My esteemed colleague and exceptional citizen journalist over at Edushyster has an interview up that is well worth your time to read.
She talks to Joan Goodman, director of the TFA program at U Penn, about the no excuse charters of Philadelphia (among other things, the piece is a reminder that we can not knee-jerkingly sort good guys and bad guys based simply on their affiliations). The interview is depressing.
Goodman: To reach these objectives, these schools
have developed very elaborate behavioral regimes that they insist all
children follow, starting in kindergarten. Submission, obedience, and
self-control are very large values. They want kids to submit. You can’t
really do this kind of instruction if you don’t have very submissive
children who are capable of high levels of inhibition and do whatever
they’re told.
You should read this piece. Go ahead. I'll wait right here until you get back...
Much about the article jumps out at me, but nothing quite so much as this.
But if you get them early, you develop
their sense of self that accords with those of the authority. The adults
know everything, they know nothing. Here’s what’s good, here’s what’s
right. You’ll be successful and happy if you take on these
characteristics. Without these rules you’ll be bad or impulsive and
you’ll destroy your future. You may not be having fun but you’re doing
what’s important. We know best. And the kids come to believe that. As
the social psychologists have shown, in totalizing environments, that’s
often the result. They call it “identification with the oppressor.” Here
oppressor should be changed to authority. There is very, very strong
authority in these schools. The teachers are novice teachers, so they
get molded too. I don’t think you could take highly experienced
teachers—20 years of running a classroom—and put them into these schools
and have the same kind of experience. It’s a really interesting study
to see how both the teachers and the kids get acculturated.
This sent my mind leaping back to this excerpt from My Bondage and My Freedom by Frederick Douglass. Douglass has spoken previously in the book about his mistress Mrs. Auld, a woman whose first impulse when he is a child is to treat him as a worthwhile, human person. He finds her at first to be a warm-hearted woman, who even begins to teach him to read. But that is quickly put to a stop as she is taught to be a proper slave owner. Later he reflects on their altered relationship and on the nature of slavery itself.
I had been cheated. I saw through the attempt to keep me in ignorance; I saw that slaveholders would have gladly made me believe that they were merely acting under the authority of God in making a slave of me and in making slaves of others.... The smiles of my mistress could not remove the deep sorrow that dwelt in my young bosom. Indeed these, in time, came only to deepen my sorrow. She had changed, and the reader will see that I had changed too. We were both victims to the same overshadowing evil-- she as mistress, I as slave.
This was one of Douglass's genius insights-- slavery and the treatment of people as being Less Than was not only bad for the people so treated, but also bad for those who deliver the treatment. Mrs. Auld had to become less human, less decent, less Christian, in order to treat her slaves as less worthy, just plain less than.
So in reading the Edushyster interview, it's heartbreaking to see not just the students being treated as if they are Less Than, but the entire new generation of young teachers being taught to do it.
Dammit. Life is just too short, way too short, to make such a large, concerted effort to crush every bit of young independence under institutional heels. Yes, with Goodman I share a certain affection for order and stability, and I know how helpful and powerful that atmosphere or order and stability can be in a classroom. But this goes way beyond that.
This is demanding that the students give in, that they submit to those who are More Than they are-- more wise, more powerful, more important, more worthy of independence. This is not about learning self-control-- it's about learning to surrender all control of self to those who are More Than. And you cannot learn any of that without also absorbing the message that you are Less Than.
What earthly good is that? What remotely justifiable goal is furthered by taking a bunch of children and beating them down, of forcing them to base every moment of their day around the understanding that they are Less Than, that their impulses, ideas, goals, desires are unworthy of being a basis on which they make decisions for themselves-- even decisions as small and simple as when to sharpen a pencil or where to put their hands?
This is not just bad education policy. This is morally indefensible. And I cannot even imagine how it must warp the professional and personal ethics of teachers in this building to justify their actions to themselves. Not even "we are just following orders" would be enough to keep this behavior from cramping and twisting a soul.
There's only one possible way to self-justify the no-excuses approach, and that is to accept the Less Than narrative. These children aren't capable of more civilized behavior. We must keep them under our thumbs because otherwise they will just succumb to savage impulses. The only way they can achieve higher order thinking and development is if we guide and control them every step of the way. These are, of course, arguments that were used to justify slavery. Because when we institutionalize the idea that certain people are Less Than, there are very few limits to how low we will stoop.
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Wednesday, September 10, 2014
What Should Arne Do?
Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has taken plenty of grief.
He has been criticized by folks on the right who believe he is, at the very least, a hood ornament on the Great Studebaker of Federal Intrusion into education. He has been criticized by folks on the left for being the faceplate on the great machine that is dismantling the US public school system.
Arne is easy to pick apart (I should know-- I've done it here, here, here and here, to give just a few examples), and he invites it with such fumbling footinmouthery like his classic slam on white suburban moms. He buddied up with reformsters like John White and Kevin Huffman, cheered for the winners of the Vergara anti-tenure lawsuit, and called Hurrican Katrina a great step forward for New Orleans.
And so the pile gets bigger and bigger. The NEA called for his resignation. The AFT voted that he be sent to his room to think about what he's done. Conservative CCSS boosters blame his intervention for damaging the Common Core brand. A soon-to-be-published Vanderbilt Law Review article asserts that the signature NCLB waiver program is illegal. NEA president-elect Lily E. Garcia characterized him as well-meaning, sincere, and dead wrong about just about everything. And that's about the nicest thing anyone has had to say about him in a while.
We've hammered Duncan for what he's gotten wrong. But as teachers, we know that you don't foster improvement by focusing on the negatives. Can we come up with some suggestions for what Duncan should do? Let me give it a shot with the following suggestions.
Meditate in Pursuit of Personal Integration
I'm not kidding. There has to be a serious discontinuity somewhere inside Duncan's head, because one of his defining characteristics as Secretary of Education is that the words that come out of his mouth and the policies that come out of his office don't match.
