One of the saddest days of my life was when my mother told me Superman did not exist... I was like what do you mean he's not real. And she thought I was crying because it's like Santa Claus is not real and I was crying because there was no one coming with enough power to save us.
-- Geoffrey Canada (Harlem Children's Zone)
That's the quote used to set up the 2010 edu-propa-mentary film Waiting for Superman. Like many parts of the education reform movement, it's an inspired piece of misdirection, because reformsters have not only been waiting for Superman-- they've been counting on him.
The Flint and Detroit school disasters have focused national attention on Michigan's emergency manager law. That law has been percolating in Michigan for years, heated up by the folks at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy , a right-wing thinky tank that loves the idea of privatizing government and which has been funded by the usual suspects (Koch, Walton, DeVos). They started pushing for a new, powerful Czar-ship in 2005 and finally sold it in 2012 (You can read a more detailed account of the rise of the Emergency Manager in Michigan in this piece.) The adoption of the law was contentious, but the leaders of Michigan were determined that Superman would come, and when he came, they would be ready.
Because the emergency manager model doesn't just believe that Superman is coming-- it depends on it. Superman is coming, and we must prepare a place for him.
The emergency management system we see in Michigan is just one way of expressing the Superman Theory of Change-- there are Supermen among us, and they could save the lesser beings, if only we stopped holding them back. Superman could bring us excellence, but the enemy of excellence is bureaucracy and regulation and rules and, most of all, democracy.
Counting on Superman has led to a variety of initiatives. The various attempts to break tenure (like Vergara and Reed before it) have come from the belief that when Superman takes over a school district, he must (like a CEO) be free to hire and fire based on what he alone can see with his super vision. (And schools would work so much better if every classroom was taught by another Superman).
The need to break unions is part of the same trend. Unions tie Superman down, forcing him to follow a bunch of stupid rules every time he wants to strap on his cape and take to the skies.
Likewise, government regulations get in Superman's way, keeping him earthbound in a web of red tape. For a Superman believer like Jeb! Bush, it makes perfect sense to say that Flint's crisis was caused by too much regulation-- if the Supermen who emergency manage Flint and Detroit hadn't had to deal with local and federal authorities at all, they would have avoided this whole mess.
Superman also needs to be un-hampered by "politics." Reed Hastings (Netflix) famously supported the idea of doing away with elected school boards entirely, because they are too unstable, too susceptible to the will and whims of the public. This distaste for politics gives, in hindsight, a new understanding to the common complaint from reformsters a few years ago, who kept bemoaning how ed reform ideas like Common Core were being tripped up by "politics," meaning, we can now see, that people were trying to keep Superman from exerting his full powers.
Hastings saw a solution, and he wasn't the only one, in the steady replacement of public schools and their kryptonite mountains of rules and unions and regulations and democracy-- replacing all that with charter schools which are, after all, simply schools run by Superman as a permanent emergency manager from Day One. You can see it on Eva Moskowitz's bemused face every time someone tries to argue with her- "Why are you questioning me? Do you not see that I am Superman, come to save the less fortunate? Nobody tells me what to do."
Superman will save our schools. Well, not all our schools. The Ubermensch is most needed where the cities and schools are filled with Those People, those Lesser Humans who can't be trusted to vote properly, act properly, learn properly, and certainly not to chart their own course properly. No, it is Superman's burden to rescue those lesser beings.
Of course, those lesser beings are rarely found in rich communities. No, it's the poor, the brown, the black that need to be rescued by Superman, and anybody who stands in Superman's way is a racist on the wrong side of the Civil Rights Issue of Our Time, which is, apparently, that poor black and brown people deserve the opportunity to be rescued by Superman. Of course Those People should be silently grateful that Superman will choose for them what choices they are desperately in need of, which often includes training in how to be properly compliant, how to be happy in their proper place.
So across the country, some are not just waiting for Superman, but counting on him. Banking on him. Michigan needs Superman to come run many of its cities ( particularly the mostly-black ones). States across the nation need Superman to come run their school districts (particularly the mostly not white ones). Superman somehow knows the secret of running a city. Superman somehow knows the secret of educating children.
