So you say you'd like a cheerful story for a change. Fine. Let's talk about Dolly Parton. Really.
You may or may not be a fan of Dolly Parton, Country Icon and Oddly Constructed Barbie Doll, but if you're not paying attention, you might miss Dolly Parton, Philanthropist. And not Investment Philanthropist or Disruptive Innovation Philanthropist. Parton is pretty old school.
Parton came from real poverty, growing up with eleven siblings and a father who couldn't read or write in the middle of one of the poorest regions in the country. A tough time for her was not wondering if she dropped out of college, would her parents be willing to support her long enough to get her start-up off the ground.
Parton never forgot where she came from. You may think of Dollywood as a monument to kitsch, a big slice of Tennessee tacky, but it is also a sturdy economic engine and job factory in the middle of an otherwise poverty-stricken region. Parton's thought never seemed to be, "I'll build a big plastic monument to myself," but "I'll create a business that will bring money to my home region."
But Dollywood is only the most visible of Parton's work. Since the 1970s she's been awarding scholarships in Sevier County (her home). She's played at times with giving students a $500 bonus for finishing high school. Some of what she's done I can't tell you about because, apparently, much of her philanthropy is done anonymously.
But I can tell you about the Dollywood Foundation and the Imagination Library.
This program started with the simplest idea in the world-- putting books in the homes of small children. It began, once again, in her home county, and her proposal was simple-- sign your newborn child up, and once a month from birth through Kindergarten, the child will receive a book. On the program's website, Parton writes
When I was growing up in the hills of East Tennessee, I knew my dreams
would come true. I know there are children in your community with their
own dreams. They dream of becoming a doctor or an inventor or a
minister. Who knows, maybe there is a little girl whose dream is to be a
writer and singer.
The seeds of these dreams are often found in books and the seeds you help plant in your community can grow across the world.
The program launched in 1995 in Sevier County, and it grew quickly. By 2006, when the Washington Post wrote about it, the program had spread to 471 communities in 41 states. In 2011 it launched in Scotland, and it can now be found in the UK, Australia, and Canada. The site says that 706,468 US kids are currently signed up. It's still fairly simple. Some combination of sponsors (some private, some government, depending on the locale) help with the financing (the cost is roughly $27 per child per year) and the Foundation delivers the books, each in its own poly bag with the child's name on it (consider the power of a child, even a small one, receiving a book that is theirs, addressed to them, by name).
Researching this was challenging, because press about the program is sparse. Apparently Parton is unaware that good philanthropists make sure to get plenty of press coverage for their work.
And one other noteworthy feature of this program-- she doesn't pay people to promote it or participate. It has spread across the world because people like the idea and want to do it. Imagine that-- a program that makes so much sense that it sells itself.
It makes me wonder-- what if Bill Gates had decided that rather than rewrite public education, he would spend a gabillion dollars putting books in the hands of every elementary school student in this country. What if a raft of corporate sponsors had worked with Scholastic Books to give every child a good-for-one-book voucher?
Ah, well. Parton may not be setting the education world on fire, but she's also not telling the children of Sevier County that they just need to find some grit to escape or insisting that Sevier County schools need to be more rigorous and testier. And if she has been, please wait a day or so to tell me. Let me have at least a day to enjoy the idea of a person who got rich and used the money to help folks out in a simple and direct way.
Thursday, August 7, 2014
Wednesday, August 6, 2014
Conservatism vs. Ed Reform (Pt. II)
Andy Smarick continues his examination of the uneasy interface between conservatism and ed reform. I took a look at Part I of this series previously, but this time I'm going to skip over the bulk of his post to look at his conclusion, where he posits four issues that he is chewing over.
Defining dispositional conservatism is a challenge all by itself. I like this picture from Corey Robin (author of The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin):
Conservatives, at least by reputation, are supposed to be calm, reasonable, quiet, averse to the operatic, friendly to the familiar. They don’t go looking for trouble in far-off lands. They stay home, tending their gardens, patching the roof, taking care of their children. They want to be left alone. They’re not interested in history’s adventure. They want to leave things be, even if things aren’t so great, because they know that trying to change things, particularly through politics, will only make them worse.
This kind of conservatism was never going to embrace or be embraced by the ed reform movement. Any time you want to shift the flow of power or money in society (and the ed reform movement sought to do both), you have to dynamite some stream beds. Nobody ever gathered money or power by standing up and saying, "Okay, everyone. There's not really a big problem here, so just sit down and don't get excited." It's the same reason that government is always declaring war on some and that disaster capitalists like disruptive change.
Discussing what should be preserved was never going to be on the menu initially, because ed reform was looking to mine money and power out of New Things. There was probably also an element of reformsters believing that anything explicitly preserved from the old system would just become a toehold for resistance to hang onto.
Ironically, dispositional conservatism is now part of the ed reform landscape, because much of the ed reform agenda is now the status quo, so we get reformsters like John White in LA arguing that we must stay the course because changing now will create disorder and disruption.