It has been that way since Day One. Take this quote from his confirmation hearing:
I think the more our schools become community centers, the more they become centers of community and family life, the better our children can do.
There is more in a similar vein. And an admirable vein it is, too, but Duncan's office has been a huge booster of the charter school movement, including the kind of charter-on-steroid action we're seeing places like New Orleans and Newark, the kind of chartery "save kids from their zip code" systems that actively oppose neighborhood and community schools.
Duncan's entire tenure has been more of the same. He uses rhetoric about how teachers deserve more respect and better pay, but he also applauds the death of tenure in California and suggests that educational mediocrity is enabled by the rampant lying of educators. He speaks about the importance of listening to teachers, but he rarely encounters a teacher who hasn't been vetted and screened. Then we have his recent discovery that tests are being over-emphasized in schools across America, a shocking development that he deplores without any recognition that such test reverence is a direct result of his own policies.
When I look at the huge Antarctic-sized gulf between Duncan's words and his actions, I can only conclude one of the following is true
1) He is dissembling in the political style
2) He doesn't understand the effects of administration policies
3) He has in his head a powerful barrier against cognitive dissonance
4) He is privately wracked with existential angst
5) He is full of bovine-issued fertilizer
I'll admit that some of these are more likely than others. But whatever the case, Duncan needs to align his words and his policies, because either his policies are a betrayal of his principles, or his words are lies. Either way, he needs to check himself. As a nation, we need to have an honest conversation about the policies the government is actually pursuing, not a pleasing word-massage that has no connection to reality. The honest conversation might not be fun or pleasant, but we still need to have it.
Do the Right Thing
The best positive steps for Duncan to take would be to actually reverse the destructive policies that he has been pursuing. I know high government officials rarely write their own speeches, so let me offer a rough draft that Duncan can feel free to use:
Four years ago, with the best of intentions, we embarked on an attempt to rescue American education from the flawed policies of No Child Left Behind and renew our commitment to our children's education. In pursuing those worthy goals, we made mistakes. I stand before you today to announce that we are prepared to admit those errors and correct our course.
We believed in the promise of charter schools, but we have seen that, unregulated and unmonitored, charters have become a means of bilking taxpayers and destroying communities. We will require all states to return to tight caps on charter creation until we can develop policies that will allow charters to be developed responsibly, and not as get rich quick schemes for educational amateurs.
We believed that the development of national standards would bring consistency to our schools and economies of scale to the educational marketplace, which would in turn make our nation's school system more efficient and economical. We can now see that no such thing occured. One size does not fit all, and the profit motive has no place in the classroom. As of today, we are withdrawing our support for any sort of national standards movement that does not come from the nation's schools themselves.
We believed in the value of testing as a way of measuring educational progress. We have come to understand that tests provide a poor measure of the rich educational experiences we desire for all our children, and that our demand that tests be central to all aspects of education has simply warped and twisted the fabric of American schools. As of today, we will remove all federal standardized testing requirements, and we will ensure that such tests will never be used to evaluate students, teachers or schools ever again.
We recognize at last that the problems of poverty-strained schools cannot be solved by tests, attempts to shuffle teachers around, additional bureaucracy, and an infusion of untrained teacher temps. The solution for these schools is to work for long-term solutions to the problems of poverty, and, in the short term, blunt those effects by making sure that economic and educational resources are directed to those schools that cannot secure such resources on their own.
Finally, we pledge to take a step back and to trust the people of states and local school districts to make wise and well-informed decisions about their own education. We will listen to teachers and local officials.In the coming year, we will not issue a single educational edict from DC except to implement the changes that I have just described. And we will not take a single meeting with corporate executives from any education-based businesses. If they want your business, if they want to exert influence over you, they must come to you-- not to us. We are here to help you. We are going to stop telling you what to do.
See how easy that is? Duncan could be a hero tomorrow. If he needs a quiet place to think it over and get in touch with his better side, I have a spare bedroom and I live right next to a river. He's welcome any time, and I promise not to say a single mean thing to him while he's here.
Originally posted at View from the Cheap Seats
He has been criticized by folks on the right who believe he is, at the very least, a hood ornament on the Great Studebaker of Federal Intrusion into education. He has been criticized by folks on the left for being the faceplate on the great machine that is dismantling the US public school system.
Arne is easy to pick apart (I should know-- I've done it here, here, here and here, to give just a few examples), and he invites it with such fumbling footinmouthery like his classic slam on white suburban moms. He buddied up with reformsters like John White and Kevin Huffman, cheered for the winners of the Vergara anti-tenure lawsuit, and called Hurrican Katrina a great step forward for New Orleans.
And so the pile gets bigger and bigger. The NEA called for his resignation. The AFT voted that he be sent to his room to think about what he's done. Conservative CCSS boosters blame his intervention for damaging the Common Core brand. A soon-to-be-published Vanderbilt Law Review article asserts that the signature NCLB waiver program is illegal. NEA president-elect Lily E. Garcia characterized him as well-meaning, sincere, and dead wrong about just about everything. And that's about the nicest thing anyone has had to say about him in a while.
We've hammered Duncan for what he's gotten wrong. But as teachers, we know that you don't foster improvement by focusing on the negatives. Can we come up with some suggestions for what Duncan should do? Let me give it a shot with the following suggestions.
Meditate in Pursuit of Personal Integration
I'm not kidding. There has to be a serious discontinuity somewhere inside Duncan's head, because one of his defining characteristics as Secretary of Education is that the words that come out of his mouth and the policies that come out of his office don't match.
It has been that way since Day One. Take this quote from his confirmation hearing:
I think the more our schools become community centers, the more they become centers of community and family life, the better our children can do.
There is more in a similar vein. And an admirable vein it is, too, but Duncan's office has been a huge booster of the charter school movement, including the kind of charter-on-steroid action we're seeing places like New Orleans and Newark, the kind of chartery "save kids from their zip code" systems that actively oppose neighborhood and community schools.
