K12 remains the top dog in the junkyard of cyberschooling. It provides an instructive lesson in how a good pile of cash and friends in the right places can keep a business afloat even after people have poked holes in the hull.
There was never anything about the organization that didn't look like a red flag. It was set up by hedge fund manager Ronald Packer and propped up with money from junk bond king Michael Milken (an iconic Wall Street greedhound of the eighties who pioneered the art of getting caught, convicted and sent to prison, and still remaining rich and powerful). William Bennett, a former Secretary of Education and GOP pundit who was for many reformster ideas before it was cool, was a founding figurehead as well. More recently, Nathaniel Davis began rising through the executive ranks on the board (his previous experience-- CEO of XM radio).
K12 has been "embattled" all along. Here's a fairly brutal shot they took from the New York Times way back in December of 2011. Former teachers routinely write tell-alls about their experience, like this more recent guest piece on Anthony Cody's blog. The NCAA put K12 schools on the list of cybers that were disqualified from sports eligibility.
In February of this year, the Center for Media and Democracy named Ron Packard one of the highest paid public workers in the country (i.e. person paid with tax dollars). This despite "the alarming fact that only 28% of K12 Inc schools met state standards in 2010-2011."
A look at this report on executive compensation gives a picture of how lucrative the cyber charter business can be. Back in 2009, K12 was delivering a total of $5.51 million dollars in executive compensation. By 2012 that had climbed to $10.89 million, and the following year it jumped a whopping 96% to $21.37 million. And every last bit of it is our tax dollars at work. K12, like all charters, does not "make" money-- they just collect it from taxpayers.
Cyber schooling has long been a darling of ALEC, who, as they are wont to do, whipped up some helpful model legislation for states to follow. And legislatures have been mighty friendly to cybers. In PA, school districts must send their computed cost-per-student to the charters, but prior to 2011-2012 the state gave some of that money back to the bricks-and-mortar schools. Now, nothing.
Meanwhile, a cyber school can assign, say, 250 students to one teacher per subject. Each student gets a "free" computer. If we figure about 30K per teacher and about $500 per computer, that's a rough outlay of $245,000. So, we spend about 1K per student, while taking in anywhere from 8K to 20K per student (students with special needs are golden). That is a mighty pleasant profit margin.
K12 may have suffered remarkably few consequences for their educational achievements, but when you make your business all about the benjamins, you may have to answer for financial issues. Packard stepped down at the beginning of this year, apparently with a giant suitcase full of personal gains that some stockholders felt was a bit ill-gotten, and they decided to get the courts involved. This is part of a cascade of lawsuits covering everything from artificially inflating stock prices to lying about what the company is actually accomplishing.
It remains to be seen what happens next for the biggest star in the cyber-educational firmament. If my browser ads are any indication, they still have plenty of money for advertising, which only makes sense-- in the cyber charter business, your success is not based on how many students you teach, but on how many you enroll. I'm going to cross my fingers and hope that those numbers finally start heading down.
To learn even more about this story, I cannot recommend enough the website TheTruth About K12-- they've followed this story carefully and have a thoughtful and thorough compendium of useful info. Stop on over and educate yourself.
Monday, August 4, 2014
Sunday, August 3, 2014
Petrilli Reports on Common Core Wars
On the eve of his ascension to the top spot at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, Michael J. Petrilli wrote a post to reflect on the current state of the "Common Core Wars," a term which in itself demonstrates Petrilli's gift for precision in language (see, it's the Common Core that is embattled, not American public education).
He hits a couple of points on his Update from the Front, all worth looking at.
Who's winning?
Petrilli says its the opponents in the air, and the Core on the ground. It's the foes of CCSS who are making the most noise and garnering the most attention, but they haven't actually kicked the Core to the curb anywhere but Okalhoma (though he notes that Louisiana is getting pretty noisy). We could contest either part of his evaluation, but I think a better question is-- what will winning look like?
It's an important question. A good case can be made that the Great European War (1914-1918) dragged on because nobody knew what the hell victory would look like (except, eventually, France and Belgium, whose goal eventually was "Get everybody to get the hell out of our country"). If you don't know what victory looks like, you A) have a hard time moving toward it and B) have no way of recognizing it.
At this point, neither side in the battle for the soul of public education is going to get what they want. The pro-Core dream of 50 happy states united in one big educational marketplace of universal standardization is not going to happen. The pro-public ed dream of the Core being wiped away and the clock being rolled back to fifteen years ago as if none of it ever happened-- that's not happening either. Until we know what destinations we're considering, we won't know who "won" or "lost"-- or if the metaphor of war and winning and losing even makes sense for the issues we're dealing with (spoiler alert: I bet it doesn't).
What Common Core concerns are legitimate?
Give Petrilli credit on this-- he knows when to give a little ground.
I’ve never argued that decisions to adopt (or retain) the Common Core are a slam dunk or that you have to be done dumb or crazy to oppose them. As with any policy issue, there are plenty of pros and cons.
So what are the legit concerns of Common Core foes?
* Federal overreach. Petrilli points out that Glenn Beck's story of the Core's origin is cockeyed, but he puts forth his own version which still assigns the lead role to the CCSSO, who respond heroically to cries from thinky tanks (like Fordham) that education needs an overhaul (oddly, the well-funded-by-Gates TFI neglects to mention his heroic role in Core promotion). Then some governor's foolishly hit up the feds for some incentives, and the federal too-much-involvement was born, and hard righties began the freaking out, which Petrilli sympathizes with, but really, there's no need and they should all just chill. Good luck with that one.
* The standards aren't perfect. "Opponents are right: they aren’t perfect. We said as much back in 2010. But they’re pretty darn good and much better than what most states had before. Yes, they can absolutely be improved."
This position would be a shade different from the Petrilli who said, in response to the OK uproar, "If there is this pressure to just make sure the standards are different from the Common Core … it's going to mean that teachers who have been working for four years to get trained on these new standards, to update their curriculum, that all that work is going to be thrown out the window."
But let's stipulate that the pre-CCSS position on rewriting has changed considerably from the days that the CCSS Forefathers put a copyright on the standards and declared that states may change nothing and could only add 15%. The understanding these days seems to be that nobody anywhere has any intention of trying to enforce that copyright.
Petrilli goes on to note that the standards aren't perfect, but they aren't as bad as critics say.
* Confusing, convoluted textbooks. Plug for Singapore Math and acknowledgement that many textbooks are now a mess, because some textbook companies botched the whole business and teachers aren't trained and everybody who meets a grumpy parent just blames it on the Core.