Sometimes dispositional conservatism is just about whether things are going your way or not. If things aren't going your way, you're not disposed to be conservative.
In other (fewer) words, the lack of love for this type of conservatism and its concerns in ed reform is a clear signal that not all ed reformers were trying to answer the question, "How can we create the best education system?" Some, maybe many, were busy answering a different question, like "How can we open up education to more investment and profit opportunity" or "How can we wrest control of education away from the people who have it now."
If it will make Smarick feel better, I can assure him that many of his progressive friends are not fans of the technocrats. The fact that you have cool computer toys and a big brain and a stack of money does not mean that you have a remote clue about education and how best to do it.
I'd argue that technocrats are the progressive counterparts of rich conservatives. In both cases, we're dealing with someone whose stance is "I have more X than anybody, therefor I should be the person calling the shots." X may equal money, brains, or some manner of success, but the resulting problem is not one of politics, but of ego. You're not trying to run the show because you think you've tapped into some superior philosophy-- you're trying to run the show because you just believe that you are better than other people in a way that makes you qualified to Take Charge.
The fourth question is the hardest one. It's a version of the older question-- can dispositional conservatism solve problems are really extreme. How can "Let's just slow down and think this through carefully before we do anything rash or extreme" be a good position to take if you're in a burning building?
Smarick's question is further complicated by the question of whether or not urban school districts constitute a burning building, and if they are burning, does it matter that the same people who want to demolish the building are the same ones who set fire to it in the first place? Are there actual crises, and are they really educational crises, or crises of power, money and politics?
When considering the possibility of incremental responses to urban schools, it's worth noting that the radical approach to urban school district real or supposed failure has produced no successes, at all. From Philadelphia to New Orleans to Newark to Chicago to Los Angeles to DC, ed reformers have had ample opportunity to try every kind of radical reformy reboots they ever wanted to, and they've pursued these programs with an eye explicitly on scalability. According to the original ed reform narrative, we are by now all supposed to be sitting around learning how to follow the model from some highly successful re-imagined school district. We aren't. Instead, we just keep reading bulletins from Texas and DC and Atlanta, revealing that the miracles were actually illusory.
In other words, even though Smarick seems afraid that a measured dispositionally conservative response to urban school district problems, the evidence suggests that a measured thoughtful careful response to these crises is, to borrow a phrase, the worst possible solution, except for every other one.
These are tough and worthwhile questions to ask. It would be interesting to see if there were a common ground in education for discussion between conservatives and liberals who have concluded that their own leading figures in education have lost sight of the principles of both conservatism and liberalism.
- Why doesn’t ed reform seem to appreciate dispositional conservatism?
- Why doesn’t ed reform ever discuss what should be preserved?
- I wish my progressive friends appreciated the trouble with technocratic change.
- Is there a compelling dispositionally conservative response to tragic, longstanding K–12 injustices, like the ongoing failure of urban districts?
Defining dispositional conservatism is a challenge all by itself. I like this picture from Corey Robin (author of The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin):
Conservatives, at least by reputation, are supposed to be calm, reasonable, quiet, averse to the operatic, friendly to the familiar. They don’t go looking for trouble in far-off lands. They stay home, tending their gardens, patching the roof, taking care of their children. They want to be left alone. They’re not interested in history’s adventure. They want to leave things be, even if things aren’t so great, because they know that trying to change things, particularly through politics, will only make them worse.
This kind of conservatism was never going to embrace or be embraced by the ed reform movement. Any time you want to shift the flow of power or money in society (and the ed reform movement sought to do both), you have to dynamite some stream beds. Nobody ever gathered money or power by standing up and saying, "Okay, everyone. There's not really a big problem here, so just sit down and don't get excited." It's the same reason that government is always declaring war on some and that disaster capitalists like disruptive change.
Discussing what should be preserved was never going to be on the menu initially, because ed reform was looking to mine money and power out of New Things. There was probably also an element of reformsters believing that anything explicitly preserved from the old system would just become a toehold for resistance to hang onto.
Ironically, dispositional conservatism is now part of the ed reform landscape, because much of the ed reform agenda is now the status quo, so we get reformsters like John White in LA arguing that we must stay the course because changing now will create disorder and disruption.
Sometimes dispositional conservatism is just about whether things are going your way or not. If things aren't going your way, you're not disposed to be conservative.
In other (fewer) words, the lack of love for this type of conservatism and its concerns in ed reform is a clear signal that not all ed reformers were trying to answer the question, "How can we create the best education system?" Some, maybe many, were busy answering a different question, like "How can we open up education to more investment and profit opportunity" or "How can we wrest control of education away from the people who have it now."
If it will make Smarick feel better, I can assure him that many of his progressive friends are not fans of the technocrats. The fact that you have cool computer toys and a big brain and a stack of money does not mean that you have a remote clue about education and how best to do it.