Duncan's entire tenure has been more of the same. He uses rhetoric about how teachers deserve more respect and better pay, but he also applauds the death of tenure in California and suggests that educational mediocrity is enabled by the rampant lying of educators. He speaks about the importance of listening to teachers, but he rarely encounters a teacher who hasn't been vetted and screened. Then we have his recent discovery that tests are being over-emphasized in schools across America, a shocking development that he deplores without any recognition that such test reverence is a direct result of his own policies.
When I look at the huge Antarctic-sized gulf between Duncan's words and his actions, I can only conclude one of the following is true
1) He is dissembling in the political style
2) He doesn't understand the effects of administration policies
3) He has in his head a powerful barrier against cognitive dissonance
4) He is privately wracked with existential angst
5) He is full of bovine-issued fertilizer
I'll admit that some of these are more likely than others. But whatever the case, Duncan needs to align his words and his policies, because either his policies are a betrayal of his principles, or his words are lies. Either way, he needs to check himself. As a nation, we need to have an honest conversation about the policies the government is actually pursuing, not a pleasing word-massage that has no connection to reality. The honest conversation might not be fun or pleasant, but we still need to have it.
Do the Right Thing
The best positive steps for Duncan to take would be to actually reverse the destructive policies that he has been pursuing. I know high government officials rarely write their own speeches, so let me offer a rough draft that Duncan can feel free to use:
Four years ago, with the best of intentions, we embarked on an attempt to rescue American education from the flawed policies of No Child Left Behind and renew our commitment to our children's education. In pursuing those worthy goals, we made mistakes. I stand before you today to announce that we are prepared to admit those errors and correct our course.
We believed in the promise of charter schools, but we have seen that, unregulated and unmonitored, charters have become a means of bilking taxpayers and destroying communities. We will require all states to return to tight caps on charter creation until we can develop policies that will allow charters to be developed responsibly, and not as get rich quick schemes for educational amateurs.
We believed that the development of national standards would bring consistency to our schools and economies of scale to the educational marketplace, which would in turn make our nation's school system more efficient and economical. We can now see that no such thing occured. One size does not fit all, and the profit motive has no place in the classroom. As of today, we are withdrawing our support for any sort of national standards movement that does not come from the nation's schools themselves.
We believed in the value of testing as a way of measuring educational progress. We have come to understand that tests provide a poor measure of the rich educational experiences we desire for all our children, and that our demand that tests be central to all aspects of education has simply warped and twisted the fabric of American schools. As of today, we will remove all federal standardized testing requirements, and we will ensure that such tests will never be used to evaluate students, teachers or schools ever again.
We recognize at last that the problems of poverty-strained schools cannot be solved by tests, attempts to shuffle teachers around, additional bureaucracy, and an infusion of untrained teacher temps. The solution for these schools is to work for long-term solutions to the problems of poverty, and, in the short term, blunt those effects by making sure that economic and educational resources are directed to those schools that cannot secure such resources on their own.
Finally, we pledge to take a step back and to trust the people of states and local school districts to make wise and well-informed decisions about their own education. We will listen to teachers and local officials.In the coming year, we will not issue a single educational edict from DC except to implement the changes that I have just described. And we will not take a single meeting with corporate executives from any education-based businesses. If they want your business, if they want to exert influence over you, they must come to you-- not to us. We are here to help you. We are going to stop telling you what to do.
See how easy that is? Duncan could be a hero tomorrow. If he needs a quiet place to think it over and get in touch with his better side, I have a spare bedroom and I live right next to a river. He's welcome any time, and I promise not to say a single mean thing to him while he's here.
Originally posted at View from the Cheap Seats
Zephyr Teachout's Thank You Letter
Further proof that Teachout gets it. Here's the email that arrived today (I gave money to the campaign, so I'm on the list). I'm just putting it here in its entirety because it's a class act. And if you'd like a nice analysis of the results, read this piece for the New Yorker.
Thank you.
Last night, we exceeded all of the pundits expectations, keeping Andrew Cuomo at barely 60% of the vote, and won 24 New York counties outright. In three months, with no money for TV or even mailers, we punctured the illusion that Andrew Cuomo is a popular incumbent Democrat.
Tim and I want to thank the teachers and parents, the fracktivists, the immigrant rights activists, the public employees, and all New Yorkers who shared our vision.
You have been heard.
You were part of a people-led, inspirational campaign, waged against all odds against an establishment prince. And by doing so, you empowered countless others to see possibilities where they might only have seen obstacles.
We are going to take a few days off, but we are not done. This campaign demonstrated the rise of a new force in our politics, the rise of fearless 21st century Democrats who believe in #AllofUs, and are willing to fight for it.
To fight, we need to shed our fear. When the Moreland scandal broke, the silence among Democratic elected officials was striking, but not surprising. Albany is in the grips of politics of fear.
I think what we've shown here is that its alright to speak up. Democrats don't need to be scared anymore. When the Governor is pushing tax cuts for the wealthy or trying to cut education, the Mayor and other leaders ought to stand up and call him out. It can't just be the advocacy groups --- elected officials have a duty to criticize the de facto leader of the Party when that leader is no longer advancing our values.
We ran to win, but this campaign was also about speaking truth to power. Our state hasn't seen more truth delivered to power since the outbreak of the Occupy movement three years ago. Listening to you, it's clear that we've broken the logjam. I can't wait to see how it all unfolds now that so many have found their voice.
Consider the wins we've achieved since we started, three months ago:
Some people have asked me why I decided to run, and when I made that decision. It happened when we saw that no public campaign financing was passed in Albany. "They" said no one would care about it, but in the face of what just happened, I want all incumbents to understand there is a big electoral cost to refusing to push for publicly funded elections.
I know I will not rest until we ban fracking, fully commit to renewables, end common core and fully commit to full public funding of schools, end anti-immigrant fear and commit to New York state citizenship, and end tax giveaways to the rich and fully commit to a more equal, open democracy and economy. I won't be satisfied until we start breaking up the new monopolies that are choking our economy and democracy.