So when Petrilli says these are three "legitimate concerns," what he appears to mean is that the feelings are real-- they just aren't based in fact.
How to respond to legitimate concerns
Petrilli sees the federalism concern as the driver of the big bus of bile, but also the hardest one to fix. Can't take Race to the Top back, nor the $$$ that went with it. Can't seem to get Arne to stop acting like this is all his baby. I don't know-- we seem to have gotten all of the Obama administration to stop uttering the words "Common Core". Of course, it's also true that almost nobody, including Mike Petrilli, says the "State Standards" part any more. These are all words that have lost their luster as applause lines.
Duncan, Petrell says, could probably help by declaring his intention to step away. Instead, he's ramping up to pick fights with various states for waiver non-compliance. Punishing OK for dropping CCSS will simply prove that the feds really are conducting this railroad.
Other concerns can be addressed by states, by snazzing up their own versions of CCSS Lite and by grabbing onto the very best in CCSS-approved text books.
We’ll also need to help parents and teachers understand that they aren’t powerless in the face of bad textbooks—that their own local communities still have the authority to decide which instructional materials will be used and that they don’t have to settle for schlock.
Petrilli rightly id's a sense of powerlessness as another driver of Core opposition. I'm not sure why he misses another chance to stick it to the feds-- the number one cause of powerless feelings might be the fact that the feds have said they will punish anyone who doesn't fall in line and get test scores on the mystery tests that, supposedly, can best be prepared for by grabbing anything with a CCSS Ready label on it.
Want to make people feel less powerless? Say something along the lines of, "We're going to put a stop to all high stakes testing until people have a chance to get up to speed. We'll be back in, say, five to eight years and you can show us a top-notch, well-designed, valid state-level test. Until then, use your best judgment." Wouldn't be perfect, but it would sure be better.Unfortunately, Petrilli has something else in mind:
My earnest hope is that the politicians—from Arne Duncan to Bobby Jindal and everyone in between—stop misbehaving and give educators the room to focus on the real work at hand: selecting good curricular materials, improving teaching and learning, and getting ready for the much more rigorous tests that will be given nine months from now. All we are saying is give peace a chance.
Right on track until that last part-- much more rigorous tests that will be given nine months from now. The only thing right about this is that his sentence correctly lists "improving teaching and learning" and "getting ready for the tests" as separate items, because it is true that improving education and getting ready for the testing rigorfests are two entirely different activities, and unfortunately, the latter is really getting in the way of the former. If we are going to give peace a chance, announcing our intention to unleash weapons of mass destruction in nine months is not the way to do it.
He hits a couple of points on his Update from the Front, all worth looking at.
Who's winning?
Petrilli says its the opponents in the air, and the Core on the ground. It's the foes of CCSS who are making the most noise and garnering the most attention, but they haven't actually kicked the Core to the curb anywhere but Okalhoma (though he notes that Louisiana is getting pretty noisy). We could contest either part of his evaluation, but I think a better question is-- what will winning look like?
It's an important question. A good case can be made that the Great European War (1914-1918) dragged on because nobody knew what the hell victory would look like (except, eventually, France and Belgium, whose goal eventually was "Get everybody to get the hell out of our country"). If you don't know what victory looks like, you A) have a hard time moving toward it and B) have no way of recognizing it.
At this point, neither side in the battle for the soul of public education is going to get what they want. The pro-Core dream of 50 happy states united in one big educational marketplace of universal standardization is not going to happen. The pro-public ed dream of the Core being wiped away and the clock being rolled back to fifteen years ago as if none of it ever happened-- that's not happening either. Until we know what destinations we're considering, we won't know who "won" or "lost"-- or if the metaphor of war and winning and losing even makes sense for the issues we're dealing with (spoiler alert: I bet it doesn't).
What Common Core concerns are legitimate?
Give Petrilli credit on this-- he knows when to give a little ground.
I’ve never argued that decisions to adopt (or retain) the Common Core are a slam dunk or that you have to be done dumb or crazy to oppose them. As with any policy issue, there are plenty of pros and cons.
So what are the legit concerns of Common Core foes?
* Federal overreach. Petrilli points out that Glenn Beck's story of the Core's origin is cockeyed, but he puts forth his own version which still assigns the lead role to the CCSSO, who respond heroically to cries from thinky tanks (like Fordham) that education needs an overhaul (oddly, the well-funded-by-Gates TFI neglects to mention his heroic role in Core promotion). Then some governor's foolishly hit up the feds for some incentives, and the federal too-much-involvement was born, and hard righties began the freaking out, which Petrilli sympathizes with, but really, there's no need and they should all just chill. Good luck with that one.
* The standards aren't perfect. "Opponents are right: they aren’t perfect. We said as much back in 2010. But they’re pretty darn good and much better than what most states had before. Yes, they can absolutely be improved."
This position would be a shade different from the Petrilli who said, in response to the OK uproar, "If there is this pressure to just make sure the standards are different from the Common Core … it's going to mean that teachers who have been working for four years to get trained on these new standards, to update their curriculum, that all that work is going to be thrown out the window."
But let's stipulate that the pre-CCSS position on rewriting has changed considerably from the days that the CCSS Forefathers put a copyright on the standards and declared that states may change nothing and could only add 15%. The understanding these days seems to be that nobody anywhere has any intention of trying to enforce that copyright.
Petrilli goes on to note that the standards aren't perfect, but they aren't as bad as critics say.
* Confusing, convoluted textbooks. Plug for Singapore Math and acknowledgement that many textbooks are now a mess, because some textbook companies botched the whole business and teachers aren't trained and everybody who meets a grumpy parent just blames it on the Core.
So when Petrilli says these are three "legitimate concerns," what he appears to mean is that the feelings are real-- they just aren't based in fact.
How to respond to legitimate concerns
Petrilli sees the federalism concern as the driver of the big bus of bile, but also the hardest one to fix. Can't take Race to the Top back, nor the $$$ that went with it. Can't seem to get Arne to stop acting like this is all his baby. I don't know-- we seem to have gotten all of the Obama administration to stop uttering the words "Common Core". Of course, it's also true that almost nobody, including Mike Petrilli, says the "State Standards" part any more. These are all words that have lost their luster as applause lines.
Duncan, Petrell says, could probably help by declaring his intention to step away. Instead, he's ramping up to pick fights with various states for waiver non-compliance. Punishing OK for dropping CCSS will simply prove that the feds really are conducting this railroad.