I'd argue that technocrats are the progressive counterparts of rich conservatives. In both cases, we're dealing with someone whose stance is "I have more X than anybody, therefor I should be the person calling the shots." X may equal money, brains, or some manner of success, but the resulting problem is not one of politics, but of ego. You're not trying to run the show because you think you've tapped into some superior philosophy-- you're trying to run the show because you just believe that you are better than other people in a way that makes you qualified to Take Charge.
The fourth question is the hardest one. It's a version of the older question-- can dispositional conservatism solve problems are really extreme. How can "Let's just slow down and think this through carefully before we do anything rash or extreme" be a good position to take if you're in a burning building?
Smarick's question is further complicated by the question of whether or not urban school districts constitute a burning building, and if they are burning, does it matter that the same people who want to demolish the building are the same ones who set fire to it in the first place? Are there actual crises, and are they really educational crises, or crises of power, money and politics?
When considering the possibility of incremental responses to urban schools, it's worth noting that the radical approach to urban school district real or supposed failure has produced no successes, at all. From Philadelphia to New Orleans to Newark to Chicago to Los Angeles to DC, ed reformers have had ample opportunity to try every kind of radical reformy reboots they ever wanted to, and they've pursued these programs with an eye explicitly on scalability. According to the original ed reform narrative, we are by now all supposed to be sitting around learning how to follow the model from some highly successful re-imagined school district. We aren't. Instead, we just keep reading bulletins from Texas and DC and Atlanta, revealing that the miracles were actually illusory.
In other words, even though Smarick seems afraid that a measured dispositionally conservative response to urban school district problems, the evidence suggests that a measured thoughtful careful response to these crises is, to borrow a phrase, the worst possible solution, except for every other one.
These are tough and worthwhile questions to ask. It would be interesting to see if there were a common ground in education for discussion between conservatives and liberals who have concluded that their own leading figures in education have lost sight of the principles of both conservatism and liberalism.
NYC Looks For Teachers on Craigslist
The NYC Teaching Collective (formerly the NYC Teaching Residency) seems to be have hatched from a simple idea-- why pay TFA to provide us with underqualified, undertrained teacher bodies when we can just do it in house?
If nothing else, their mission statement is more direct:
The mission of the NYC Teaching Collaborative is to recruit and prepare talented, committed individuals to become effective teachers who dedicate themselves to raising student achievement and driving change in New York City's highest-need schools.
In other words, we need some people who will get test scores up. And "despite success in raising the overall quality of our teaching force, many schools in our highest need communities still struggle to attract and retain highly effective educators."
Now, some people might conclude that when you have trouble attracting and retaining people for a particular job, there might be a problem with the job-- how it's compensated, the working conditions, something. But NYC schools have apparently concluded that they simply aren't getting the right class of people for the job.
And where do you go when you need a better quality of job applicant? Why, Craigslist, of course.
Yes, the NYC school system, through the NYC Teaching Collaborative, is advertising for teachers on Craigslist. Well, not necessarily teachers, exactly.
Become a NYC Teacher - no experience required!
The program goes TFA one better in its quest to turn non-teachers into teaching gold. Candidates complete a six-month spring residency followed by a six-weeks summer program, followed by their own classroom. The program's goal is to provide "an accelerated path to the classroom that feels comprehensive rather than rushed."
The Craigslist ad says that each trainee is provided with an experienced teacher called a Collaborative Coach, however the City's own website says the trainee will work with either an experienced teacher OR a Collaborative Coach. That's a distinction I'd probably want to have cleared up.
Applicants are "meticulously" selected, though no specific requirements of any sort are listed; participants are described repeatedly as talented, dedicated, and hard-working. The program comes with a $13K stipend for the training period, and while there is no guarantee of a job, so far the program has 100% placement. Participants also commit to giving four years to a NYC high needs school.
NYC is a hotbed of alternative paths to teacherdom, and this program from the city school system does not challenge TFA for the criminal underpreparation crown. But kudos for looking for future professionals the 21st Century way. The ad does have one problem, however-- the inspiring photo at the header includes the slogan "Train for a year. Teach for a lifetime." They may want to wait until Campbell Brown's anti-tenure lawsuit is settled before they make those kind of crazy promises.
If nothing else, their mission statement is more direct:
The mission of the NYC Teaching Collaborative is to recruit and prepare talented, committed individuals to become effective teachers who dedicate themselves to raising student achievement and driving change in New York City's highest-need schools.
In other words, we need some people who will get test scores up. And "despite success in raising the overall quality of our teaching force, many schools in our highest need communities still struggle to attract and retain highly effective educators."
Now, some people might conclude that when you have trouble attracting and retaining people for a particular job, there might be a problem with the job-- how it's compensated, the working conditions, something. But NYC schools have apparently concluded that they simply aren't getting the right class of people for the job.
And where do you go when you need a better quality of job applicant? Why, Craigslist, of course.