We have seen through this campaign that the political system does respond to pressure. We have seen that when you raise the issues, when you speak truth to power, when you rely on honest and grass roots democracy, the system moves. These must be our principles going forward. We have a come a long way in this campaign, we did not make it to the top of the mountain, but together we all see the bright light that guides our vision. As I said at the WFP convention, quoting Maya Angelou: "We must confess that we are the possible."
The possibilities are just opening up.
Again -- thank you.
Zephyr Teachout
Thank you.
Last night, we exceeded all of the pundits expectations, keeping Andrew Cuomo at barely 60% of the vote, and won 24 New York counties outright. In three months, with no money for TV or even mailers, we punctured the illusion that Andrew Cuomo is a popular incumbent Democrat.
Tim and I want to thank the teachers and parents, the fracktivists, the immigrant rights activists, the public employees, and all New Yorkers who shared our vision.
You have been heard.
You were part of a people-led, inspirational campaign, waged against all odds against an establishment prince. And by doing so, you empowered countless others to see possibilities where they might only have seen obstacles.
We are going to take a few days off, but we are not done. This campaign demonstrated the rise of a new force in our politics, the rise of fearless 21st century Democrats who believe in #AllofUs, and are willing to fight for it.
To fight, we need to shed our fear. When the Moreland scandal broke, the silence among Democratic elected officials was striking, but not surprising. Albany is in the grips of politics of fear.
I think what we've shown here is that its alright to speak up. Democrats don't need to be scared anymore. When the Governor is pushing tax cuts for the wealthy or trying to cut education, the Mayor and other leaders ought to stand up and call him out. It can't just be the advocacy groups --- elected officials have a duty to criticize the de facto leader of the Party when that leader is no longer advancing our values.
We ran to win, but this campaign was also about speaking truth to power. Our state hasn't seen more truth delivered to power since the outbreak of the Occupy movement three years ago. Listening to you, it's clear that we've broken the logjam. I can't wait to see how it all unfolds now that so many have found their voice.
Consider the wins we've achieved since we started, three months ago:
- Two days ago, for the first time ever--in a campaign stop--Governor Cuomo talked about income inequality and why it is a critical issue.
- Because of this campaign, Andrew Cuomo has promised to back Democrats for the State Senate, and pass a comprehensive public campaign finance system. We can continue to use our voices to hold him to that promise.
- Andrew Cuomo was boasting in campaign literature that he had increased school funding.
- Yesterday, at the polling booth, after years of silence, Andrew Cuomo promised to visit a Pennsylvania fracking site. We can continue to use our voices to hold him to that promise.
- We made cable mergers and monopolization a campaign issue.
- Because of our campaign, Governor Cuomo is now actively campaigning on the Dream Act and has said he will put his full weight behind it. This commitment would not have happened without our campaign.
- We held the line that we will not compromise on a woman’s right to choose. Governor Cuomo has followed our lead and committed to actually fight to win the full 10 point plan. We can continue to use our voices to hold him to that promise.
- We took an unequivocal stance in support of marijuana decriminalization. In response to our campaign, Governor Cuomo has committed that he too will support marijuana decriminalization.
Some people have asked me why I decided to run, and when I made that decision. It happened when we saw that no public campaign financing was passed in Albany. "They" said no one would care about it, but in the face of what just happened, I want all incumbents to understand there is a big electoral cost to refusing to push for publicly funded elections.
I know I will not rest until we ban fracking, fully commit to renewables, end common core and fully commit to full public funding of schools, end anti-immigrant fear and commit to New York state citizenship, and end tax giveaways to the rich and fully commit to a more equal, open democracy and economy. I won't be satisfied until we start breaking up the new monopolies that are choking our economy and democracy.
We have seen through this campaign that the political system does respond to pressure. We have seen that when you raise the issues, when you speak truth to power, when you rely on honest and grass roots democracy, the system moves. These must be our principles going forward. We have a come a long way in this campaign, we did not make it to the top of the mountain, but together we all see the bright light that guides our vision. As I said at the WFP convention, quoting Maya Angelou: "We must confess that we are the possible."
The possibilities are just opening up.
Again -- thank you.
Zephyr Teachout
Common Core 2.0?
Over at the Washington Post. Lindsey Layton is reporting on a survey by the Education Commission of the States about the Common Core. The ECS bills itself as a non-partisan research group, headed by a different governor each year, with a history stretching back to mid-sixties. They've produced a handy list that shows all the cool new names states have come up with for their states standards.
Layton posits that this is Common Core 2.0-- the same old wine in brand new skins. Nineteen states have found bold new ways to hide the fact that they are signed onto the Core Standards, because it turns out that-- gasp-- the Core have become political kryptonite (sorry about that, ex-future-President Jeb Bush).
An example of CCSS 2.0 in action
I can tell you a little about how this is playing out in Pennsylvania, because just this week, Governor Tom "Uphill Election Battle" Corbett issued a press release in which he sternly intones that he will continue on his nearly-completed mission to chase the Common Core out of the Keystone State.
“Though Common Core began as a state-led initiative to ensure our public schools met the educational standards needed in the 21st century economy, the process has been overly influenced by the federal government,” Gov. Corbett said. “Common Core has become nothing more than a top-down takeover of the education system. It is nothing more than Obamacare for education.”
Not entirely accurate history there, but when you're politically distancing yourself from something, you sometimes have to be both pro-active and retro-active. But fear not.
“Pennsylvania has a long tradition of local control of public schools,” Gov. Corbett continued. “Our children deserve every educational advantage, and I want to thank the educators and the State Board for their hard work in getting us to this point. I am now asking the State Board to continue the process we began at the start of my term and to ensure that any final influence of the national Common Core State Standards is eradicated from Pennsylvania.”
Yes, this process of eradicating the Core has been going on for three years now, I hear.
How has the separation been progressing?
It's true-- in PA we have been rigorously pursuing the Pennsylvania Core Standards (which, up until a year or two ago, were called the Pennsylvania Common Core Standards), which are totally different from the CCSS. Let's check some examples.