Other concerns can be addressed by states, by snazzing up their own versions of CCSS Lite and by grabbing onto the very best in CCSS-approved text books.
We’ll also need to help parents and teachers understand that they aren’t powerless in the face of bad textbooks—that their own local communities still have the authority to decide which instructional materials will be used and that they don’t have to settle for schlock.
Petrilli rightly id's a sense of powerlessness as another driver of Core opposition. I'm not sure why he misses another chance to stick it to the feds-- the number one cause of powerless feelings might be the fact that the feds have said they will punish anyone who doesn't fall in line and get test scores on the mystery tests that, supposedly, can best be prepared for by grabbing anything with a CCSS Ready label on it.
Want to make people feel less powerless? Say something along the lines of, "We're going to put a stop to all high stakes testing until people have a chance to get up to speed. We'll be back in, say, five to eight years and you can show us a top-notch, well-designed, valid state-level test. Until then, use your best judgment." Wouldn't be perfect, but it would sure be better.Unfortunately, Petrilli has something else in mind:
My earnest hope is that the politicians—from Arne Duncan to Bobby Jindal and everyone in between—stop misbehaving and give educators the room to focus on the real work at hand: selecting good curricular materials, improving teaching and learning, and getting ready for the much more rigorous tests that will be given nine months from now. All we are saying is give peace a chance.
Right on track until that last part-- much more rigorous tests that will be given nine months from now. The only thing right about this is that his sentence correctly lists "improving teaching and learning" and "getting ready for the tests" as separate items, because it is true that improving education and getting ready for the testing rigorfests are two entirely different activities, and unfortunately, the latter is really getting in the way of the former. If we are going to give peace a chance, announcing our intention to unleash weapons of mass destruction in nine months is not the way to do it.
Can't vs. Won't
A million years ago, when I was student teaching at Wiley Jr. High in Cleveland Heights, my co-operating teacher told me that there are two rules in teaching:
1) Some students will not learn.
2) There is nothing the teacher can do to change Rule #1.
Pedagogical reform reliably returns to the issue of Can. If we've heard it once, we've heard it a million times-- all students can learn (most recently with the addendum "to a high level of achievement"). And I do not disagree.
But our challenge is not Can. Our challenge is Will. And if we are unwilling to see the difference, we do our students a huge disservice even as we treat them with great disrespect.
I could probably learn conversational Chinese. I have a checkered past when it comes to learning foreign languages, but if I dropped everything else that I'm working on, really buckled down, and applied myself, I could learn to at least get by with at least some spoken Chinese, though what I would do with it I have no idea. But I've done a cost-benefits analysis, and I've concluded that while I could learn conversational Chinese, it's not really worth the time and trouble, and so I will not be taking on that project.
Because I am a grown-ass man, nobody gets too excited about my choice. Nobody finds me oppositionally defiant or learning disabled or just plain a problem. I'm just a person who made a personal choice about how to spend my time and effort.
But if I were seventeen years old, making the same decisions about identifying gerund phrases or understanding Hamlet or solving quadratic equations-- well, then We Would Have a Problem.
There's another helping verb that hovers unacknowledged over these discussions, and that verb is "must." As in the assumption that if we have a well-designed program of instruction being delivered by an effective teacher, well, then, the students must learn.
This assumption, embedded in so much reformster pedagogy, denies the students agency. It denies students the basic human ability to choose how to spend their time, attention, and effort. It treats them with the utmost disrespect, saying, in effect, "Well, of course, they will do as they're told. You just have to tell them correctly."
At its worst, this approach "creates" more defective students. After all, if I have a perfect instructional program in the box and it was unpacked and delivered by an instructor who did just what she was supposed to do, and the student still didn't learn, there can only be one explanation-- there's something wrong with the student. At least, that's the only explanation possible if I assume that the student is not a sentient human life form with the ability to make choices based on her own values and priorities.
Now, as a professional teacher, my job is to get students to choose to learn. I'm teaching high school students, so I face a different version of this challenge than my elementary colleagues. But for me, step one is to recognize that I can't make my students do anything, and they don't have to do anything. I can con, cheer, encourage, bribe, cajole, reward, punish, push, tug, trick, and sell them to get there, but at the end of the day, they will choose to learn or they will choose not to. And I tell them all this on day one, and it has been very successful for me, because the message they hear is that I will treat them with respect.
See, I think this is more than a pedagogical issue. I believe it's a moral and ethical issue as well. It is basic respect to treat other human beings as independent, autonomous entities. It is disrespectful-- I will even go so far as to call it evil-- to try to deprive other human beings of their ability to direct their own lives. Yes-- when you give people the freedom to make choices, they will sometimes make bad ones, but if you are not free to make bad choices, you are not free. Yes, there is a corresponding moral imperative to do all in power to help people make better choices, but there is a line, and we cross it at exactly the moment that we try to take other people's choices away.
It's not correct to say that students who are live in poverty or deal with a disability or come from an unstable home environment cannot learn. They can-- but they face obstacles that make the costs-benefits analysis more difficult, that make choosing to learn a less obvious or easy choice. Recognizing that is NOT "blaming the victim" nor is it "making excuses." If we are going to encourage them to make sound choices, we have to understand what their choices look like so that we can show them choices that make sense, and arm them with the tools they actually need-- so that they will choose to learn. In some situations, we must also fight hard to make more paths available to them.
So we have a huge obligation to help students choose to learn and grow into their best selves. And we have a huge obligation to recognize their freedom, their ability to make use of their free will. Isn't the ability to make good choices one of the core abilities we want to foster in schools? And how does one learn to make good choices, if one never practices making choices?
A system where the individual students don't matter, where they have no choices, where they are simply pushed through a process like toasters on an assembly line, a system, in short, that assumes that students must be compliant and that they have no power to choose-- that is an immoral system. As invested as we may be in the students' outcomes, their lives are not ours to control.
We absolutely need to recognize that all students can learn. We also need to recognize that whether they will learn or not is their choice, not ours. How far we will go to help them choose well is our own choice, our charge, our responsibility.It's our job.
1) Some students will not learn.
2) There is nothing the teacher can do to change Rule #1.
Pedagogical reform reliably returns to the issue of Can. If we've heard it once, we've heard it a million times-- all students can learn (most recently with the addendum "to a high level of achievement"). And I do not disagree.
But our challenge is not Can. Our challenge is Will. And if we are unwilling to see the difference, we do our students a huge disservice even as we treat them with great disrespect.