Yes, the NYC school system, through the NYC Teaching Collaborative, is advertising for teachers on Craigslist. Well, not necessarily teachers, exactly.
Become a NYC Teacher - no experience required!
The program goes TFA one better in its quest to turn non-teachers into teaching gold. Candidates complete a six-month spring residency followed by a six-weeks summer program, followed by their own classroom. The program's goal is to provide "an accelerated path to the classroom that feels comprehensive rather than rushed."
The Craigslist ad says that each trainee is provided with an experienced teacher called a Collaborative Coach, however the City's own website says the trainee will work with either an experienced teacher OR a Collaborative Coach. That's a distinction I'd probably want to have cleared up.
Applicants are "meticulously" selected, though no specific requirements of any sort are listed; participants are described repeatedly as talented, dedicated, and hard-working. The program comes with a $13K stipend for the training period, and while there is no guarantee of a job, so far the program has 100% placement. Participants also commit to giving four years to a NYC high needs school.
NYC is a hotbed of alternative paths to teacherdom, and this program from the city school system does not challenge TFA for the criminal underpreparation crown. But kudos for looking for future professionals the 21st Century way. The ad does have one problem, however-- the inspiring photo at the header includes the slogan "Train for a year. Teach for a lifetime." They may want to wait until Campbell Brown's anti-tenure lawsuit is settled before they make those kind of crazy promises.
Power Social Marketing for Teachers
Patti Fletcher's credentials would not necessarily lead you to take her seriously. She is the global leader of the Cross-Portfolio Marketing and
Social Marketing Center of Excellence teams at IHS, and is the
Co-Founder and CEO of PSDNetwork, LLC, which sounds like a huge gobbledygook salad with jargonaisse dressing. Fletcher's work "centers on enablement and culture change with a particularly interesting focus on women in the boardroom."
In a recent post on Leader Networks entitled "Social Marketing and Gender Equality through Power Networking: 4 Common Trends Related to Transformation, Power and Influence," Fletcher lays out four ideas about institutional transformation that are directed at empowering women in the business world, but which have equally powerful implications for teachers and education. It's worth your time to read the whole piece, despite the heavy dose of business-speak that it promises, but here's the main points of the main points.
Trend #1. There is no separation between a professional and a personal life.
Women tend to integrate more than separate. We don’t have a work life and a personal life. We have a life! Taking that a step further, many successful female executives and millennial entrepreneurs I speak with all say they do not separate their relationships. “I don’t have work friends and personal friends, I have friends,” says Mark Johnson, former CEO of Zite (acquired by CNN in 2011, spun off to Flipboard in 2014).
This holds true for lots of teachers as well. Certainly, teaching in a small town, I am always a teacher no matter where I'm found. After all these years, some students are still shocked to see me in a grocery store, buying food. This is also why, in many communities, teachers really are held to a higher standard of conduct. When you're out in a bar drinking, people will still see you as their child's teacher.
Trend #2. It's not who you know that matters the most, it's who knows you.
Why does the media keep calling Randi Weingarten whenever they need a teacher's persepctive? Because she's the person they know. Why don't teachers appear on talk shows, news broadcasts, or any of the other places where education is discussed? Because the people in power, the people who decide these things, don't know any teachers.
How to break that barrier is a challenge. But it's part of the answer we're looking for.
We B2B social marketers want our brands to be first in mind within our target topics. We want to be in the hearts and minds of our customers, industry influencers, our partners. The people who know us are far more important that the people we know. The more people who know us and will advocate for our brands — whether we are present or not — the more our brands become the go-to source for thought leadership, engagement, and eventually business.
Why does Campbell Brown get to be the face of the latest reformy attack on teachers? Because people, both in the general public and the halls of power, know her. Reformsters have this part down. Teachers, not so much. In particular, unions could be creating whole speakers bureaus of teachers-- active classroom professionals available to everything from media to the local Rotary Club.
Trend #3. Power relationships are based on mutual interests and sharing information, not frequency of transactions.
In other words, networking. Fletcher says women are often reluctant to network because the interactions seem so force, unnatural, and self-serving. But connecting with people, being able to help them out, connecting them with other like-minded people-- those all build up power networks.
Teachers can be, of course, the ultimate anti-networkers. Let me just stay in my room and never talk to anybody over the age of ten. Often we overlook the most obvious of networking opportunities-- our own former students. But even connecting with our own colleagues would be a step forward for some of us.
Fletcher cites Judy Robinette, author of How To Be a Power Connector.
Robinett connects with people on what they care about and focuses on how she can help them. And, she works hard at her relationships. “I am not going to be a one-hit wonder. I am not going to do you a favor and never hear from me again,” says Robinett. She works hard at cultivating her relationships by being the source of information and of new connections.
Trend #4. Context and Strategy Are Critical
Whether we are talking about building a power network of key players in an industry you are targeting for your next business, or you are trying to engage potential customers online, first you have to find out where they are and then go to them.