CC.1.2.11-12.A
Determine and analyze the relationship between two or more central ideas of a text, including the development and interaction of the central ideas; provide an objective summary of the test.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.2
Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.
Different as night and later that same night. (The PA Core standard is first there). Let's try again.
CC.1.2.11-12.E
Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the structure an author uses in his or her exposition or argument, including whether the structure makes points clear, convincing and engaging.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.5
Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the structure an author uses in his or her exposition or argument, including whether the structure makes points clear, convincing, and engaging.
If you want to play this game yourself, you can find the PA Core Standards here and the CCSS here.
What else have you got, Tom?
One of the fun things about declaring your state independent from the Common Core is that you can take credit for things you don't even have to do. "It's just standards, not a curriculum, and local control stays in place," is always fun as an apologia for the Core, but when you're pretending to dump the Core, you can declare that this represents a change.
It is important to note that Pennsylvania’s standards do not mandate curriculum, teaching methods, materials or instructional strategies to be used in the classroom. These decisions are made by local school officials in consultation with parents and the community.
See how cool that is? Instead of pretending that these are features of the Core, we can pretend that we are installing them as a change from the Core.
Testing?
In PA we are also refusing to go with a national test. It's worth noting that several years ago we were badly burned by an attempt to handle our standardized testing online. That week-long fiasco ought to be burned into the memories of at least a few Harrisburg bureaucrats.
So we take our own Keystone Exam, on paper. Now, where the Keystone comes from is a bit of a mystery. The official word is that it was produced by the PA Department of Education, and the data seems to come by way of Data Recognition Corporation.
Maybe we do create the tests in house. But I do know that I sat through a training in which the trainer used materials from the PARCC tests, and we were told, with a state ed department in the room, that the PARCC material would work fine for our training purposes. Not a surprise- if the PA Core standards are cloned from the CCSS, then the testing must follow the same pattern as PARCC or SBA.
Other things that aren't happening
Nobody from the state and nobody who watches the state on educational issues is telling local districts, "Just wait up until we can see what radical changes the governor is going to make to the standards."Nobody seems to think that we don't already know what we need to know to move forward. And nobody is saying, "Be careful not to look at any Common Core materials because they will be totally incompatible with the Pennsylvania standards."
Also, no threatening letters from Arne Duncan saying, "Youse guys are playing wit fire. Put down that eraser and rewrite pen, and just pick up the Core." No, nobody on the national scene seems to think that the Core's hard work is in jeopardy here in the Keystone State.
Does Common Core 2.0 work?
I cannot tell you how many of my conservative friends and acquaintances have been cyber-passing about copies of Corbett's message with their own cries of, "Hurray! At last the governor is going to do the right thing." He's taking heat from his own party for "undercutting sound policy" So far I've seen no analysis to suggest that he's getting a boost from this, but Corbett is an incumbent whose prospects are not great for re-election. Now he's become one more example of how running from the Core-- sort of-- is becoming a popular election strategy.
Pennsylvania is just one example of this sort of shenanigans in action. The moral of the story--as I've told my conservative friends-- is read the fine print. Putting new lipstick on a pig is no more transformative than the original coat of Revlon was. Do not become distracted by an argument about the relative merits of Midnight Blue and Rapscallion Red; just check to see if the beast oinks.
It probably will. Common Core 2.0 will still eventually find its way to a platter where, apple in its mouth, it will be far more at home by a relaxing beach party than in any of America's schools.
Layton posits that this is Common Core 2.0-- the same old wine in brand new skins. Nineteen states have found bold new ways to hide the fact that they are signed onto the Core Standards, because it turns out that-- gasp-- the Core have become political kryptonite (sorry about that, ex-future-President Jeb Bush).
An example of CCSS 2.0 in action
I can tell you a little about how this is playing out in Pennsylvania, because just this week, Governor Tom "Uphill Election Battle" Corbett issued a press release in which he sternly intones that he will continue on his nearly-completed mission to chase the Common Core out of the Keystone State.
“Though Common Core began as a state-led initiative to ensure our public schools met the educational standards needed in the 21st century economy, the process has been overly influenced by the federal government,” Gov. Corbett said. “Common Core has become nothing more than a top-down takeover of the education system. It is nothing more than Obamacare for education.”
Not entirely accurate history there, but when you're politically distancing yourself from something, you sometimes have to be both pro-active and retro-active. But fear not.
“Pennsylvania has a long tradition of local control of public schools,” Gov. Corbett continued. “Our children deserve every educational advantage, and I want to thank the educators and the State Board for their hard work in getting us to this point. I am now asking the State Board to continue the process we began at the start of my term and to ensure that any final influence of the national Common Core State Standards is eradicated from Pennsylvania.”
Yes, this process of eradicating the Core has been going on for three years now, I hear.
How has the separation been progressing?
It's true-- in PA we have been rigorously pursuing the Pennsylvania Core Standards (which, up until a year or two ago, were called the Pennsylvania Common Core Standards), which are totally different from the CCSS. Let's check some examples.
CC.1.2.11-12.A
Determine and analyze the relationship between two or more central ideas of a text, including the development and interaction of the central ideas; provide an objective summary of the test.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.2
Determine two or more central ideas of a text and analyze their development over the course of the text, including how they interact and build on one another to provide a complex analysis; provide an objective summary of the text.
Different as night and later that same night. (The PA Core standard is first there). Let's try again.
CC.1.2.11-12.E
Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the structure an author uses in his or her exposition or argument, including whether the structure makes points clear, convincing and engaging.
CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.11-12.5
Analyze and evaluate the effectiveness of the structure an author uses in his or her exposition or argument, including whether the structure makes points clear, convincing, and engaging.
If you want to play this game yourself, you can find the PA Core Standards here and the CCSS here.
What else have you got, Tom?
One of the fun things about declaring your state independent from the Common Core is that you can take credit for things you don't even have to do. "It's just standards, not a curriculum, and local control stays in place," is always fun as an apologia for the Core, but when you're pretending to dump the Core, you can declare that this represents a change.