I could probably learn conversational Chinese. I have a checkered past when it comes to learning foreign languages, but if I dropped everything else that I'm working on, really buckled down, and applied myself, I could learn to at least get by with at least some spoken Chinese, though what I would do with it I have no idea. But I've done a cost-benefits analysis, and I've concluded that while I could learn conversational Chinese, it's not really worth the time and trouble, and so I will not be taking on that project.
Because I am a grown-ass man, nobody gets too excited about my choice. Nobody finds me oppositionally defiant or learning disabled or just plain a problem. I'm just a person who made a personal choice about how to spend my time and effort.
But if I were seventeen years old, making the same decisions about identifying gerund phrases or understanding Hamlet or solving quadratic equations-- well, then We Would Have a Problem.
There's another helping verb that hovers unacknowledged over these discussions, and that verb is "must." As in the assumption that if we have a well-designed program of instruction being delivered by an effective teacher, well, then, the students must learn.
This assumption, embedded in so much reformster pedagogy, denies the students agency. It denies students the basic human ability to choose how to spend their time, attention, and effort. It treats them with the utmost disrespect, saying, in effect, "Well, of course, they will do as they're told. You just have to tell them correctly."
At its worst, this approach "creates" more defective students. After all, if I have a perfect instructional program in the box and it was unpacked and delivered by an instructor who did just what she was supposed to do, and the student still didn't learn, there can only be one explanation-- there's something wrong with the student. At least, that's the only explanation possible if I assume that the student is not a sentient human life form with the ability to make choices based on her own values and priorities.
Now, as a professional teacher, my job is to get students to choose to learn. I'm teaching high school students, so I face a different version of this challenge than my elementary colleagues. But for me, step one is to recognize that I can't make my students do anything, and they don't have to do anything. I can con, cheer, encourage, bribe, cajole, reward, punish, push, tug, trick, and sell them to get there, but at the end of the day, they will choose to learn or they will choose not to. And I tell them all this on day one, and it has been very successful for me, because the message they hear is that I will treat them with respect.
See, I think this is more than a pedagogical issue. I believe it's a moral and ethical issue as well. It is basic respect to treat other human beings as independent, autonomous entities. It is disrespectful-- I will even go so far as to call it evil-- to try to deprive other human beings of their ability to direct their own lives. Yes-- when you give people the freedom to make choices, they will sometimes make bad ones, but if you are not free to make bad choices, you are not free. Yes, there is a corresponding moral imperative to do all in power to help people make better choices, but there is a line, and we cross it at exactly the moment that we try to take other people's choices away.
It's not correct to say that students who are live in poverty or deal with a disability or come from an unstable home environment cannot learn. They can-- but they face obstacles that make the costs-benefits analysis more difficult, that make choosing to learn a less obvious or easy choice. Recognizing that is NOT "blaming the victim" nor is it "making excuses." If we are going to encourage them to make sound choices, we have to understand what their choices look like so that we can show them choices that make sense, and arm them with the tools they actually need-- so that they will choose to learn. In some situations, we must also fight hard to make more paths available to them.
So we have a huge obligation to help students choose to learn and grow into their best selves. And we have a huge obligation to recognize their freedom, their ability to make use of their free will. Isn't the ability to make good choices one of the core abilities we want to foster in schools? And how does one learn to make good choices, if one never practices making choices?
A system where the individual students don't matter, where they have no choices, where they are simply pushed through a process like toasters on an assembly line, a system, in short, that assumes that students must be compliant and that they have no power to choose-- that is an immoral system. As invested as we may be in the students' outcomes, their lives are not ours to control.
We absolutely need to recognize that all students can learn. We also need to recognize that whether they will learn or not is their choice, not ours. How far we will go to help them choose well is our own choice, our charge, our responsibility.It's our job.
The Permanent Politicizing of Education
It's completely predictable that in the wake of CCSS, other problems will arise. Folks who think that we can chase the Common Core away and afterwards go back to How Things Were Before are kidding themselves-- even if CCSS were to vanish tomorrow, it has already changed the educational landscape in ways we can't fully grasp yet.
One sign is in Lyndsey Layton's Washington Post article about a wave of education legislation in the states. In "Legislatures Taking State Education into Their Own Hands" she highlights one of the problems we'll be facing in the post-CCSS world-- the hyper-politicizing of public education on the state level. I suspect this is the new normal.
We've seen flashes of this before, mostly in flyover country legislatures debating whether or not science classes should include creationism and other anti-science curriculum.
But Common Core implementation took us past the land of Jesus dinosaurs and to a place where politics were mainlined into the veins of public education. CCSS supporters have bemoaned that the debate about the standards was filled with politics instead of discussion of the merits. On the one hand, that wasn't entirely true-- there has been plenty of criticism of CCSS on the merits. But on the other hand-- of course.
CCSS wasn't presented based on its merits, and it wasn't run through educational channels. Part of its very premise has always been that the Education Establishment is a big stinky pile of hidebound incompetence, and it will be up to a daring team of intrepid billionaires and politicians to save education in this country.
Compare the distribution system for the Core to every other reform we've lived through.
The traditional approach is that somebody sells it to the state department of education, and soon, college professors and state ed department employees fan out to do professional development across the state. Teachers listen critically and take back what, in their professional opinion, belongs in their classroom. Rinse and repeat every three to five years.
But CCSS and NCLB dispersed consultants from new educational corporate start-ups, whose argument was not "We've brought some ideas that we think will help you." It was "Politicians have passed some laws that mean you must pay attention to us." How many PD arguments about effectiveness or validity or educational soundness have been cut short by a presenter who shrugs and says, "You know, we could argue about this all day, but the bottom line is that here's what the law says."
NCLB and RttR determined that politics would be the delivery system for delivering educational programs, meaning that folks who want to sell a bridge to Educationville must sell it to politicians, not educators. NCLB was not about winning the hearts and minds of teachers; it was about compelling them to get in line with the force of law. CCSS promoters did not set out to convince educators across the US that CCSS would make schools better; they sold it to federal politicians and high-level bureaucrats.
The trend Layton notes in her piece is entirely predictable. States aren't saying, "Let's get politicians out of education." They're saying, "Let's get federal politicians out of education and replace them with state level politicians." We can fight to get education back into the hands of educators-- and we should-- but I doubt that it's a fight we'll ever fully win. Name one field in which, once they've taken control, politicians have decided to give control of that field back to the experts.