Which sounds like about pretty much everything in teacherland.
In the ongoing debate about the future of public education, we need to remember that as alarmed as we may be, the charge is not to explain to civilians why we are upset, but to explain why they should be upset. We should not be telling them where they should go to get the information; we should be bringing it to them where they are.
In a recent post on Leader Networks entitled "Social Marketing and Gender Equality through Power Networking: 4 Common Trends Related to Transformation, Power and Influence," Fletcher lays out four ideas about institutional transformation that are directed at empowering women in the business world, but which have equally powerful implications for teachers and education. It's worth your time to read the whole piece, despite the heavy dose of business-speak that it promises, but here's the main points of the main points.
Trend #1. There is no separation between a professional and a personal life.
Women tend to integrate more than separate. We don’t have a work life and a personal life. We have a life! Taking that a step further, many successful female executives and millennial entrepreneurs I speak with all say they do not separate their relationships. “I don’t have work friends and personal friends, I have friends,” says Mark Johnson, former CEO of Zite (acquired by CNN in 2011, spun off to Flipboard in 2014).
This holds true for lots of teachers as well. Certainly, teaching in a small town, I am always a teacher no matter where I'm found. After all these years, some students are still shocked to see me in a grocery store, buying food. This is also why, in many communities, teachers really are held to a higher standard of conduct. When you're out in a bar drinking, people will still see you as their child's teacher.
Trend #2. It's not who you know that matters the most, it's who knows you.
Why does the media keep calling Randi Weingarten whenever they need a teacher's persepctive? Because she's the person they know. Why don't teachers appear on talk shows, news broadcasts, or any of the other places where education is discussed? Because the people in power, the people who decide these things, don't know any teachers.
How to break that barrier is a challenge. But it's part of the answer we're looking for.
We B2B social marketers want our brands to be first in mind within our target topics. We want to be in the hearts and minds of our customers, industry influencers, our partners. The people who know us are far more important that the people we know. The more people who know us and will advocate for our brands — whether we are present or not — the more our brands become the go-to source for thought leadership, engagement, and eventually business.
Why does Campbell Brown get to be the face of the latest reformy attack on teachers? Because people, both in the general public and the halls of power, know her. Reformsters have this part down. Teachers, not so much. In particular, unions could be creating whole speakers bureaus of teachers-- active classroom professionals available to everything from media to the local Rotary Club.
Trend #3. Power relationships are based on mutual interests and sharing information, not frequency of transactions.
In other words, networking. Fletcher says women are often reluctant to network because the interactions seem so force, unnatural, and self-serving. But connecting with people, being able to help them out, connecting them with other like-minded people-- those all build up power networks.
Teachers can be, of course, the ultimate anti-networkers. Let me just stay in my room and never talk to anybody over the age of ten. Often we overlook the most obvious of networking opportunities-- our own former students. But even connecting with our own colleagues would be a step forward for some of us.
Fletcher cites Judy Robinette, author of How To Be a Power Connector.
Robinett connects with people on what they care about and focuses on how she can help them. And, she works hard at her relationships. “I am not going to be a one-hit wonder. I am not going to do you a favor and never hear from me again,” says Robinett. She works hard at cultivating her relationships by being the source of information and of new connections.
Trend #4. Context and Strategy Are Critical
Whether we are talking about building a power network of key players in an industry you are targeting for your next business, or you are trying to engage potential customers online, first you have to find out where they are and then go to them.
Which sounds like about pretty much everything in teacherland.
In the ongoing debate about the future of public education, we need to remember that as alarmed as we may be, the charge is not to explain to civilians why we are upset, but to explain why they should be upset. We should not be telling them where they should go to get the information; we should be bringing it to them where they are.
Tuesday, August 5, 2014
Who Wants To Be South Korea
South Korea is on the reformster short list of Countries We Want To Be Like (right up there with Finland and Estonia). She Who Will Not Be Named frequently cites her own year in South Korea as a formative experience (from which she somehow jumps to the conclusion that every child in America needs the same experience).
And yet, a piece in the Sunday, August 1, New York Times reminds us why South Korea is more of a cautionary tale than a guiding light.
"An Assault Upon Our Children" by Se-Woong Koo reminds us of all the things about South Korea's system that are not to love. Koo's mother moved him to Vancouver for school after his older brother fell ill from the stress of meeting school requirements, but Koo returned to South Korea as a teacher. That different perspective did not make things look any better.
And yet, a piece in the Sunday, August 1, New York Times reminds us why South Korea is more of a cautionary tale than a guiding light.
"An Assault Upon Our Children" by Se-Woong Koo reminds us of all the things about South Korea's system that are not to love. Koo's mother moved him to Vancouver for school after his older brother fell ill from the stress of meeting school requirements, but Koo returned to South Korea as a teacher. That different perspective did not make things look any better.