It is important to note that Pennsylvania’s standards do not mandate curriculum, teaching methods, materials or instructional strategies to be used in the classroom. These decisions are made by local school officials in consultation with parents and the community.
See how cool that is? Instead of pretending that these are features of the Core, we can pretend that we are installing them as a change from the Core.
Testing?
In PA we are also refusing to go with a national test. It's worth noting that several years ago we were badly burned by an attempt to handle our standardized testing online. That week-long fiasco ought to be burned into the memories of at least a few Harrisburg bureaucrats.
So we take our own Keystone Exam, on paper. Now, where the Keystone comes from is a bit of a mystery. The official word is that it was produced by the PA Department of Education, and the data seems to come by way of Data Recognition Corporation.
Maybe we do create the tests in house. But I do know that I sat through a training in which the trainer used materials from the PARCC tests, and we were told, with a state ed department in the room, that the PARCC material would work fine for our training purposes. Not a surprise- if the PA Core standards are cloned from the CCSS, then the testing must follow the same pattern as PARCC or SBA.
Other things that aren't happening
Nobody from the state and nobody who watches the state on educational issues is telling local districts, "Just wait up until we can see what radical changes the governor is going to make to the standards."Nobody seems to think that we don't already know what we need to know to move forward. And nobody is saying, "Be careful not to look at any Common Core materials because they will be totally incompatible with the Pennsylvania standards."
Also, no threatening letters from Arne Duncan saying, "Youse guys are playing wit fire. Put down that eraser and rewrite pen, and just pick up the Core." No, nobody on the national scene seems to think that the Core's hard work is in jeopardy here in the Keystone State.
Does Common Core 2.0 work?
I cannot tell you how many of my conservative friends and acquaintances have been cyber-passing about copies of Corbett's message with their own cries of, "Hurray! At last the governor is going to do the right thing." He's taking heat from his own party for "undercutting sound policy" So far I've seen no analysis to suggest that he's getting a boost from this, but Corbett is an incumbent whose prospects are not great for re-election. Now he's become one more example of how running from the Core-- sort of-- is becoming a popular election strategy.
Pennsylvania is just one example of this sort of shenanigans in action. The moral of the story--as I've told my conservative friends-- is read the fine print. Putting new lipstick on a pig is no more transformative than the original coat of Revlon was. Do not become distracted by an argument about the relative merits of Midnight Blue and Rapscallion Red; just check to see if the beast oinks.
It probably will. Common Core 2.0 will still eventually find its way to a platter where, apple in its mouth, it will be far more at home by a relaxing beach party than in any of America's schools.
Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Arne Takes Search for Clues on Road
Arne Duncan took a three-or-so day swing through the south, and along the way her reminded us about the many things he doesn't really get. Let's take a look at what comes up in coverage by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Not Answering Questions
AJC.com reported that in a meeting with a small, select audience, Arne was asked an excellent question by a student:
Noting how often Duncan cited the critical need for “effective teachers” during the roundtable, the student asked, “What does that really mean? How do we define effective teaching?”
Arne's answer included the observation that teaching is hard. Then he moved on to the notion that it involved head and heart. If you teach chemistry, you need to know stuff about it, he noted. But he also noted that the teacher who most "impacted" (gah) his life knew stuff, but cared about him. Did Arne address how the various forms of teacher evaluation required by the DOE include heart? Did he explain that Washington State lost its waiver because its teacher evaluation system did not properly evaluate the heart of the teachers? Sadly, Arne veered off from that to the old talking point of multiple measures, but did not explain which of the multiple measures might be useful for determining how much heart the tin teachers of the education forest are displaying.
Mirroring Students
No talking point tour would be complete without a mention of how the teaching force does not mirror the majority-minority of our teacher population. So Arne got that one out there.
A student asked how we can get more black and latino men to pick up the challenge, and Arne worked his way sideways into the real answer, which is that we don't need to up recruiting-- we need to improve retention.
What would keep more non-white male teachers in the field? More money isn't really the problem, says Arne. It's mentors, support and good administrators. Might be interesting to consider how much "good support" is a function of fully funding certain schools, and how much retaining good administrators might also be connected to schools that have enough resources for a leader to feel like she could do her job. But Arne's not going there. Instead, he's going to blame colleges that deliver unprepared teachers to the classroom (but he's NOT going to call out certain alternative programs that deliver "teachers" with only a few weeks of training under their belts).
Credits
“You give me the poorest kids in the toughest community, put them in a great early childhood program, great elementary and middle schools and great high schools with AP courses, and I am very optimistic about that child’s chances in life,” he said.
Give him credit for staying the course. Poverty is cured by pre-K education and lots of AP classes. It's as simple as that.
Duncan rued the lack of urgency around education, starting with a Congress that treats education as an expense rather than an investment.
I'll give him credit for this. That's actually a decent line. And I also rue the lack of urgency around education, because it leads to the notion that we might as well let a bunch of amateurs tinker around with it.
Just Plain Wrong
The AJC obligingly buries Arne's dumbest statements far down the article.
“As a nation, we are going to educate our way to a better economy. Companies are going to go to where the skilled workers are. Hopefully, it is here in the United States.” If not, he said, America will lose skilled jobs to India, China or Korea.
Really? So, the loss of jobs to India and China is not about their workers great skill in willingly accepting teeny-tiny wages for work in unregulated industrial sites? Again, kudos for the consistency involved in insisting that having more trained and educated people in this country will magically cause jobs to appear. Because everyone who knows an American in their twenties has heard the heartwarming story of how college graduates over the past several years have walked out into a world of employers saying, "What!? You have a college degree?!! Wait just a second while we create a job just for you!!"
Then someone asked what a young teacher (why "young"? I have no idea) should do when confronted with students operating below grade level. Can you tell what's special about Arne's answer?
