immediately palpable is her anger at what has been done to public education in this country. And as each chapter unrolls, it's impossible not to see why she is so angry.
Schneider is one of the most important bloggers in the edublogosphere. She is a tireless researcher, with a careful command both of statistical research tools and the tortured depths of government forms. What Schneider has done, time and time again, is use her research skills to act out the most standard, and yet most valuable, imperative-- follow the money. While many edubloggers stick to bold strokes or the part of the ice berg that sticks up in their particular neighborhood, Schneider repeatedly completes the painstaking job of connecting the dots.
Her blog is required reading for anyone concerned about the current battle for Amerian public education. Seriously-- over to the right of your screen is a list of blog links and you should be following the link to her blog (deursch29). But there were topics of enough complexity and detail that to really address them, Schneider needed to write a book.
A Chronicle of Echoes is a sprawling narrative the connects the dots, follows the money, and lays out how the reformsters have gotten their hands around the throat of public education. And I guarantee you-- no matter how closely you've followed events of the past several years, there is information in this book that A) you didn't know yet and B) you knew, but didn't know just how bad it was.
Here's the subject list by chapter:
1) Joel Klein
2) Eva Moskowitz
3) Wendy Kopp
4) Michelle Rhee
5) Erik Hanushek
6) Chicago Connect: Daley-Vallas
7) Chicago Connection: Duncan (and Obama)
8) Chicago Connection: Emanuel (with Obama)
9) Paul Vallas (Philadelphia)
10) Paul Vallas (New Orleans, Bridgeport)
11) David Coleman and the Common Core
12) Chester Finn and Frederick Hess
13) Jeb Bush (Florida miracle)
14) Jeb Bush (beyond the miracle)
15) Bush's Foundation for Excellence in Education and Chiefs for Change
16) TNTP and StudentsFirst
17) Democrats for Education Reform and Education Reform Now
18) National Council on Teacher Quality
19) Stand for Children
20) Black Alliance for Education Options and Parents Revolution
21) Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP)
22) Aspen and Pahara Institutes
23) The Big Three Foundations: Gates, Walton and Broad
24) ALEC
Followed by almost 100 pages of endnotes (just in case you doubt her research chops.
The chapters are all stand-alone. Although an overall narrative emerges in the book, what Schneider has really written here is a reference book, an encyclopedia of reformster leaders and organizations. With meticulous research and plenty of quotes excavated throughout, this is a book to return to when one of your colleagues or even a civilian asks, "So what's that ALEC thing?" or "But doesn't TFA do great work?" or "Why do you turn purple and bulgy-eyed when I bring up David Coleman?"
The book is, in short, great arsenal support for you as you try to educate yourself or others.
A word of warning about Schneider's tone. I'm a big fan of her powerful mix of scathing wit and damning facts, but it is likely that someone who is new to these, a casual civilian, or just generally on the fence about ed reform issues may be put off by her tone. This is not a dispassionate attempt to lead the reader to a conclusion; this is "I'm pissed and I'm going to tell you why." It's justified, it's powerful, and it's appropriate, but not all audiences are going to make it past her anger to the mountain of facts it rests on.
If you are the kind of person who wishes everyone would just talk nicely about these things, I'm not going to have that argument with you now, but I am going to encourage you as strongly as possible to get this book and read for the facts and the details. If you know that person, your best approach may not be to simply hand them the book, but to share the facts from it.
Like Schneider's blog, this book is hugely important because it empowers a whole world of people in the resistance with facts, dates, details, quotes-- all the specifics that show what is really happening. It's the facts and figures, names and places, connections and quotes that help build a case and distinguish us from crazy-pants conspiracy theorists. This is a book to read and to keep on your shelf for ready reference. This is a book that tells you who did this, and how they did it.
If you weren't sure about picking this up when it first came out, or you meant to but didn't get around to it, I am telling you now-- buy this book. Mercedes Schneider is pissed, and she is also smart, witty, and well-grounded in facts and research. This is essential reading for anyone who supports public education. Get a copy today-- here, I'll even make it easy for you.
Friday, June 27, 2014
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Why Do Feds Love Scalability?
It's time once again for the DOE's Charter Schools Program Grants for Replication and Expansion of High-Quality Charter Schools competition.
This program nominally supports the administrations love affair with scalability. The scenario that has been alluded to time after time is this:
1) Many charters experiment with many educational thingies
2) One of the educational thingies turns out to be super-duper awesome
3) Super-duper awesome educational thingy is reproduced in every school in America
So, on the list of values that reformsters have simply presented as virtues without examination or discussion, let's add scalability-- the ability to take a product or service and expand it to the national market.
Scalability is not necessarily a great idea. Take the Krispy Kremes story. Krispy Kreme donuts started out as a regional success story, donuts that were hot and fresh and far above ordinary mass market donutry. And then they decided to go national, and turned out the best way to move the brand across the country was to make donuts that were pretty much the same as other mass market donuts. It used to be that you could only find Krispy Kremes in certain areas, and when you did it was a special treat. Now you can find them everywhere-- but there's nothing special about them at all.
Here in Western PA we have a convenience store called Sheetz. They are awesome, and not awesome in a Doing What Nobody Else Can Dream Of way, but in a We're Doing What Everybody Is Trying To Do But We're Doing It Right Way. Sheetz are what every sad 7-11 Kwickee Mart Gas and Speedy Food place in the country want to be. And they have studiously avoided scaling up to national size, and have instead remained regional and awesome.