There are many scenarios for the post-CCSS world, but I suspect most of them include a new reality of tighter political control of education. The state-level reins-grabbing is just one version of that in action, and it is already taking many, many forms. It's important that teachers not just say, "Well, the federal standards lost. Now I can go back to my classroom and teach in peace."
One sign is in Lyndsey Layton's Washington Post article about a wave of education legislation in the states. In "Legislatures Taking State Education into Their Own Hands" she highlights one of the problems we'll be facing in the post-CCSS world-- the hyper-politicizing of public education on the state level. I suspect this is the new normal.
We've seen flashes of this before, mostly in flyover country legislatures debating whether or not science classes should include creationism and other anti-science curriculum.
But Common Core implementation took us past the land of Jesus dinosaurs and to a place where politics were mainlined into the veins of public education. CCSS supporters have bemoaned that the debate about the standards was filled with politics instead of discussion of the merits. On the one hand, that wasn't entirely true-- there has been plenty of criticism of CCSS on the merits. But on the other hand-- of course.
CCSS wasn't presented based on its merits, and it wasn't run through educational channels. Part of its very premise has always been that the Education Establishment is a big stinky pile of hidebound incompetence, and it will be up to a daring team of intrepid billionaires and politicians to save education in this country.
Compare the distribution system for the Core to every other reform we've lived through.
The traditional approach is that somebody sells it to the state department of education, and soon, college professors and state ed department employees fan out to do professional development across the state. Teachers listen critically and take back what, in their professional opinion, belongs in their classroom. Rinse and repeat every three to five years.
But CCSS and NCLB dispersed consultants from new educational corporate start-ups, whose argument was not "We've brought some ideas that we think will help you." It was "Politicians have passed some laws that mean you must pay attention to us." How many PD arguments about effectiveness or validity or educational soundness have been cut short by a presenter who shrugs and says, "You know, we could argue about this all day, but the bottom line is that here's what the law says."
NCLB and RttR determined that politics would be the delivery system for delivering educational programs, meaning that folks who want to sell a bridge to Educationville must sell it to politicians, not educators. NCLB was not about winning the hearts and minds of teachers; it was about compelling them to get in line with the force of law. CCSS promoters did not set out to convince educators across the US that CCSS would make schools better; they sold it to federal politicians and high-level bureaucrats.
The trend Layton notes in her piece is entirely predictable. States aren't saying, "Let's get politicians out of education." They're saying, "Let's get federal politicians out of education and replace them with state level politicians." We can fight to get education back into the hands of educators-- and we should-- but I doubt that it's a fight we'll ever fully win. Name one field in which, once they've taken control, politicians have decided to give control of that field back to the experts.
There are many scenarios for the post-CCSS world, but I suspect most of them include a new reality of tighter political control of education. The state-level reins-grabbing is just one version of that in action, and it is already taking many, many forms. It's important that teachers not just say, "Well, the federal standards lost. Now I can go back to my classroom and teach in peace."
Saturday, August 2, 2014
CCSS Myths That Won't Die, Already
You may think that certain Common Core bunk has been debunked so many times that it would finally crawl back to the PR cave that it crawled out of and, if not die, at least spend the weeks eating twinkies and watching AMNTM marathons. But no.
Here comes Cynthia Dagnal-Myron over at HuffPost with an article that looks as if it were written in the summer of 2013. But no-- August 1, 2014. It's a sobering reminder that these undead talking points are remarkably resistant to the light of day. Let's tick off the bogus bunkery still bouncing around.
You haven't read them, have you
We leap right in with the title-- "Do You Really Know What the Common Core Is?" -- and that old standard insinuation that if you're critical of the Common Core, it must be because you don't really understand them, you poor dear. Even Mike Petrilli at the Fordham Institute (motto: We Use Common Core Butter on Our Common Core Bread) no longer claims that CCSS is not criticized by some folks who have looked at it pretty damn carefully.
American schools are failing
You would think by now that we have sufficiently explained how US student scores actually stack up internationally. Breakdowns of PISA scores tell us far more about poverty in the US than schools internationally. Nor do we ever remember to ask the important question "Did the US ever lead the world in these scores?" (spoiler alert: no). And if schools are currently failing, you'd think that would tell us something about the over-a-decade that reformsters have had their own way with public education. They've had a generation of students to fiddle with-- weren't they supposed to be announcing "Mission Accomplished" by now?
But no. Dagnal-Myron starts with this simple premise.
Our school system is broken. Badly.
Faux history
And so in 2009, the leaders of 48 states, two territories and the District of Columbia enlisted the aid of hundreds of teachers and educational experts who eventually created the Common Core to help us fix it.
Well, it is true that some things did happen in 2009. After that, this sentence goes south. I recommend Dagnal-Myron catch up on a more fact-based history of the Common Core. Try this short account by educational historian Diane Ravitch. Or Lyndsey Layton's interview with Bill Gates about his role in spreading Common Core. If you want more background in painstaking fully-researched detail about the pre-2009 history of the Core, try this piece by Mercedes Schneider.And this piece by Anthony Cody is as good a place as any to work on that "hundreds of teachers" baloney; it includes lots of helpful links to NGA's own list of the sixty-ish people who wrote the Core.
Weird self-contradiction
I have read literally (literally!) hundreds of these paeans to Common Core, and they inevitably include some moment of self-devouring illogic. In this case, Dagnal-Myron wanders down a byway about testing. Some districts test too much, because there's money involved, and that leads to lousy test scores. But not, I guess the test scores that Dagnal-Myron used as proof that schools are terribly broken and failing.
Numbered lists of CCSS swellness
You'd think we didn't need to bother, but no-- here comes a list.
Reading non-fiction is swell
It's up to districts to pick reading lists, and students already read non-fiction, and districts don't have to use that list in the appendix marked "Here's how to do it right." Districts are totally free to risk their funding by ignoring the CCSS "suggestions."
Also, Tea Party be crazy
Noting that required reading only includes a few swell things like the Declaration, Dagnal-Myron notes that these swell documents are the very ones many of the people who seem angriest about the CC love to pull out of a suit pocket and wave, very proudly, at the camera. Come on-- even some of the big CCSS boosters have finally figured out that the Tea Party is only a tiny little slice of the folks lined up against the Core.
More critical thinking and reading and writing
She considers this the "money" standard. I consider this a chance to ask the same old question-- what do you think teachers were doing previously? Were English teachers sitting in classes saying, "No, don't actually read that book. Just put it under your pillow. And for God's sake-- when you write an essay about it, use irrational arguments and don't support them with anything of substance."