“A lot of kids below grade level haven’t been challenged in the past. Having high standards for kids who are one to two years behind is exactly what they need. They need more time, they need after-school programs, they need work on Saturday and Sunday and they need summers. But if you have a class of 25 kids and 17 of them two or three years behind and that is what you are getting every single year, you have to look downriver.”
No, it's not that he proposes a bunch of bogus explanations for why the child is behind. Because, yes, students who have trouble learning simply need to be pushed harder. Also, students who are short need to be challenged to grow taller-- maybe put their meals on the top shelf of a bookshelf. And when faced with something that's hard for them, who doesn't dream of devoting all their spare time to doing it some more?
But no-- it's none of that. What's special about the answer is that it doesn't actually answer the question at all. When you have students are behind, go look at their previous teachers. Maybe give 'em the stinkeye. Because that will totally fix the students' current academic problems.
It may be that Arne, as NEA-president-elect Lily Garcia suggests, sincere and well-meaning, but he's so intensely and consistently wrong. Congratulations, Atlanta.
Not Answering Questions
AJC.com reported that in a meeting with a small, select audience, Arne was asked an excellent question by a student:
Noting how often Duncan cited the critical need for “effective teachers” during the roundtable, the student asked, “What does that really mean? How do we define effective teaching?”
Arne's answer included the observation that teaching is hard. Then he moved on to the notion that it involved head and heart. If you teach chemistry, you need to know stuff about it, he noted. But he also noted that the teacher who most "impacted" (gah) his life knew stuff, but cared about him. Did Arne address how the various forms of teacher evaluation required by the DOE include heart? Did he explain that Washington State lost its waiver because its teacher evaluation system did not properly evaluate the heart of the teachers? Sadly, Arne veered off from that to the old talking point of multiple measures, but did not explain which of the multiple measures might be useful for determining how much heart the tin teachers of the education forest are displaying.
Mirroring Students
No talking point tour would be complete without a mention of how the teaching force does not mirror the majority-minority of our teacher population. So Arne got that one out there.
A student asked how we can get more black and latino men to pick up the challenge, and Arne worked his way sideways into the real answer, which is that we don't need to up recruiting-- we need to improve retention.
What would keep more non-white male teachers in the field? More money isn't really the problem, says Arne. It's mentors, support and good administrators. Might be interesting to consider how much "good support" is a function of fully funding certain schools, and how much retaining good administrators might also be connected to schools that have enough resources for a leader to feel like she could do her job. But Arne's not going there. Instead, he's going to blame colleges that deliver unprepared teachers to the classroom (but he's NOT going to call out certain alternative programs that deliver "teachers" with only a few weeks of training under their belts).
Credits
“You give me the poorest kids in the toughest community, put them in a great early childhood program, great elementary and middle schools and great high schools with AP courses, and I am very optimistic about that child’s chances in life,” he said.
Give him credit for staying the course. Poverty is cured by pre-K education and lots of AP classes. It's as simple as that.
Duncan rued the lack of urgency around education, starting with a Congress that treats education as an expense rather than an investment.
I'll give him credit for this. That's actually a decent line. And I also rue the lack of urgency around education, because it leads to the notion that we might as well let a bunch of amateurs tinker around with it.
Just Plain Wrong
The AJC obligingly buries Arne's dumbest statements far down the article.
“As a nation, we are going to educate our way to a better economy. Companies are going to go to where the skilled workers are. Hopefully, it is here in the United States.” If not, he said, America will lose skilled jobs to India, China or Korea.
Really? So, the loss of jobs to India and China is not about their workers great skill in willingly accepting teeny-tiny wages for work in unregulated industrial sites? Again, kudos for the consistency involved in insisting that having more trained and educated people in this country will magically cause jobs to appear. Because everyone who knows an American in their twenties has heard the heartwarming story of how college graduates over the past several years have walked out into a world of employers saying, "What!? You have a college degree?!! Wait just a second while we create a job just for you!!"
Then someone asked what a young teacher (why "young"? I have no idea) should do when confronted with students operating below grade level. Can you tell what's special about Arne's answer?
“A lot of kids below grade level haven’t been challenged in the past. Having high standards for kids who are one to two years behind is exactly what they need. They need more time, they need after-school programs, they need work on Saturday and Sunday and they need summers. But if you have a class of 25 kids and 17 of them two or three years behind and that is what you are getting every single year, you have to look downriver.”
No, it's not that he proposes a bunch of bogus explanations for why the child is behind. Because, yes, students who have trouble learning simply need to be pushed harder. Also, students who are short need to be challenged to grow taller-- maybe put their meals on the top shelf of a bookshelf. And when faced with something that's hard for them, who doesn't dream of devoting all their spare time to doing it some more?
But no-- it's none of that. What's special about the answer is that it doesn't actually answer the question at all. When you have students are behind, go look at their previous teachers. Maybe give 'em the stinkeye. Because that will totally fix the students' current academic problems.
It may be that Arne, as NEA-president-elect Lily Garcia suggests, sincere and well-meaning, but he's so intensely and consistently wrong. Congratulations, Atlanta.
Adding Insult to Injury
It's a fair question. There have been plenty of reform movement imposed on education-- why is the current wave of reforminess evoking such a severe reaction among teachers.
It's not just the injuries that NCLB, RttT and Waiverism (RttT Lite) have inflicted on education. It's the insults that have gone with them.
First, there's the professional insult.
Imagine a family member is having car trouble. You're a trained, experienced mechanic, but instead of asking you for help, your family member calls your sibling, the butterfingered one who has never done anything with a car but drive it. That's more than just a snub-- that's an insult to your professional skills.
That sort of insult has been the story of reforminess every step of the way. Really Important People decided that it was time to bring some standardization to education in this country, and so they made certain NOT to call on the large body of professional educators that work their whole lives in the field. And when teacher dared to speak up about brilliant reformy bits like the Common Core, they were dismissed, as if their professional acumen was a detriment to a discussion of American public education.