What are the great successes in scalability? Well, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, various other fast food chains. I'm trying to think of an example of a product or service that has been scaled up to the national level and which is also synonymous with the very best in its field, and.... I've got nothing. Instead, it would seem that a big lesson of scalability is that it requires easily reproduced mediocrity.
If customers want the very best, they don't generally look for a nationally-scaled business.
Of course, if we stop looking at scalability from a customer standpoint and start looking it from the business operator's perspective, scalability shines up prettier than a semi-attractive bar patron viewed through 3 AM beer goggles.
For business operators, scalability is absolutely great. It is a super-effective way to make more money, move more of a product that is produced with inexpensive standardization, and force the market to bend to your concerns instead of your trying to react to the market.
Scalability is great for business operators and provides good enough-ish service for the customers.
Why would we want that as a goal for America's schools? Under what circumstances would it make sense to say, "You know this is a great way to teach our students here at Local High School, because the program is scalable"? Why would I as a classroom teacher decide that a program I designed myself specifically to fit the exact students in front of me-- why would I throw out that program in favor of some standardized scalable pablum that is supposedly good for any classroom in the country?
Scalability is a value for entrepreneurs. It has no value for students, teachers, schools and communities. It's unfortunate that the DOE sees it as a quality to seek out and reward. I look forward to DOE grants for Programs Producing Extreme Boredom and Schools With Exceptional Disregard For Individual Differences of Its Students.
This program nominally supports the administrations love affair with scalability. The scenario that has been alluded to time after time is this:
1) Many charters experiment with many educational thingies
2) One of the educational thingies turns out to be super-duper awesome
3) Super-duper awesome educational thingy is reproduced in every school in America
So, on the list of values that reformsters have simply presented as virtues without examination or discussion, let's add scalability-- the ability to take a product or service and expand it to the national market.
Scalability is not necessarily a great idea. Take the Krispy Kremes story. Krispy Kreme donuts started out as a regional success story, donuts that were hot and fresh and far above ordinary mass market donutry. And then they decided to go national, and turned out the best way to move the brand across the country was to make donuts that were pretty much the same as other mass market donuts. It used to be that you could only find Krispy Kremes in certain areas, and when you did it was a special treat. Now you can find them everywhere-- but there's nothing special about them at all.
Here in Western PA we have a convenience store called Sheetz. They are awesome, and not awesome in a Doing What Nobody Else Can Dream Of way, but in a We're Doing What Everybody Is Trying To Do But We're Doing It Right Way. Sheetz are what every sad 7-11 Kwickee Mart Gas and Speedy Food place in the country want to be. And they have studiously avoided scaling up to national size, and have instead remained regional and awesome.
What are the great successes in scalability? Well, McDonalds, Wal-Mart, various other fast food chains. I'm trying to think of an example of a product or service that has been scaled up to the national level and which is also synonymous with the very best in its field, and.... I've got nothing. Instead, it would seem that a big lesson of scalability is that it requires easily reproduced mediocrity.
If customers want the very best, they don't generally look for a nationally-scaled business.
Of course, if we stop looking at scalability from a customer standpoint and start looking it from the business operator's perspective, scalability shines up prettier than a semi-attractive bar patron viewed through 3 AM beer goggles.
For business operators, scalability is absolutely great. It is a super-effective way to make more money, move more of a product that is produced with inexpensive standardization, and force the market to bend to your concerns instead of your trying to react to the market.
Scalability is great for business operators and provides good enough-ish service for the customers.
Why would we want that as a goal for America's schools? Under what circumstances would it make sense to say, "You know this is a great way to teach our students here at Local High School, because the program is scalable"? Why would I as a classroom teacher decide that a program I designed myself specifically to fit the exact students in front of me-- why would I throw out that program in favor of some standardized scalable pablum that is supposedly good for any classroom in the country?
Scalability is a value for entrepreneurs. It has no value for students, teachers, schools and communities. It's unfortunate that the DOE sees it as a quality to seek out and reward. I look forward to DOE grants for Programs Producing Extreme Boredom and Schools With Exceptional Disregard For Individual Differences of Its Students.
Seven Trends in the Teacher Work Force
In April, the Consortium for Policy Research in Education released a paper entitled "Seven Trends: the Transformation of the Teaching Force." What the title lacks in sass and flash it makes up for in accuracy, and although the most recent data are from 2012, it still makes for interesting reading. Let's look at the seven trends.
Larger
Between the late 80s and 2008, the teaching force grew, and grew far faster than the student population.What happened? CPRE notes a couple of interesting trends.
Private schools added staff far faster than they added students, and charter school growth has contributed to the total number of teaching jobs. CPRE rejects these as large factors because those types of schools are a small portion of the total teaching world. Class size reduction, particularly on the state legislative scale like California, led to an increase in number of teachers needed.
The other three big growth areas were special area elementary teachers, ESL teachers, and (a biggie) pre-K teachers. High school math and science saw large gains. And the likely biggest contributing area-- special education.
The paper notes that the information is not supportive for either end of the political spectrum. Liberals who posit that rehiring all the laid-off teachers from recent years overlook the ballooning of the field before the massive layoffs of the economic crash. Conservatives who like to cry "bureaucratic bloating" at larger staffs ignore that it's private schools that did the most bloating.
Grayer
The teaching force is getting older, though the trend has just about played out. If you are stuck in old-school thinking, you might conclude that this has great financial implications as a bunch of old guys retiring will reduce school costs. But nowadays, old teachers are a monetary nightmare because, pensions.