Some folks, folks who have been paying attention, have seen this coming for a while. The old emergency manager model was like a nurse, a FEMA or Red Cross coming to town to help stem the tide of disaster until folks could get back on their feet. But the new emergency managers are here to deal with the crisis that never ends because the Crisis is democratic local control. The crisis is that The Wrong People are in charge. We can work the problem slowly by setting obstacles to keep The Wrong People from voting, but it's even easier in a city like Detroit or a school district like Philadelphia to simply remove the need to vote, to strip democratically elected officials of any actual power.
Peoples' willingness to go along with this is at times frightening. What is the Friedrich case except a group of teachers saying, "We really ought to know our place and stop tugging on Superman's cape." And what kind of dark road have we traveled down to find so many people who think that Donald Trump is the ubermensch who will Save America (from all those non-white Those People) ?
There are people who believe that Superman really will come to actually save us, that he will do Really Good Things and therefor it's okay to prepare his throne. We give up democracy for nothing but the very best reasons. Scratch an NEA or AFT leader and I believe you'll find a sincere argument about why the union must back Clinton no matter what union members think they want. Scratch some reformsters and you will find a sincere argument about how some of the poor and downtrodden really must be saved by Superman.
And some of the crisis are real (and some have been manufactured-- but are still real). Detroit was no sunny paradise before an emergency manager was installed. Democracy can indeed be twisted to create unjust, unfair, oppressive outcomes. Democracy is not magical.
But here's the thing. Democracy may not be perfect. But Superman is not real.
The Superman plan is no plan. The Superman plan is, "We have a bunch of problems and challenges, so we will install Superman as an emergency manager of the city or the school district, or we will build a school district from scratch with Superman as the CEO, or bring Superman into a turnaround school, and Superman will just fix all the problems. That's our plan!" That's not a plan.
Look at the Great Lakes Education Project (GLEP) slide show about Detroit schools. GLEP is a charter-favoring group started up by Dick and Betsy DeVos (Amway billionaires), and they are currently pushing for Detroit Public Schools to just be shut down. The slides collect a litany of DPS wrongdoing, screw-ups and failures, and it's a pretty horrifying litany. But at the end of this long list of DPS inadequacies, the "plan" is "close down DPS and replace it with a bunch of charters, so Superman can come save the children, somehow." That's not a plan, but it's not the first time a similar proposal has been made in this country.
Superman is not real. Superman is not waiting out there with deep, complete knowledge of how to make a school or a city successful and healthy in a single bound. I know this because if a Superman with such knowledge existed, we would have heard about him or her, and that ubermensch would be famous, and probably rich. Not only that, a real Superman with real answers would be convincing millions of people to follow those answers.
Superman is not real, but democracy is. The genius of this country has never been a single superbeing who provided the answer for an entire system or city or even corporation. There may have been people who were the face of a system or city or corporation, but they had an army of collaborators behind them, every single time. Superman comes equipped with powers bestowed at birth which he then proceeds to use as he best sees fit, but our nation's genius is to understand that the powers belong to the people, that government is created by the people, deriving its powers "from the consent of the governed." And, of course, there's that all people are created equal thing.
The people counting on Superman don't believe in democracy because they don't believe in equality. In their model of the universe, some people are just better than others. Some people should be in charge, and some people should not have a say. Some of the people who believe in Betterocracy or Rule by Superman are clearly evil and amoral, believing that it's okay to bilk those Lesser People for every penny ("If they didn't want to be treated like crap, they shouldn't have chosen to be poor.") Some Bettercrats are not destructive thieves; they feel an obligation to look out for the Lesser People, to provide those Lessers with what Superman decides they should have. These Bettercrats may even occasionally lessen the suffering in the world. But at the end of the day, they still believe that they are better than the poor and downtrodden, that they know best, that they are right to substitute their own voices and judgment for the voice and judgment of the people they take care of.
Because, after all, if Superman can come save the day, if Superman can replace mere mortal judgment with his own, if Superman can be given the freedom and power to take run a corporation or a school or an entire city, what better system could we have? Why simply wait for Superman when we can plow the road for him, remove the obstacles, silence the opponents (and for that matter the allies or beneficiaries) that might get in his way? Whether he has "emergency manager" on a business card or a big S on his chest, Superman will save the day.
They are counting on it.