Is that what you think we were doing?
And if your answer is no, then why do we need a multi-gazzillion-dollar school-system-disrupting massive federal-ish program to give us permission (or orders) to do what we were already doing?
Magical Common Core powers
Dagnal-Myron supports the previous point by observing that teenagers make poor decisions, and parents may not always enjoy it when their children approach them with solid, well-built arguments.
But you'll thank those teachers later, when she kills that first interview and lands a job with a salary that gets her out of your house and into that first apartment. Or helps her start paying off some of those loans so she can move out a little sooner.
Yes, Common Core will completely override the developmental stage of being a teenager. Science may think that wacky teenage behavior is the result of their stage of neurological development, but no, it's just that they haven't been taught critical thinking and proper textual support by CCSS-empowered teachers. You'd think that the actual physical make-up of the human brain might have an affect on what that brain can do, but no-- Common Core will re-write the human brain! Because, magic!
Things that aren't in Common Core presented as reasons to love Common Core
To be fair, I'm pretty sure that all administrators, consultants and education professors take a workshop entitled "How to make the newest education reform program say what you wish it would say." This is not a new thing.
For Dagnal-Myron, it's technology. Somehow, CCSS means that "technology is blended into the curriculum" (this also scores the usual "forgetting to stick to the standards-are-not-a-curriculum story"). She really doesn't offer any explanation of how Common Core is linked to technology, nor how it will make underfunded districts able to afford computer gee-gaws, but she's pretty sure that once computers enter the classroom, students will be really excited. Which is a charming point of view, if you are still in 1995.
Tsk-tsk-tsk
Again, as someone who specializes in sophomoric mockery, I enjoy a good tsk now and then myself. But no CCSS apologia is complete without it.
So what's not to like? I have no idea. They address the needs of today's students in ways today's students might actually find more engaging. But boy, there are some angry people out there hell bent on making sure the Common Core goes away tout de suite.
I'm really sorry to hear that. I was hoping American kids were finally going to get the big boost they needed to catch up to the kids in other countries.
But I guess some our kids will be eating their dust a little while longer...
So there you have it. You may think that we've covered all of this ground so thoroughly that there could not still be people out in the world who haven't gotten any of these memos. But no-- there are still writers, thinkers, and leaders flapping about today as if it's August 2013. Let it be a reminder to the rest of us to stay vigilant and repetitively redundant in getting the message out. And for those of you who don't, tsk tsk tsk.
Here comes Cynthia Dagnal-Myron over at HuffPost with an article that looks as if it were written in the summer of 2013. But no-- August 1, 2014. It's a sobering reminder that these undead talking points are remarkably resistant to the light of day. Let's tick off the bogus bunkery still bouncing around.
You haven't read them, have you
We leap right in with the title-- "Do You Really Know What the Common Core Is?" -- and that old standard insinuation that if you're critical of the Common Core, it must be because you don't really understand them, you poor dear. Even Mike Petrilli at the Fordham Institute (motto: We Use Common Core Butter on Our Common Core Bread) no longer claims that CCSS is not criticized by some folks who have looked at it pretty damn carefully.
American schools are failing
You would think by now that we have sufficiently explained how US student scores actually stack up internationally. Breakdowns of PISA scores tell us far more about poverty in the US than schools internationally. Nor do we ever remember to ask the important question "Did the US ever lead the world in these scores?" (spoiler alert: no). And if schools are currently failing, you'd think that would tell us something about the over-a-decade that reformsters have had their own way with public education. They've had a generation of students to fiddle with-- weren't they supposed to be announcing "Mission Accomplished" by now?
But no. Dagnal-Myron starts with this simple premise.
Our school system is broken. Badly.
Faux history
And so in 2009, the leaders of 48 states, two territories and the District of Columbia enlisted the aid of hundreds of teachers and educational experts who eventually created the Common Core to help us fix it.
Well, it is true that some things did happen in 2009. After that, this sentence goes south. I recommend Dagnal-Myron catch up on a more fact-based history of the Common Core. Try this short account by educational historian Diane Ravitch. Or Lyndsey Layton's interview with Bill Gates about his role in spreading Common Core. If you want more background in painstaking fully-researched detail about the pre-2009 history of the Core, try this piece by Mercedes Schneider.And this piece by Anthony Cody is as good a place as any to work on that "hundreds of teachers" baloney; it includes lots of helpful links to NGA's own list of the sixty-ish people who wrote the Core.
Weird self-contradiction
I have read literally (literally!) hundreds of these paeans to Common Core, and they inevitably include some moment of self-devouring illogic. In this case, Dagnal-Myron wanders down a byway about testing. Some districts test too much, because there's money involved, and that leads to lousy test scores. But not, I guess the test scores that Dagnal-Myron used as proof that schools are terribly broken and failing.
Numbered lists of CCSS swellness
You'd think we didn't need to bother, but no-- here comes a list.
Reading non-fiction is swell
It's up to districts to pick reading lists, and students already read non-fiction, and districts don't have to use that list in the appendix marked "Here's how to do it right." Districts are totally free to risk their funding by ignoring the CCSS "suggestions."
Also, Tea Party be crazy
Noting that required reading only includes a few swell things like the Declaration, Dagnal-Myron notes that these swell documents are the very ones many of the people who seem angriest about the CC love to pull out of a suit pocket and wave, very proudly, at the camera. Come on-- even some of the big CCSS boosters have finally figured out that the Tea Party is only a tiny little slice of the folks lined up against the Core.
More critical thinking and reading and writing
She considers this the "money" standard. I consider this a chance to ask the same old question-- what do you think teachers were doing previously? Were English teachers sitting in classes saying, "No, don't actually read that book. Just put it under your pillow. And for God's sake-- when you write an essay about it, use irrational arguments and don't support them with anything of substance."
Is that what you think we were doing?
And if your answer is no, then why do we need a multi-gazzillion-dollar school-system-disrupting massive federal-ish program to give us permission (or orders) to do what we were already doing?
Magical Common Core powers
Dagnal-Myron supports the previous point by observing that teenagers make poor decisions, and parents may not always enjoy it when their children approach them with solid, well-built arguments.
But you'll thank those teachers later, when she kills that first interview and lands a job with a salary that gets her out of your house and into that first apartment. Or helps her start paying off some of those loans so she can move out a little sooner.