The students were serious about studying but their eyes appeared dead.When
I asked a class if they were happy in this environment, one girl
hesitantly raised her hand to tell me that she would only be happy if
her mother was gone because all her mother knew was how to nag about her
academic performance.
South Korea is a real life reductio ad absurdum, an actual demonstration of "well, if we cared about nothing but test scores, we'd put students in school for thirteen hours a day and keep driving them until they were utterly miserable."
Which is, of course, what they do.
This is what pursuit of test scores gets you. This is what happens when you believe that a test score is the be-all and end-all and measure-all of education. This is what happens when you believe that success, as measured by the uber-test, is the only thing that matters in a child's life.
Not only are students miserable, but the logical extension of a test-based system is an emphasis on obedience, Koo tells this story:
I remember the time I disagreed with my homeroom teacher in middle
school by writing him a letter about one of his rules. The letter led to
my being summoned to the teacher’s office, where I was berated for an
hour and a half, not about the substance of my words but the fact that I
had expressed my view at all. He had a class to teach but he did not
bother to leave our meeting because he was so enraged that someone had
questioned his authority. I knew then that trying to be rational or
outspoken in school was pointless.
Why we would want a system like this for our children or our country is beyond my comprehension. Yes-- we could finally triumph in the PISA scores, but so what? What would that get us? The US has never triumphed in the PISA scores-- ever-- and yet, the United States of America seems to have done okay for itself.
Everything in life costs something. South Korea shows us what the cost of universal testing supremacy is-- give up all joy, all curiosity, all creativity, all initiative, all fun and happiness, turning the childhood years into a nightmare.
Here's a secret about great test scores. We know how to get them. We've always known. But most of us are unwilling to advocate for the kind of child abuse necessary for that "achievement. South Korea pays a huge price for their PISA supremacy, and what do they get for it, other than the admiration of a few American bureaucrats and reformsters. Why the heck would anyone want that?
Without Tenure...
Yesterday, twitter blew up with responses to Whoopi Goldberg and the View having one more uninformed discussion of tenure (and, really, we need to talk about why education discussions keep being driven by the work of comedians).
"#WithoutTenure I can be fired for...." was the tweet template of the day, and even though I rode that bus for a bit, it occurs to me this morning that it misses the point.
It's true that in the absence of tenure, teachers can (and are) fired for all manner of ridiculous things. That's unjust and unfair. As some folks never tire of pointing out, that kind of injustice is endemic in many jobs (Why people would think that the response to injustice is to demand more injustice for more people is a whole conversation of its own). That doesn't change a thing. Firing a teacher for standing up for a student or attending the wrong church or being too far up the pay scale-- those would all be injustices. But as bad as that would be, it's not the feature of a tenureless world that would most damage education.
It's not the firing. It's the threat of firing.
Firing ends a teacher's career. The threat of firing allows other people to control every day of that teacher's career.
The threat of firing is the great "Do this or else..." It takes all the powerful people a teacher must deal with and arms each one with a nuclear device.
Give my child the lead in the school play, or else. Stop assigning homework to those kids, or else. Implement these bad practices, or else. Keep quiet about how we are going to spend the taxpayers' money, or else. Forget about the bullying you saw, or else. Don't speak up about administration conduct, or else. Teach these materials even though you know they're wrong, or else. Stop advocating for your students, or else.
Firing simply stops a teacher from doing her job.
The threat of firing coerces her into doing the job poorly.
The lack of tenure, of due process, of any requirement that a school district only fire teachers for some actual legitimate reason-- it interferes with teachers' ability to do the job they were hired to do. It forces teachers to work under a chilling cloud where their best professional judgment, their desire to advocate for and help students, their ability to speak out and stand up are all smothered by people with the power to say, "Do as I tell you, or else."
Civilians need to understand-- the biggest problem with the destruction of tenure is not that a handful of teachers will lose their jobs, but that entire buildings full of teachers will lose the freedom to do their jobs well.
We spent a lot of time in this country straightening out malpractice law issues, because we recognized that a doctor can't do his job well if his one concern is not getting sued into oblivion for a mistake. We created Good Samaritan laws because we don't want someone who could help in an emergency stand back and let The Worst happen because he doesn't want to get in trouble.
As a country, we understand that certain kinds of jobs can't be done well unless we give the people who do those jobs the protections they need in order to do their jobs without fear of being ruined for using their best professional judgment. Not all jobs have those protections, because not all workers face those issues.
Teachers, who answer to a hundred different bosses, need their own special set of protections. Not to help them keep the job, but to help them do it. The public needs the assurance that teachers will not be protected from the consequences of incompetence (and administrators really need to step up-- behind every teacher who shouldn't have a job are administrators who aren't doing theirs). But the public also needs the assurance that some administrator or school board member or powerful citizen will not interfere with the work the public hired the teacher to do.
Tenure is that assurance. Without tenure, every teacher is the pawn and puppet of whoever happens to be the most powerful person in the building today. Without tenure, anybody can shoulder his way into the classroom and declare, "You're going to do things my way, or else."