As a side note, the paper's authors note that retirements only represent 14% of teacher outflow! Fourteen percent!! The big math/science teacher shortage issue is not retirements, and it's not (see previous point) supply either-- it's people who just get out rather than make a lifetime career out of it. The "put great teachers in front of every student crowd" might want to chew on that one for a while.
Greener
So one big bump on the experience chart comes at the high end-- the other is at the newbie end. This point has been addressed in more depth elsewhere, but the bottom line is that the most common teacher is an inexperienced one.
There are interesting pieces of sub-data. For instance, of those newbs, roughly a third are over twenty-nine years old.
Greening has several implications. Instructionally, it can have an impact because, despite the anti-tenure crowd's complaints, most studies that show any link show that experinec generally goes with better teaching. Industry has long known the problems that come with too much turnover and the loss of institutional memory; schools can suffer form the same issue of simply having too few people left in the building who know how things work.
Greening also has implications for pension funds-- good ones, actually, as the number of people paying in can help bolster the system. And since this crop of newbies are highly likely to quit the profession early on, a large number of them will end up basically making contributions to the pension fund that will never have to be paid back to them. So thanks for helping to pay off my retirement, non-teaching newby.
More Female
I'll admit this one caught me by surprise, and it shouldn't have. In my own district we had an elementary building that didn't have a single male adult working in it-- not from teachers through secretaries through custodians.
The total number of male teachers has actually grown. But the number of females has grown twice as fast. The authors use several paragraphs trying to guess why, but nobody really knows. The implications are likewise unpredictable, though the guess that turning teaching back into "women's work" reducing the respect and clout of the profession seems like a good one, and amply reflected in mostly male, mostly white reformsters' disdain for the profession.
More Diverse by Race-Ethnicity
While teaching is still a predominantly white profession, minority teachers are entering the ranks at a far higher rate than white teachers. That's the good news. The bad news is that minority teachers are leaving teaching at a far greater rate than white teachers.
Consistent in Academic Ability
You know the issue. Do teachers really come from the bottom echelons of college grades or SAT scores? And more importantly, do academic achievements have anything to do with teaching awesomeness, anyway?
CPRE determined that, if we sort first-year teachers by selectivity of college, about a tenth come from the top, a fifth come from the bottom, and everybody else comes from the middle. That doesn't seem to be changing.
Less Stable
This has been implied by most of the other categories. Teaching has become steadily less stable, with both attrition and moving from school to school on the upswing, and especially more so for minority teachers.
These researchers, who include Ingersoll, creator of the infamous 50% attrition figure, have fine tuned that number to something like 41%, but they would like to point out that since the total number of teachers has increased, percentages do not capture the growing raw numbers of teachers fleeing the profession, most commonly in their beginning years. Reasons given for leaving?
* School Staffing Action-- 20.8%
* Family or persona- - 35.4%
* Pursuing another job-- 38.9%
* Dissatisfaction-- 45.3%
What do we know? That of all the topics brought up in discussions of teaching staffing, the biggest one that we don't address is retention.
When reformsters start talking about getting a great teacher in each classroom, what they should really be talking about is attracting and keeping them. It's all great to talk about getting highly effective teachers into problem schools-- but how will you convince them to go there, and how will you convince them to stay. Spoiler alert: making it clear that you can fire them easily is NOT the answer.
Larger
Between the late 80s and 2008, the teaching force grew, and grew far faster than the student population.What happened? CPRE notes a couple of interesting trends.
Private schools added staff far faster than they added students, and charter school growth has contributed to the total number of teaching jobs. CPRE rejects these as large factors because those types of schools are a small portion of the total teaching world. Class size reduction, particularly on the state legislative scale like California, led to an increase in number of teachers needed.
The other three big growth areas were special area elementary teachers, ESL teachers, and (a biggie) pre-K teachers. High school math and science saw large gains. And the likely biggest contributing area-- special education.
The paper notes that the information is not supportive for either end of the political spectrum. Liberals who posit that rehiring all the laid-off teachers from recent years overlook the ballooning of the field before the massive layoffs of the economic crash. Conservatives who like to cry "bureaucratic bloating" at larger staffs ignore that it's private schools that did the most bloating.
Grayer
The teaching force is getting older, though the trend has just about played out. If you are stuck in old-school thinking, you might conclude that this has great financial implications as a bunch of old guys retiring will reduce school costs. But nowadays, old teachers are a monetary nightmare because, pensions.
As a side note, the paper's authors note that retirements only represent 14% of teacher outflow! Fourteen percent!! The big math/science teacher shortage issue is not retirements, and it's not (see previous point) supply either-- it's people who just get out rather than make a lifetime career out of it. The "put great teachers in front of every student crowd" might want to chew on that one for a while.
Greener
So one big bump on the experience chart comes at the high end-- the other is at the newbie end. This point has been addressed in more depth elsewhere, but the bottom line is that the most common teacher is an inexperienced one.
There are interesting pieces of sub-data. For instance, of those newbs, roughly a third are over twenty-nine years old.
Greening has several implications. Instructionally, it can have an impact because, despite the anti-tenure crowd's complaints, most studies that show any link show that experinec generally goes with better teaching. Industry has long known the problems that come with too much turnover and the loss of institutional memory; schools can suffer form the same issue of simply having too few people left in the building who know how things work.
Greening also has implications for pension funds-- good ones, actually, as the number of people paying in can help bolster the system. And since this crop of newbies are highly likely to quit the profession early on, a large number of them will end up basically making contributions to the pension fund that will never have to be paid back to them. So thanks for helping to pay off my retirement, non-teaching newby.