Yes, Common Core will completely override the developmental stage of being a teenager. Science may think that wacky teenage behavior is the result of their stage of neurological development, but no, it's just that they haven't been taught critical thinking and proper textual support by CCSS-empowered teachers. You'd think that the actual physical make-up of the human brain might have an affect on what that brain can do, but no-- Common Core will re-write the human brain! Because, magic!
Things that aren't in Common Core presented as reasons to love Common Core
To be fair, I'm pretty sure that all administrators, consultants and education professors take a workshop entitled "How to make the newest education reform program say what you wish it would say." This is not a new thing.
For Dagnal-Myron, it's technology. Somehow, CCSS means that "technology is blended into the curriculum" (this also scores the usual "forgetting to stick to the standards-are-not-a-curriculum story"). She really doesn't offer any explanation of how Common Core is linked to technology, nor how it will make underfunded districts able to afford computer gee-gaws, but she's pretty sure that once computers enter the classroom, students will be really excited. Which is a charming point of view, if you are still in 1995.
Tsk-tsk-tsk
Again, as someone who specializes in sophomoric mockery, I enjoy a good tsk now and then myself. But no CCSS apologia is complete without it.
So what's not to like? I have no idea. They address the needs of today's students in ways today's students might actually find more engaging. But boy, there are some angry people out there hell bent on making sure the Common Core goes away tout de suite.
I'm really sorry to hear that. I was hoping American kids were finally going to get the big boost they needed to catch up to the kids in other countries.
But I guess some our kids will be eating their dust a little while longer...
So there you have it. You may think that we've covered all of this ground so thoroughly that there could not still be people out in the world who haven't gotten any of these memos. But no-- there are still writers, thinkers, and leaders flapping about today as if it's August 2013. Let it be a reminder to the rest of us to stay vigilant and repetitively redundant in getting the message out. And for those of you who don't, tsk tsk tsk.
Friday, August 1, 2014
Writing News Re: Me
I have a bit of news to share.
You may have heard that Anthony Cody I leaving behind the world of Education Week blogging to pursue other projects and spin "Living in Dialogue" onto some new platforms. That should be going live sometime this week. You can stay caught up with his progress at the Living in Dialogue page on Facebook. I think that whole enterprise is going to be pretty cool.
In the meantime, EdWeek had an opening for a blogger, and the writer who got the nod is your truly.
I'm excited about this. It will give me an opportunity to make the case for American public education to a slightly different audience. I know there are people out there who consider EdWeek too corporate and conservative, but for me that is part of the point. There's an audience over there that is unlikely to wander into this blog on their own. I've talked to both Anthony and to Nancy Flanagan, two education writers for whom I have the utmost respect; both say they have never suffered from editorial interference at EdWeek. I have talked to my new editor there. I am confident that I will get to say what I want to say (as long as I follow the instructions of my first newspaper editor years ago, who told me "Write whatever you ant. Just try to keep some connection to our readers, and don't libel anybody.")
I will not in any way shape or form be abandoning this blog. It will continue to be the home base, mother ship, inner sanctum for me, just as it has remained as my blogginess slopped over onto Facebook and the Huffington Post.
It is continually amazing to me that a guy with nothing more than some years of teaching experience and a knack for flinging words together can end up reaching so many people. Who knew that technology would bring us back around to a world where writing-- just plain writing-- could become so powerful?
I have no interest in becoming rich and famous (an it's a damn good thing, too), but I do have an interest in A) getting the word out about what's happening in public education to people who don't know, B) letting people who DO know know that they are not crazy or alone, and C) furthering a thoughtful discussion about one of the most important things in this country-- public education. And doing it all from the perspective of a classroom teacher (I will not say "just") with no special honors or credits or thinky tank money to my name. I'm excited about carrying that mission to new audiences. The new column should go live, once or twice a week, by the end of this month.
You may have heard that Anthony Cody I leaving behind the world of Education Week blogging to pursue other projects and spin "Living in Dialogue" onto some new platforms. That should be going live sometime this week. You can stay caught up with his progress at the Living in Dialogue page on Facebook. I think that whole enterprise is going to be pretty cool.
In the meantime, EdWeek had an opening for a blogger, and the writer who got the nod is your truly.
I'm excited about this. It will give me an opportunity to make the case for American public education to a slightly different audience. I know there are people out there who consider EdWeek too corporate and conservative, but for me that is part of the point. There's an audience over there that is unlikely to wander into this blog on their own. I've talked to both Anthony and to Nancy Flanagan, two education writers for whom I have the utmost respect; both say they have never suffered from editorial interference at EdWeek. I have talked to my new editor there. I am confident that I will get to say what I want to say (as long as I follow the instructions of my first newspaper editor years ago, who told me "Write whatever you ant. Just try to keep some connection to our readers, and don't libel anybody.")
I will not in any way shape or form be abandoning this blog. It will continue to be the home base, mother ship, inner sanctum for me, just as it has remained as my blogginess slopped over onto Facebook and the Huffington Post.
It is continually amazing to me that a guy with nothing more than some years of teaching experience and a knack for flinging words together can end up reaching so many people. Who knew that technology would bring us back around to a world where writing-- just plain writing-- could become so powerful?
I have no interest in becoming rich and famous (an it's a damn good thing, too), but I do have an interest in A) getting the word out about what's happening in public education to people who don't know, B) letting people who DO know know that they are not crazy or alone, and C) furthering a thoughtful discussion about one of the most important things in this country-- public education. And doing it all from the perspective of a classroom teacher (I will not say "just") with no special honors or credits or thinky tank money to my name. I'm excited about carrying that mission to new audiences. The new column should go live, once or twice a week, by the end of this month.
Accountability vs. Responsibility
Folks keep demanding accountability in education. I'm pretty sure what we want is responsibility. We often use the terms as if they're interchangeable, but they aren't.
Accountability is about giving an accounting, reporting, proving to someone that you have done what they require of you, and proving it in the manner of their choosing. Responsibility is about having a duty, a personal requirement to deal with something.
When I take responsibility, it's a choice I make, and I answer first and foremost to myself. When I am held accountable, I'm held by someone else, and I answer first and foremost to them.
When I am responsible for something, it is my problem. I own it. When I am accountable, I am taking care of somebody else's problem. They own it.
When I am responsible, I need to get things right. I define my success. When I am accountable, I need to present the proper appearance to match someone else's idea of success.
When I am responsible, I can make whatever adjustments and decisions I need to as the need arises. When I am accountable, I'm only safe when I run all changes, revisions, and adjustments past the person who really owns the task-- the person to whom I'm accountable.