Monday, January 25, 2016
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Transactions and Transformations
My wife is taking a professional development course this weekend, and one of her classmates (a football coach) brought up one the truly genius models of distinguishing between types of coaching. If you're active in the world of coaching, you may know these terms, but for the rest of us, let's talk about transactional and transformational coaching.
The transactional coach is trying to make a deal. The athlete has a skill, a power, a strength that the coach needs to win games, so the coach works hard to get that game-winning something out of the athlete. The work between athlete and coach is about developing a particular skill out of the athlete with the goal of wining. If the athlete loses the ability to produce, then the coach no longer needs the athlete, discards the athlete, replaces the athlete, moves on. If the athlete has no ability to produce, that athlete can ride the bench or just get off the team. If the athlete can't help get a W, the athlete is of no use to the transactional coach. For the transactional coach, the athlete is like a vending machine-- you put in money (time, attention) and out comes a treat (victory).
The transformational coach has a broader view. The transformational coach is there to transform the entire athlete, or as one site puts it "by giving individual consideration to all aspects of an athlete’s performance - skills and techniques, motivation and behavior, work ethic and sportsmanship - the transformational coach has the ability to positively affect, and to positively produce, the optimal sports performance of the entire team." The transformational coach looks to transform every athlete on the team (even those who cannot help get the W or have no future in athletics) into their best selves, to build up their strengths and overcome their weaknesses, and in the process teach them how to be their best selves not just in the midst of the contest, but in the larger world.
The transactional coach only needs to check the wins-losses numbers. The transformational coach looks at what kind of people the athletes are when they emerge from the program. For that same reason, it's very easy for a transactional coach to measure "success" with a clear, simple metric, while for the transformational coach, it's much harder to reduce "success" to a quick number.
And yet, most parents want their child to have a transformational coach, and most arguments about the value of athletics-- how it develops character, teaches life skills, strengthens athletes as people-- rest on the presence of a transformational coach.
The terminology was borrowed from the business world, and it transfers nicely to the classroom as well. Most of us went into teaching precisely because we imagined becoming transformational teachers, making a difference in students' lives by helping them become their best selves, helping them transform themselves into more fully whole and human persons.
But advocates of education reform have, intentionally or not, worked to redefine teachers as transactional coaches. We are supposed to be there just to get that good test score out of each kid. We should use test prep, rewards, threats-- whatever works to get the student to make the right marks on the Big Standardized Test so that we can have that easily measured, numerically-coded win. Charter schools have the additional freedom to sort students based on which ones can best complete the transaction and which ones need to be benched. And since the transaction is a fairly simple, we have no shortage of ideas about how to have it broken into short, simple competency-based transactions that can be handled by a computer.
Transactional coaching is simple, clear and can provide distinct short-term rewards. It is also narrow, shallow, and ultimately subordinates humanity and the value of individuals to an artificial and ultimately meaningless excuse for a life purpose. Transformational coaching is way to see the pursuit of athletic excellence as a means of pursuing human excellence and giving an athlete the tools to pursue whatever goals they might set for themselves. A transformational approach puts humanity at the center, setting goals that recognize higher values than the simple pursuits in front of us. A transactional approach sets up an artificial goal and holds it up as a god to be worshipped and pursued at the expense of any human beings who stand in the way. Can there be any doubt that education should be transformational?
The transactional coach is trying to make a deal. The athlete has a skill, a power, a strength that the coach needs to win games, so the coach works hard to get that game-winning something out of the athlete. The work between athlete and coach is about developing a particular skill out of the athlete with the goal of wining. If the athlete loses the ability to produce, then the coach no longer needs the athlete, discards the athlete, replaces the athlete, moves on. If the athlete has no ability to produce, that athlete can ride the bench or just get off the team. If the athlete can't help get a W, the athlete is of no use to the transactional coach. For the transactional coach, the athlete is like a vending machine-- you put in money (time, attention) and out comes a treat (victory).
The transformational coach has a broader view. The transformational coach is there to transform the entire athlete, or as one site puts it "by giving individual consideration to all aspects of an athlete’s performance - skills and techniques, motivation and behavior, work ethic and sportsmanship - the transformational coach has the ability to positively affect, and to positively produce, the optimal sports performance of the entire team." The transformational coach looks to transform every athlete on the team (even those who cannot help get the W or have no future in athletics) into their best selves, to build up their strengths and overcome their weaknesses, and in the process teach them how to be their best selves not just in the midst of the contest, but in the larger world.