More Female
I'll admit this one caught me by surprise, and it shouldn't have. In my own district we had an elementary building that didn't have a single male adult working in it-- not from teachers through secretaries through custodians.
The total number of male teachers has actually grown. But the number of females has grown twice as fast. The authors use several paragraphs trying to guess why, but nobody really knows. The implications are likewise unpredictable, though the guess that turning teaching back into "women's work" reducing the respect and clout of the profession seems like a good one, and amply reflected in mostly male, mostly white reformsters' disdain for the profession.
More Diverse by Race-Ethnicity
While teaching is still a predominantly white profession, minority teachers are entering the ranks at a far higher rate than white teachers. That's the good news. The bad news is that minority teachers are leaving teaching at a far greater rate than white teachers.
Consistent in Academic Ability
You know the issue. Do teachers really come from the bottom echelons of college grades or SAT scores? And more importantly, do academic achievements have anything to do with teaching awesomeness, anyway?
CPRE determined that, if we sort first-year teachers by selectivity of college, about a tenth come from the top, a fifth come from the bottom, and everybody else comes from the middle. That doesn't seem to be changing.
Less Stable
This has been implied by most of the other categories. Teaching has become steadily less stable, with both attrition and moving from school to school on the upswing, and especially more so for minority teachers.
These researchers, who include Ingersoll, creator of the infamous 50% attrition figure, have fine tuned that number to something like 41%, but they would like to point out that since the total number of teachers has increased, percentages do not capture the growing raw numbers of teachers fleeing the profession, most commonly in their beginning years. Reasons given for leaving?
* School Staffing Action-- 20.8%
* Family or persona- - 35.4%
* Pursuing another job-- 38.9%
* Dissatisfaction-- 45.3%
What do we know? That of all the topics brought up in discussions of teaching staffing, the biggest one that we don't address is retention.
When reformsters start talking about getting a great teacher in each classroom, what they should really be talking about is attracting and keeping them. It's all great to talk about getting highly effective teachers into problem schools-- but how will you convince them to go there, and how will you convince them to stay. Spoiler alert: making it clear that you can fire them easily is NOT the answer.
How To Buy Support
Because the entire reformster universe runs on money (rather than conviction or proof or widespread grassroots support), it's useful to understand how buying support works.
It's perhaps most useful to understand how it doesn't work. Sometimes people get the impression that some shadowy figure delivers a bag of money to Representative Burgwarble or the Big Fat Ideas Thinky Tank and the recipient says, "Okay then. I'll be happy to now support whatever you tell me to."
This is inefficient, and not so effective because your supporter-for-hire is not so convincing. It's like deciding you need a tall blond spokesmodel, so you hire a short brunette and try to make her over. No-- it's much more efficient and effective to find a tall blonde who can talk.
So, for instance, when we are confronted with teachers speaking out in support of Common Core (like the four teacher spokespersons for Jeb Bush's Learn More Go Further program) I doubt that we're seeing turncoats who decided to embrace CCSS for some quick money. That spokesperson process starts by hunting down teachers who actually think Common Core is great (whether they actually understand what it truly is or not is a whole other issue that needn't be addressed). We can even formalize the search by having, say, a teacher of the year contest that includes loving the Core as a criterion. These are not people who are selling out; these are people who feel fortunate for being rewarded for what they already believe.
We can hire for other skills sets. For instance, some people love to argue. They love the battle, the chess game, the rhetorical constructs. You probably knew at least a couple of these people in college, people who could see the whole strategy and tactics of an argument laid out and just couldn't wait to fire it up and who would just light up when faced with a similarly-skilled opponent. This is that guy who stayed up till 3 AM arguing that Hitler could have been an effective world leader or that Communism is actually viable. These folks may have a particular ideological bent, but they can construct an argument for anything and sometimes consider it a special challenge to argue for something they actually believe is wrong. "Facts" are malleable and adaptable; the only true value is winning. Money is a good measure of score. People who lose their cool and get all emotional are deserving of little respect.
In politics, the Supremes have shown no understanding of how the purchase of politicians works these days. It's not "Here's a bag of money. Pass my bill." Politician's number one job is to get re-elected, and campaigns are incredibly expensive. That money has to come from somewhere. If you are an elected official, the people with the money are the people who decide whether you will keep your job or not. That means that these people are the people you must keep happy, the people you must convince you're doing well. The people with money are literally your bosses. And like any other boss, they will hire the people who they think will best fit their organization's goals.(They will also make it hard for headhunters to hire anyone away from them, because in every area other than teaching, they recognize that you have to outbid rival employers.)
When advocating for your cause, you yourself might be a cynical, opportunistic, money-grubbing, amoral, brazenly self-centered person. But that's not who you send out into the public sphere to make your case. For the voice and face of your cause, you need somebody who actually believes in the snake oil that you are selling.
The generals in these battles may well be reptilian wretches, but the front-line troops will be cute little earnest puppies.
So groups like StudentsFirst, Students Matter, Learn More Go Further, and Teach for America may be led with people of bad intent, but they have found earnest, sincere people to be the public faces of their initiatives.
The oldest trick in the book is to use the earnest puppies as a shield. Lots of people wanted to attack the Vergara suit; nobody wanted to be seen attacking nine fresh-faced teens. TFA deserves all the scorn and pushback that can be mounted, but nobody looks good trashing some earnest college grad who just wants to help poor kids.