Tenure is not a crown and scepter for every teacher, to make them powerful and untouchable. Tenure is a bodyguard who stands at the classroom door and says, "You go ahead and teach, buddy. I'll make sure nobody interrupts just to mess with you." Taxpayers are paying us for our best professional judgment; the least they deserve is a system that allows us to give them what they're paying us for.
"#WithoutTenure I can be fired for...." was the tweet template of the day, and even though I rode that bus for a bit, it occurs to me this morning that it misses the point.
It's true that in the absence of tenure, teachers can (and are) fired for all manner of ridiculous things. That's unjust and unfair. As some folks never tire of pointing out, that kind of injustice is endemic in many jobs (Why people would think that the response to injustice is to demand more injustice for more people is a whole conversation of its own). That doesn't change a thing. Firing a teacher for standing up for a student or attending the wrong church or being too far up the pay scale-- those would all be injustices. But as bad as that would be, it's not the feature of a tenureless world that would most damage education.
It's not the firing. It's the threat of firing.
Firing ends a teacher's career. The threat of firing allows other people to control every day of that teacher's career.
The threat of firing is the great "Do this or else..." It takes all the powerful people a teacher must deal with and arms each one with a nuclear device.
Give my child the lead in the school play, or else. Stop assigning homework to those kids, or else. Implement these bad practices, or else. Keep quiet about how we are going to spend the taxpayers' money, or else. Forget about the bullying you saw, or else. Don't speak up about administration conduct, or else. Teach these materials even though you know they're wrong, or else. Stop advocating for your students, or else.
Firing simply stops a teacher from doing her job.
The threat of firing coerces her into doing the job poorly.
The lack of tenure, of due process, of any requirement that a school district only fire teachers for some actual legitimate reason-- it interferes with teachers' ability to do the job they were hired to do. It forces teachers to work under a chilling cloud where their best professional judgment, their desire to advocate for and help students, their ability to speak out and stand up are all smothered by people with the power to say, "Do as I tell you, or else."
Civilians need to understand-- the biggest problem with the destruction of tenure is not that a handful of teachers will lose their jobs, but that entire buildings full of teachers will lose the freedom to do their jobs well.
We spent a lot of time in this country straightening out malpractice law issues, because we recognized that a doctor can't do his job well if his one concern is not getting sued into oblivion for a mistake. We created Good Samaritan laws because we don't want someone who could help in an emergency stand back and let The Worst happen because he doesn't want to get in trouble.
As a country, we understand that certain kinds of jobs can't be done well unless we give the people who do those jobs the protections they need in order to do their jobs without fear of being ruined for using their best professional judgment. Not all jobs have those protections, because not all workers face those issues.
Teachers, who answer to a hundred different bosses, need their own special set of protections. Not to help them keep the job, but to help them do it. The public needs the assurance that teachers will not be protected from the consequences of incompetence (and administrators really need to step up-- behind every teacher who shouldn't have a job are administrators who aren't doing theirs). But the public also needs the assurance that some administrator or school board member or powerful citizen will not interfere with the work the public hired the teacher to do.
Tenure is that assurance. Without tenure, every teacher is the pawn and puppet of whoever happens to be the most powerful person in the building today. Without tenure, anybody can shoulder his way into the classroom and declare, "You're going to do things my way, or else."
Tenure is not a crown and scepter for every teacher, to make them powerful and untouchable. Tenure is a bodyguard who stands at the classroom door and says, "You go ahead and teach, buddy. I'll make sure nobody interrupts just to mess with you." Taxpayers are paying us for our best professional judgment; the least they deserve is a system that allows us to give them what they're paying us for.
Monday, August 4, 2014
Does Reformster Character Matter?
When I posted this morning about the giant confluence of issues and money that is K12, Inc., I received this comment from ready Candy Crider:
I would rather you address the curriculum - is it sound and will it help students learn and love learning? Bashing the people who built it tells me nothing about the program itself.
"Bashing" is a fairly plastic term in bloggy circles. Sometimes "bashing" means "using ad hominem name calling" and sometimes it means "pointing out annoying facts."While this is a sass-heavy blog, I actually try to stay away from "this person is just a big doody head and so we should ignore them." And it's simply more accurate to write "this person said a very stupid thing" than "this person is very stupid." Smart people write and say stupid things all the time.
But the question of character is a tricky one. It is absolutely true that my piece about K12 did not directly address the curriculum or lessons that K12 uses, and I'm perfectly comfortable with that. Ms. Crider says that looking at the people involved tells us nothing about the program itself. I disagree. I think it tells us loads. Let me propose a scenario.
A new medical practice has opened in your town. You know the following things about it:
* It was not started by doctors or people with medical background, but by investment bankers who heard that you can make a big profit in medicine.
* It pays bottom dollar for its staff, scooping up practitioners who couldn't find work with any other medical practice.