I honor my responsibilities because they matter to me. I meet my responsibilities because I don't want to let people down, because I want to look myself in the mirror, because I want to think of myself as someone who does what's right. I meet my accountability requirements because if I don't, someone will punish me (and the greater the accountability, the more that punishment will hurt me).
Responsibility comes with power (and vice versa). Accountability comes with little power.
Responsibility is personal. Accountability is impersonal.
Responsibility requires you to call upon, nurture, exercise, and grow your own best personal qualities. Accountability requires you to repress anything that's not approved by those to whom you are accountable. Responsibility helps you become the best version of yourself. Accountability stunts and twists that growth.
The foundation of responsibility is relationships. I don't want to let people down because I have a relationship with them. I want to be able to look myself in the mirror because knowing who I am, and being okay with it, is fundamental to my relationship with everyone else. Accountability is anathema to relationship. When you hurt me, in order to "hold me accountable," that breaks the bridges between us. It's easier for both of us if we don't have any kind of relationship.
Because responsibility is built on relationship, it takes time to create and nourish it. Responsibility grows best in an atmosphere of respect and trust and support. Accountability is quick and simple. I don't even have to meet you to "hold you accountable." It's faster and easier and more readily scalable if you don't.
Accountability is what you impose when you don't have the time or patience to develop responsibility.
Responsibility is about doing the right thing. Accountability is about following orders correctly, going through the approved motions.
We know all this. Teachers and parents wrestle with this distinction all the time. We have our times when we are pushed into the accountability corner ("Just DO it-- or else!") and it never feels good. It feels like failure. It feels desperation. It feels like we've already lost.
We know that a student who is doing good work out of pride and joy of accomplishment is doing far better than one who's going through the motions because we threatened him with the punishment of losing points or losing recess. We know that there have to be consequences, but if we're all about consequences, our students are lost to us and we are down to a Hail Mary of quick fix desperation.
Accountability is just a fancy word for "These yahoos won't do anything right unless we threaten them with serious punishment for screwing up." If we hear a fellow teacher or administrator say that, we would not think, "Boy, that's the professional I want to be! That sounds like the road to success."
You don't have to be a teacher to know these things. Hell, there's actual science that says the same thing in fancier words. But we repeatedly hear calls for accountability. Yes, the tests aren't perfect, but how else will we hold states/schools/teachers accountable? Tenure is bad because it keeps us from holding teachers accountable. A quick, dirty google turns up 650K hits for "accountability in education."
Look, there are certainly things for which teachers and schools should be held accountable. But if we make accountability the be-all and end-all of the system, we will build a brutal, punishing system that crushes all the character traits we say we want. I like a little pepper on my hamburger, but that doesn't make it a good idea to craft an entire patty out of solid pepper. We can't throw out all accountability in education, but we cannot make it the foundation of the system, either. It will not bring out the best in our teachers, our schools, or our students.
Accountability is about giving an accounting, reporting, proving to someone that you have done what they require of you, and proving it in the manner of their choosing. Responsibility is about having a duty, a personal requirement to deal with something.
When I take responsibility, it's a choice I make, and I answer first and foremost to myself. When I am held accountable, I'm held by someone else, and I answer first and foremost to them.
When I am responsible for something, it is my problem. I own it. When I am accountable, I am taking care of somebody else's problem. They own it.
When I am responsible, I need to get things right. I define my success. When I am accountable, I need to present the proper appearance to match someone else's idea of success.
When I am responsible, I can make whatever adjustments and decisions I need to as the need arises. When I am accountable, I'm only safe when I run all changes, revisions, and adjustments past the person who really owns the task-- the person to whom I'm accountable.
I honor my responsibilities because they matter to me. I meet my responsibilities because I don't want to let people down, because I want to look myself in the mirror, because I want to think of myself as someone who does what's right. I meet my accountability requirements because if I don't, someone will punish me (and the greater the accountability, the more that punishment will hurt me).
Responsibility comes with power (and vice versa). Accountability comes with little power.
Responsibility is personal. Accountability is impersonal.
Responsibility requires you to call upon, nurture, exercise, and grow your own best personal qualities. Accountability requires you to repress anything that's not approved by those to whom you are accountable. Responsibility helps you become the best version of yourself. Accountability stunts and twists that growth.
The foundation of responsibility is relationships. I don't want to let people down because I have a relationship with them. I want to be able to look myself in the mirror because knowing who I am, and being okay with it, is fundamental to my relationship with everyone else. Accountability is anathema to relationship. When you hurt me, in order to "hold me accountable," that breaks the bridges between us. It's easier for both of us if we don't have any kind of relationship.
Because responsibility is built on relationship, it takes time to create and nourish it. Responsibility grows best in an atmosphere of respect and trust and support. Accountability is quick and simple. I don't even have to meet you to "hold you accountable." It's faster and easier and more readily scalable if you don't.
Accountability is what you impose when you don't have the time or patience to develop responsibility.
Responsibility is about doing the right thing. Accountability is about following orders correctly, going through the approved motions.
We know all this. Teachers and parents wrestle with this distinction all the time. We have our times when we are pushed into the accountability corner ("Just DO it-- or else!") and it never feels good. It feels like failure. It feels desperation. It feels like we've already lost.
We know that a student who is doing good work out of pride and joy of accomplishment is doing far better than one who's going through the motions because we threatened him with the punishment of losing points or losing recess. We know that there have to be consequences, but if we're all about consequences, our students are lost to us and we are down to a Hail Mary of quick fix desperation.
Accountability is just a fancy word for "These yahoos won't do anything right unless we threaten them with serious punishment for screwing up." If we hear a fellow teacher or administrator say that, we would not think, "Boy, that's the professional I want to be! That sounds like the road to success."
You don't have to be a teacher to know these things. Hell, there's actual science that says the same thing in fancier words. But we repeatedly hear calls for accountability. Yes, the tests aren't perfect, but how else will we hold states/schools/teachers accountable? Tenure is bad because it keeps us from holding teachers accountable. A quick, dirty google turns up 650K hits for "accountability in education."
Look, there are certainly things for which teachers and schools should be held accountable. But if we make accountability the be-all and end-all of the system, we will build a brutal, punishing system that crushes all the character traits we say we want. I like a little pepper on my hamburger, but that doesn't make it a good idea to craft an entire patty out of solid pepper. We can't throw out all accountability in education, but we cannot make it the foundation of the system, either. It will not bring out the best in our teachers, our schools, or our students.
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