It's useful to remember that not everybody who opposes us is knowingly wrong, in it for the money, sneaky and dishonest. Sometimes we aren't facing wolves in sheeps' clothing; we're facing actual sheep who disagree with us. We need to choose our tactics acordingly.
It's perhaps most useful to understand how it doesn't work. Sometimes people get the impression that some shadowy figure delivers a bag of money to Representative Burgwarble or the Big Fat Ideas Thinky Tank and the recipient says, "Okay then. I'll be happy to now support whatever you tell me to."
This is inefficient, and not so effective because your supporter-for-hire is not so convincing. It's like deciding you need a tall blond spokesmodel, so you hire a short brunette and try to make her over. No-- it's much more efficient and effective to find a tall blonde who can talk.
So, for instance, when we are confronted with teachers speaking out in support of Common Core (like the four teacher spokespersons for Jeb Bush's Learn More Go Further program) I doubt that we're seeing turncoats who decided to embrace CCSS for some quick money. That spokesperson process starts by hunting down teachers who actually think Common Core is great (whether they actually understand what it truly is or not is a whole other issue that needn't be addressed). We can even formalize the search by having, say, a teacher of the year contest that includes loving the Core as a criterion. These are not people who are selling out; these are people who feel fortunate for being rewarded for what they already believe.
We can hire for other skills sets. For instance, some people love to argue. They love the battle, the chess game, the rhetorical constructs. You probably knew at least a couple of these people in college, people who could see the whole strategy and tactics of an argument laid out and just couldn't wait to fire it up and who would just light up when faced with a similarly-skilled opponent. This is that guy who stayed up till 3 AM arguing that Hitler could have been an effective world leader or that Communism is actually viable. These folks may have a particular ideological bent, but they can construct an argument for anything and sometimes consider it a special challenge to argue for something they actually believe is wrong. "Facts" are malleable and adaptable; the only true value is winning. Money is a good measure of score. People who lose their cool and get all emotional are deserving of little respect.
In politics, the Supremes have shown no understanding of how the purchase of politicians works these days. It's not "Here's a bag of money. Pass my bill." Politician's number one job is to get re-elected, and campaigns are incredibly expensive. That money has to come from somewhere. If you are an elected official, the people with the money are the people who decide whether you will keep your job or not. That means that these people are the people you must keep happy, the people you must convince you're doing well. The people with money are literally your bosses. And like any other boss, they will hire the people who they think will best fit their organization's goals.(They will also make it hard for headhunters to hire anyone away from them, because in every area other than teaching, they recognize that you have to outbid rival employers.)
When advocating for your cause, you yourself might be a cynical, opportunistic, money-grubbing, amoral, brazenly self-centered person. But that's not who you send out into the public sphere to make your case. For the voice and face of your cause, you need somebody who actually believes in the snake oil that you are selling.
The generals in these battles may well be reptilian wretches, but the front-line troops will be cute little earnest puppies.
So groups like StudentsFirst, Students Matter, Learn More Go Further, and Teach for America may be led with people of bad intent, but they have found earnest, sincere people to be the public faces of their initiatives.
The oldest trick in the book is to use the earnest puppies as a shield. Lots of people wanted to attack the Vergara suit; nobody wanted to be seen attacking nine fresh-faced teens. TFA deserves all the scorn and pushback that can be mounted, but nobody looks good trashing some earnest college grad who just wants to help poor kids.
It's useful to remember that not everybody who opposes us is knowingly wrong, in it for the money, sneaky and dishonest. Sometimes we aren't facing wolves in sheeps' clothing; we're facing actual sheep who disagree with us. We need to choose our tactics acordingly.
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
What Should Arne Have Said
There's been a pig-pile on Arne today over his ill-considered announcement of the DOE's new get-tough-on-states policy regarding students with disabilities (I know, because I was one of the first pigs on the pile).
However. The answer that Arne came up with is stupid, but the question it addresses-- are all students with disabilities getting the educational service they deserve-- is not a stupid question at all. This is a serious issue, and there are some of the serious points that need to be seriously considered if we're going to have a serious conversation about it.
* "Students with disabilities" is a huge, huge, HUGE category. It includes the students in my classroom who are labeled learning disabled but whose label I would never have guessed because their disability never interferes with their classroom performance. It also includes students with profound levels of difficulty who will never, ever in their lives function "at grade level." And it includes every shade of grey in between. To make any statement of policy about students with disabilities that lumps them altogether is like writing a policy that dictates how we should handle "people with dark hair."
* Parents of students with disabilities often have to fight long, hard, and constantly to get their children the services and support that they should be getting. Many districts and schools have a history of writing off disabled students. That's not okay.
* The balancing act between when parents want, what schools recommend, and what can be realistically delivered is tricky, delicate and not always easily settled. You can't automatically choose one side every time. Anybody who wades into this mess has to know that.
* Standardized testing is often the worst possible way to measure the educational attainments of students with special needs. Watching special needs students deal with these tests drives home the oft-repeated (at least by me) truth that a standardized test only really measures the student's ability to take a standardized test.
* "Well, those LD students are just dumb and you'll never teach them anything anyway," is not a valid position. How they can learn, what they can learn, and how we can determine what they've learned are all tricky, highly individual issues. Almost everybody can learn something, but we all have limits, and some limitations are greater than others.
* The most severely disabled students are like buckets with limited capacity. Do we want to fill the bucket with Skills For Taking Standardized Tests or Skills For Having A Happy Life? Because those things aren't the same.