That's a huge professional insult. It's the kind of thing a wise person would never, ever do to someone whose cooperation they needed. Think about it. If you need your boss's support to accomplish a project at work, the last thing you ever say to your boss is, "No, I don't want any input from you. There's nothing you know that could possibly be any help." Lord, no. Even if you plan to ignore every piece of advice that boss gives, you still make your boss feel included in the process so that you can get the necessary cooperation.
So the professional insult of reform is not just a slam on teachers' ability and experience, but a sideways statement that teachers are not important to education, that their cooperation will not be needed to make all these nifty reformy gimcracks run properly.
So, a double professional insult.
Then, the personal insults.
But reformsters went beyond the professional insults. With the various "accountability" systems, they have repeatedly made one point abundantly clear-- they consider teachers to be terrible human beings.
Yes, it may look like teachers have devoted themselves to a relatively low-paying often thankless job because of some sort of devotion to the ideals of American public education, but reformsters know the truth-- teachers are lazy slackers who don't particularly like children and only took a teaching job because they felt certain they'd never have to actually do it.
Tenure, we are told, must be destroyed because teachers will only do a good job if they know that they can be fired at any time. If we have job security, the reasoning goes, we will kick back and do nothing, because apparently that is our aspiration as teachers.
High stakes testing must be used, we were told, because schools have been lying to parents about how well students are doing, because schools are all about being big lying liars.
The accountability systems are all built around one simple premise-- that teachers will not do a decent job unless threatened and co-erced and outed to the public through regular revealing of our scores. Without the threat of job loss and the prospect of public humiliation, teachers would crawl under their desks and let chaos reign. One can only conclude from these systems that teachers are the most indolent, incompetent, unmotivated, uncommitted people who ever walked the earth.
So there you have the source of the extra anger over and above the anger about the dismantling of American public education. But please keep in mind, teachers, that as we are being routinely insulted both professionally and personally, reformsters would like us to respond in dulcet, measured tones of civility. And please don't be insulting. That would be rude.
It's not just the injuries that NCLB, RttT and Waiverism (RttT Lite) have inflicted on education. It's the insults that have gone with them.
First, there's the professional insult.
Imagine a family member is having car trouble. You're a trained, experienced mechanic, but instead of asking you for help, your family member calls your sibling, the butterfingered one who has never done anything with a car but drive it. That's more than just a snub-- that's an insult to your professional skills.
That sort of insult has been the story of reforminess every step of the way. Really Important People decided that it was time to bring some standardization to education in this country, and so they made certain NOT to call on the large body of professional educators that work their whole lives in the field. And when teacher dared to speak up about brilliant reformy bits like the Common Core, they were dismissed, as if their professional acumen was a detriment to a discussion of American public education.
That's a huge professional insult. It's the kind of thing a wise person would never, ever do to someone whose cooperation they needed. Think about it. If you need your boss's support to accomplish a project at work, the last thing you ever say to your boss is, "No, I don't want any input from you. There's nothing you know that could possibly be any help." Lord, no. Even if you plan to ignore every piece of advice that boss gives, you still make your boss feel included in the process so that you can get the necessary cooperation.
So the professional insult of reform is not just a slam on teachers' ability and experience, but a sideways statement that teachers are not important to education, that their cooperation will not be needed to make all these nifty reformy gimcracks run properly.
So, a double professional insult.
Then, the personal insults.
But reformsters went beyond the professional insults. With the various "accountability" systems, they have repeatedly made one point abundantly clear-- they consider teachers to be terrible human beings.
Yes, it may look like teachers have devoted themselves to a relatively low-paying often thankless job because of some sort of devotion to the ideals of American public education, but reformsters know the truth-- teachers are lazy slackers who don't particularly like children and only took a teaching job because they felt certain they'd never have to actually do it.
Tenure, we are told, must be destroyed because teachers will only do a good job if they know that they can be fired at any time. If we have job security, the reasoning goes, we will kick back and do nothing, because apparently that is our aspiration as teachers.
High stakes testing must be used, we were told, because schools have been lying to parents about how well students are doing, because schools are all about being big lying liars.
The accountability systems are all built around one simple premise-- that teachers will not do a decent job unless threatened and co-erced and outed to the public through regular revealing of our scores. Without the threat of job loss and the prospect of public humiliation, teachers would crawl under their desks and let chaos reign. One can only conclude from these systems that teachers are the most indolent, incompetent, unmotivated, uncommitted people who ever walked the earth.
So there you have the source of the extra anger over and above the anger about the dismantling of American public education. But please keep in mind, teachers, that as we are being routinely insulted both professionally and personally, reformsters would like us to respond in dulcet, measured tones of civility. And please don't be insulting. That would be rude.
Monday, September 8, 2014
John Oliver, Student Debt, and the Edubiz Marketplace
I really have nothing to add to this, but boy do you need to see it.
.
Okay, I have one thing to add to it. He actually missed the part where the fed bailed out Corinthian.
This is what twisted market forces look like when they hit education. When the government sets up a system with the main function of using students to funnel loan dollars to education based businesses, this is what you get. You are using students as a conduit where they allow the feds and banks to channel big money to schools, generating a profit by charging the conduits interest! The providing of an education is completely secondary to the providing of a big payday for the corporations involved.
Is it going to look any different in the K-12 world? Of course not-- choice systems are a way to funnel tax dollars to edubiz corporations. The only difference is that we're not making the people who use vouchers pay for the privilege. Yet.
But the big fat student loan packages that are being shoved through various students in need are simply another form of voucher. If I were a voucher fan, drooling over the prospect of the day when I could shop around an all-charter, all-private world of schools, I would take a good long hard look at what's going on in the world of college finance today. And I would have a good hard think about what these kinds of market forces, twisted by crony capitalism and government money-funneling, would do in that world.
As we like to say in cyberia, if you aren't paying, then you're the product. And that means your interests are not paramount. But here we see revealed the great humungus fallacy in the idea of a free market school system. Fans of that systems imagine "I will be the customer, so I will be in charge." Brzzzzt! Wrong. The customers are the schools, profiting through you. You will have no more market power than a wallet.
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