* It requires those practitioners to move patients through at unheard-of rates so that the owners can get maximum profits by collecting maximum insurance payments.
* The practice measures its success not in patients served or cured or helped, but in dollars pocketed.
* The practice aggressively markets itself to patients who are in great need of health care, but who lack the sophistication or knowledge to make highly informed choices about their health care.
Now, Ms. Crider. Your child or mom or someone else you care about is sick. Do you look at this new practice, and with all you know say, "Well, we won't really know how good they are until we give it a shot." Intellectually, you may know that could be true-- but would you really play those long odds with the life of someone you love?
No, your understanding of the operators methods and motivations is more than enough to let you make conclusions about the quality of care. The character of the operators matters.
When David Coleman said that growing up means understanding that nobody gives a shit what you think or feel, that told us a great deal about his goals in writing ELA standards and his vision about what writing instruction should look like.
Likewise, reading Mother Crusader's chilling connect-the-dots between Campbell Brown and Paul Singer doesn't necessarily tell us anything of substance about the New York lawsuit to destroy tenure. But it immediately tells us two things.
First, that Brown is being at best disingenuous when she says she's worried about the protestors going after her backers, and second, just how hard these folks are likely to fight. Because Brown's husband hangs with the kind of people who fight nations and topple governments just to make a buck.
And on the plus side, paying attention to character and motivations allows us to the spot those reformsters who really do value learning and education but are simply clueless about how policies truly affect the achievement of those goals.
Character assassination is an easy game to play (because everybody has done Something Awful at some point) and not particularly valuable. But understanding someone's motivations and values tells us an awful lot about what they're likely to do (or not do). Yes, we should keep focused on the real issues and the substance behind them, and yes, sometimes good people do bad things and bad people do good things. But if someone picks your pocket, punches your spouse, kicks your dog, steals beans out of your garden, and then offers to sell you magic beans, you'd be foolish to say, "Well, sure. I won't know if the beans are magic until I plant them."
I would rather you address the curriculum - is it sound and will it help students learn and love learning? Bashing the people who built it tells me nothing about the program itself.
"Bashing" is a fairly plastic term in bloggy circles. Sometimes "bashing" means "using ad hominem name calling" and sometimes it means "pointing out annoying facts."While this is a sass-heavy blog, I actually try to stay away from "this person is just a big doody head and so we should ignore them." And it's simply more accurate to write "this person said a very stupid thing" than "this person is very stupid." Smart people write and say stupid things all the time.
But the question of character is a tricky one. It is absolutely true that my piece about K12 did not directly address the curriculum or lessons that K12 uses, and I'm perfectly comfortable with that. Ms. Crider says that looking at the people involved tells us nothing about the program itself. I disagree. I think it tells us loads. Let me propose a scenario.
A new medical practice has opened in your town. You know the following things about it:
* It was not started by doctors or people with medical background, but by investment bankers who heard that you can make a big profit in medicine.
* It pays bottom dollar for its staff, scooping up practitioners who couldn't find work with any other medical practice.
* It requires those practitioners to move patients through at unheard-of rates so that the owners can get maximum profits by collecting maximum insurance payments.
* The practice measures its success not in patients served or cured or helped, but in dollars pocketed.
* The practice aggressively markets itself to patients who are in great need of health care, but who lack the sophistication or knowledge to make highly informed choices about their health care.
Now, Ms. Crider. Your child or mom or someone else you care about is sick. Do you look at this new practice, and with all you know say, "Well, we won't really know how good they are until we give it a shot." Intellectually, you may know that could be true-- but would you really play those long odds with the life of someone you love?
No, your understanding of the operators methods and motivations is more than enough to let you make conclusions about the quality of care. The character of the operators matters.
When David Coleman said that growing up means understanding that nobody gives a shit what you think or feel, that told us a great deal about his goals in writing ELA standards and his vision about what writing instruction should look like.
Likewise, reading Mother Crusader's chilling connect-the-dots between Campbell Brown and Paul Singer doesn't necessarily tell us anything of substance about the New York lawsuit to destroy tenure. But it immediately tells us two things.
First, that Brown is being at best disingenuous when she says she's worried about the protestors going after her backers, and second, just how hard these folks are likely to fight. Because Brown's husband hangs with the kind of people who fight nations and topple governments just to make a buck.
And on the plus side, paying attention to character and motivations allows us to the spot those reformsters who really do value learning and education but are simply clueless about how policies truly affect the achievement of those goals.
Character assassination is an easy game to play (because everybody has done Something Awful at some point) and not particularly valuable. But understanding someone's motivations and values tells us an awful lot about what they're likely to do (or not do). Yes, we should keep focused on the real issues and the substance behind them, and yes, sometimes good people do bad things and bad people do good things. But if someone picks your pocket, punches your spouse, kicks your dog, steals beans out of your garden, and then offers to sell you magic beans, you'd be foolish to say, "Well, sure. I won't know if the beans are magic until I plant them."
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