So what Arne should have said was something like this:
Our nation, our states, and our schools have an obligation to every young citizen in search of an education. But for some of our most challenged young citizens, that definition of an education may look very different from the standard one.
I will renew the department's commitment to ensuring that in all states, students with special needs do not have those needs neglected. It is not enough to just do the required paperwork without regard for what is actually happening with the student, and it is not acceptable to simply jam each student into a pre-set standardized slot.
Yes, there are students whose unique challenges mean they require unique educational plans, and those plans must be made with respect and sensitivity to each student's unique limitations and gifts. But each plan must be made by a team of people who know and care about that student, not simply pulled out of a bureaucratic template created in some far-off office.
We must hold each special student up to the highest possible expectations, but we must temper those expectations with sensitivity and wisdom. It does no good to push people past their breaking point. There should never be another Ethan Rediske. And we must recognize that we may not be able to measure their achievements with conventional standardized tools. We depend on our educational professionals on the ground to help parents see what their children have accomplished.
The promise of American public education was not made to so-called "normal" students alone, but to every student, no matter what the individual constellation of strengths and weaknesses may be. This administration is committed to seeing that the promise of public education is fulfilled for every American student, not by bending that student to fit our vision, but by expanding our vision so that is large enough, and flexible enough, to meet the needs of each student.
And that, more or less, is what Arne should have said.
However. The answer that Arne came up with is stupid, but the question it addresses-- are all students with disabilities getting the educational service they deserve-- is not a stupid question at all. This is a serious issue, and there are some of the serious points that need to be seriously considered if we're going to have a serious conversation about it.
* "Students with disabilities" is a huge, huge, HUGE category. It includes the students in my classroom who are labeled learning disabled but whose label I would never have guessed because their disability never interferes with their classroom performance. It also includes students with profound levels of difficulty who will never, ever in their lives function "at grade level." And it includes every shade of grey in between. To make any statement of policy about students with disabilities that lumps them altogether is like writing a policy that dictates how we should handle "people with dark hair."
* Parents of students with disabilities often have to fight long, hard, and constantly to get their children the services and support that they should be getting. Many districts and schools have a history of writing off disabled students. That's not okay.
* The balancing act between when parents want, what schools recommend, and what can be realistically delivered is tricky, delicate and not always easily settled. You can't automatically choose one side every time. Anybody who wades into this mess has to know that.
* Standardized testing is often the worst possible way to measure the educational attainments of students with special needs. Watching special needs students deal with these tests drives home the oft-repeated (at least by me) truth that a standardized test only really measures the student's ability to take a standardized test.
* "Well, those LD students are just dumb and you'll never teach them anything anyway," is not a valid position. How they can learn, what they can learn, and how we can determine what they've learned are all tricky, highly individual issues. Almost everybody can learn something, but we all have limits, and some limitations are greater than others.
* The most severely disabled students are like buckets with limited capacity. Do we want to fill the bucket with Skills For Taking Standardized Tests or Skills For Having A Happy Life? Because those things aren't the same.
So what Arne should have said was something like this:
Our nation, our states, and our schools have an obligation to every young citizen in search of an education. But for some of our most challenged young citizens, that definition of an education may look very different from the standard one.
I will renew the department's commitment to ensuring that in all states, students with special needs do not have those needs neglected. It is not enough to just do the required paperwork without regard for what is actually happening with the student, and it is not acceptable to simply jam each student into a pre-set standardized slot.
Yes, there are students whose unique challenges mean they require unique educational plans, and those plans must be made with respect and sensitivity to each student's unique limitations and gifts. But each plan must be made by a team of people who know and care about that student, not simply pulled out of a bureaucratic template created in some far-off office.
We must hold each special student up to the highest possible expectations, but we must temper those expectations with sensitivity and wisdom. It does no good to push people past their breaking point. There should never be another Ethan Rediske. And we must recognize that we may not be able to measure their achievements with conventional standardized tools. We depend on our educational professionals on the ground to help parents see what their children have accomplished.
The promise of American public education was not made to so-called "normal" students alone, but to every student, no matter what the individual constellation of strengths and weaknesses may be. This administration is committed to seeing that the promise of public education is fulfilled for every American student, not by bending that student to fit our vision, but by expanding our vision so that is large enough, and flexible enough, to meet the needs of each student.
And that, more or less, is what Arne should have said.
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
Quite Possibly the Stupidest Thing To Come Out of the US DOE
In announcing a new emphasis and "major shift," the US Department of Education will now demand that states show educational progress for students with disabilities.
Arne Duncan announced that, shockingly, students with disabilities do poorly in school. They perform below level in both English and math. No, there aren't any qualifiers attached to that. Arne is bothered that students with very low IQs, students with low function, students who have processing problems, students who have any number of impairments-- these students are performing below grade level.
"We know that when students with disabilities are held to high expectations and have access to a robust curriculum, they excel," Duncan said. (per NPR coverage)
And I'm pretty sure we don't know any such thing. I'm pretty sure that the special needs students in schools across the country are special needs precisely because they have trouble meeting the usual expectations.
But who knows. Maybe Arne is on to something. Maybe blind students can't see because nobody expects them to. Maybe the student a colleague had in class years ago, who was literally rolled into the room and propped up in a corner so that he could be "exposed" to band-- maybe that child's problems were just low expectations. Maybe IEPs are actually assigned randomly, for no reason at all.
And that's not even the stupidest thing. We're not there yet.
Kevin Huffman, education boss of Tennessee, also chimed in on the conference call, to explain why disabled students do poorly, and how to fix it.
He said most lag behind because they're not expected to succeed if they're given more demanding schoolwork and because they're seldom tested
That's it. We should just demand that disabled students should do harder work and take more tests.
When Florida was harassing Andrea Rediske to have her dying, mentally disabled child to take tests, they were actually doing him a favor, and not participating in state-sponsered abuse.
Don't tell me reading is hard because of your dyslexia, kid. Just do it. And take this test.
We don't need IEPs-- we need expectations and demands. We don't need student support and special education programs-- we need more testing. We don't need consideration for the individual child's needs-- we just need to demand that the child get up to speed, learn things, and most of all TAKE THE DAMN TESTS. Because then, and only then, will we be able to make all student disabilities simply disappear.
This is just so stunningly, awesomely dumb, it's hard to take in. Do they imagine that disabled students are just all faking, or that the specialists who diagnose these various problems are just making shit up for giggles? Either way, Duncan and Huffman have set an entirely new high bar for ignorance, insensitivity, and just plain flat out stupidity.
Arne Duncan announced that, shockingly, students with disabilities do poorly in school. They perform below level in both English and math. No, there aren't any qualifiers attached to that. Arne is bothered that students with very low IQs, students with low function, students who have processing problems, students who have any number of impairments-- these students are performing below grade level.
"We know that when students with disabilities are held to high expectations and have access to a robust curriculum, they excel," Duncan said. (per NPR coverage)
And I'm pretty sure we don't know any such thing. I'm pretty sure that the special needs students in schools across the country are special needs precisely because they have trouble meeting the usual expectations.
But who knows. Maybe Arne is on to something. Maybe blind students can't see because nobody expects them to. Maybe the student a colleague had in class years ago, who was literally rolled into the room and propped up in a corner so that he could be "exposed" to band-- maybe that child's problems were just low expectations. Maybe IEPs are actually assigned randomly, for no reason at all.
And that's not even the stupidest thing. We're not there yet.
Kevin Huffman, education boss of Tennessee, also chimed in on the conference call, to explain why disabled students do poorly, and how to fix it.
He said most lag behind because they're not expected to succeed if they're given more demanding schoolwork and because they're seldom tested
That's it. We should just demand that disabled students should do harder work and take more tests.
When Florida was harassing Andrea Rediske to have her dying, mentally disabled child to take tests, they were actually doing him a favor, and not participating in state-sponsered abuse.
Don't tell me reading is hard because of your dyslexia, kid. Just do it. And take this test.
We don't need IEPs-- we need expectations and demands. We don't need student support and special education programs-- we need more testing. We don't need consideration for the individual child's needs-- we just need to demand that the child get up to speed, learn things, and most of all TAKE THE DAMN TESTS. Because then, and only then, will we be able to make all student disabilities simply disappear.
This is just so stunningly, awesomely dumb, it's hard to take in. Do they imagine that disabled students are just all faking, or that the specialists who diagnose these various problems are just making shit up for giggles? Either way, Duncan and Huffman have set an entirely new high bar for ignorance, insensitivity, and just plain flat out stupidity.
GOP and Dems Once Again United by Disdain for Teachers
Well, we knew it was coming. We just didn't know it would be quite so bald-faced.
As reported by Politico, the coming push to trash teacher job protections will bring together players from both the Obama and Bush administration (just in case you still doubted that Obama-on-education was at all different from Bush-on-education).
Campbell Brown, former journalist and current-- well, I hesitate to call her a teacher-hater, but it's hard to find any evidence to the contrary, will be launching a lawsuit in New York state to strip teachers of tenure and FILO protections (and then move on to other states from there). This is not a surprise-- given the Vergara decision, it was foregone conclusion that many folks would smell an opening for smashing unions and stripping teacher job protections across the country. But there are several aspects of this soon-to-be-case that are more special than we might have expected.
* Brown is not even pretending to mount any kind of political theater. Vergara at least made a small show of hiding the millionaire plaintiffs behind a curtain while using nine live teens as props. Brown is announcing her intent before even having a casting call for plaintiffs. And her Partnership for Educational Justice makes spectacularly little effort to pretend to be anything other than what it is-- an astroturf group founded to pilot legal attacks on tenure and seniority.
* Robert Gibbs (former communications aid to Senator Obama and press secretary for President Obama), Ben LaBolt (campaign spokesman for candidate Obama), and Jon Jones (2008 digital strategist for candidate Obama) have been hired to do the PR campaign for the lawsuit. And we're not really pretending that anything different is happening. Because that's where we now live-- in a country where you want to make sure your lawsuit is backed up by a public relations blitz.
* Jay Lefkowitz, an attorney who was a deputy assistant for domestic policy under President George W. Bush, will be doing the legal work pro bono. So there it is-- beyond terrorist threats, the one thing that can unite GOP and Dems in this country is a desire to slap up those damn teachers.
* Brown is quoted by Politico explaining why the PR matters-- because the conversation is more important than the lawsuit. In other words, it would not be enough to have the courts strip teachers of job protections; teachers must get their asses kicked in the court of public opinion as well. The PR portion of Vergara was heavy on how teachers are lazy slackers who don't want to do their jobs, while the union cared only for itself and not for students. Is that the conversation we need to have more of.
* Brown compares the battle against tenure to the battle for gay marriage. Because, Proposition 8. Because.... I got nothing. It's an amazing parallel.
Beyond this, we have the same old same old. Brown is connected to many of the reformster crowd, including her husband, and she has often spoken out against the difficulty in removing sexual predators from teaching positions, but her proposed solutions have always been considerably broader. Not "here's how we could solve this specific problem" but "here's how we could get rid of the union and tenure." So, we have cockroaches in the kitchen, so let's burn down the house.
The future plaintiffs continue to parrot the line "we must insure that every child has a strong teacher in the classroom." What nobody has even pretended to explain is how making it easier to fire teachers guarantees a great teacher in every classroom (particularly at a time when teachers arealready getting out of Dodge at an unprecedented rate).
It's all kind of sad and ridiculous and angry-making and appalling all at once.
There is a conversation to be had about teacher job protection. I talked about it here. But we already know from Vergara that Brown's lawsuit is not going to further that conversation. As Rick Hess noted, one of the problems standing in the way of that conversation is a lack of trust, and a flood of PR like we saw in California is not about to make teachers feel any more trusting.
Seeing folks from both political parties united behind a media figure and financed by shadowy figures who won't be revealed, all trying to remove job protections by arguing in the court of public opinion that teachers shouldn't have those protections because teachers are lazy and awful and simply don't deserve them-- that is not going to make teachers feel that it's safe to show any vulnerability at all. And no-- it's no help to soften the pitch with a "Well, the great teachers don't suck, but we reserve the right to tell you whether you are great or not. Because you probably suck."
This is more full on attack, with nothing new for teachers to learn except that the folks who want to slap us down and put us in our place come from all over the political spectrum. And perhaps a few more teachers will figure out that it's foolish to assume that Democrats are our friends.
As reported by Politico, the coming push to trash teacher job protections will bring together players from both the Obama and Bush administration (just in case you still doubted that Obama-on-education was at all different from Bush-on-education).
Campbell Brown, former journalist and current-- well, I hesitate to call her a teacher-hater, but it's hard to find any evidence to the contrary, will be launching a lawsuit in New York state to strip teachers of tenure and FILO protections (and then move on to other states from there). This is not a surprise-- given the Vergara decision, it was foregone conclusion that many folks would smell an opening for smashing unions and stripping teacher job protections across the country. But there are several aspects of this soon-to-be-case that are more special than we might have expected.
* Brown is not even pretending to mount any kind of political theater. Vergara at least made a small show of hiding the millionaire plaintiffs behind a curtain while using nine live teens as props. Brown is announcing her intent before even having a casting call for plaintiffs. And her Partnership for Educational Justice makes spectacularly little effort to pretend to be anything other than what it is-- an astroturf group founded to pilot legal attacks on tenure and seniority.
* Robert Gibbs (former communications aid to Senator Obama and press secretary for President Obama), Ben LaBolt (campaign spokesman for candidate Obama), and Jon Jones (2008 digital strategist for candidate Obama) have been hired to do the PR campaign for the lawsuit. And we're not really pretending that anything different is happening. Because that's where we now live-- in a country where you want to make sure your lawsuit is backed up by a public relations blitz.
* Jay Lefkowitz, an attorney who was a deputy assistant for domestic policy under President George W. Bush, will be doing the legal work pro bono. So there it is-- beyond terrorist threats, the one thing that can unite GOP and Dems in this country is a desire to slap up those damn teachers.
* Brown is quoted by Politico explaining why the PR matters-- because the conversation is more important than the lawsuit. In other words, it would not be enough to have the courts strip teachers of job protections; teachers must get their asses kicked in the court of public opinion as well. The PR portion of Vergara was heavy on how teachers are lazy slackers who don't want to do their jobs, while the union cared only for itself and not for students. Is that the conversation we need to have more of.
* Brown compares the battle against tenure to the battle for gay marriage. Because, Proposition 8. Because.... I got nothing. It's an amazing parallel.
Beyond this, we have the same old same old. Brown is connected to many of the reformster crowd, including her husband, and she has often spoken out against the difficulty in removing sexual predators from teaching positions, but her proposed solutions have always been considerably broader. Not "here's how we could solve this specific problem" but "here's how we could get rid of the union and tenure." So, we have cockroaches in the kitchen, so let's burn down the house.
The future plaintiffs continue to parrot the line "we must insure that every child has a strong teacher in the classroom." What nobody has even pretended to explain is how making it easier to fire teachers guarantees a great teacher in every classroom (particularly at a time when teachers arealready getting out of Dodge at an unprecedented rate).
It's all kind of sad and ridiculous and angry-making and appalling all at once.
There is a conversation to be had about teacher job protection. I talked about it here. But we already know from Vergara that Brown's lawsuit is not going to further that conversation. As Rick Hess noted, one of the problems standing in the way of that conversation is a lack of trust, and a flood of PR like we saw in California is not about to make teachers feel any more trusting.
Seeing folks from both political parties united behind a media figure and financed by shadowy figures who won't be revealed, all trying to remove job protections by arguing in the court of public opinion that teachers shouldn't have those protections because teachers are lazy and awful and simply don't deserve them-- that is not going to make teachers feel that it's safe to show any vulnerability at all. And no-- it's no help to soften the pitch with a "Well, the great teachers don't suck, but we reserve the right to tell you whether you are great or not. Because you probably suck."
This is more full on attack, with nothing new for teachers to learn except that the folks who want to slap us down and put us in our place come from all over the political spectrum. And perhaps a few more teachers will figure out that it's foolish to assume that Democrats are our friends.
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