The transactional coach only needs to check the wins-losses numbers. The transformational coach looks at what kind of people the athletes are when they emerge from the program. For that same reason, it's very easy for a transactional coach to measure "success" with a clear, simple metric, while for the transformational coach, it's much harder to reduce "success" to a quick number.
And yet, most parents want their child to have a transformational coach, and most arguments about the value of athletics-- how it develops character, teaches life skills, strengthens athletes as people-- rest on the presence of a transformational coach.
The terminology was borrowed from the business world, and it transfers nicely to the classroom as well. Most of us went into teaching precisely because we imagined becoming transformational teachers, making a difference in students' lives by helping them become their best selves, helping them transform themselves into more fully whole and human persons.
But advocates of education reform have, intentionally or not, worked to redefine teachers as transactional coaches. We are supposed to be there just to get that good test score out of each kid. We should use test prep, rewards, threats-- whatever works to get the student to make the right marks on the Big Standardized Test so that we can have that easily measured, numerically-coded win. Charter schools have the additional freedom to sort students based on which ones can best complete the transaction and which ones need to be benched. And since the transaction is a fairly simple, we have no shortage of ideas about how to have it broken into short, simple competency-based transactions that can be handled by a computer.
Transactional coaching is simple, clear and can provide distinct short-term rewards. It is also narrow, shallow, and ultimately subordinates humanity and the value of individuals to an artificial and ultimately meaningless excuse for a life purpose. Transformational coaching is way to see the pursuit of athletic excellence as a means of pursuing human excellence and giving an athlete the tools to pursue whatever goals they might set for themselves. A transformational approach puts humanity at the center, setting goals that recognize higher values than the simple pursuits in front of us. A transactional approach sets up an artificial goal and holds it up as a god to be worshipped and pursued at the expense of any human beings who stand in the way. Can there be any doubt that education should be transformational?
ICYMI: This Week's Reading Stuff
No blizzard here, but if you are socked in, here are some things to read while you're waiting for the world to dig itself out. And for the rest of us, just some Sunday reading for our cup of cocoa.
If You're a Teacher, Say Please and Thank You
Ray Salazar with an absolutelyl bang-on response to the scourge of no-nonsense compliance demanding being advocated by some reformsters these days.
No, My Kindergartner Will Not Be Doing Y0our Homework Assignment
Okay, it's possible that you haven't missed this because it's been heavily liked and read on the book of face, but just in case, you need to catch Cara Paiuk's parental take on the ridiculousness that is academic homework for kindergartners.
Will Ethical Walls Protect Education Journalism from Billionaire Influence
If you are Eli Broad and you propose to buy half of the L.A. school district for fun and profit, it makes sense to buy a big L.A. newspaper so you can get the kind of favorable coverage you need to sell your rather audacious and horrifying idea. Anthony Cody collects and sums up the best explanations of why it's a terrible idea.
ESSA Answers
Amid the many, many posts on Diane Ravitch's blog is a unrolling-in-segments series offering answers to questions about ESSA from Lamar Alexander's chief of staff. Here's what DC thinks they did.
Eva Goes To Court
John Merrow's Eva Moskowitx interview was part of the Very Bad Month that showed many cracks in the Success Academy facade, so it seems only fair that he should report on the legal trouble she now faces for her failure to properly educate students with special needs.
The Truth about Flint
This Salon piece from Paul Rosenberg isn't just about Flint-- it looks more thoroughly at the systematic process of stripping democracy from poor, black Americans. His one mistake is ascribing the process strictly to the GOP, but otherwise this is a thorough and thoughtful look at the trend threatening US democracy.
If You're a Teacher, Say Please and Thank You
Ray Salazar with an absolutelyl bang-on response to the scourge of no-nonsense compliance demanding being advocated by some reformsters these days.
No, My Kindergartner Will Not Be Doing Y0our Homework Assignment
Okay, it's possible that you haven't missed this because it's been heavily liked and read on the book of face, but just in case, you need to catch Cara Paiuk's parental take on the ridiculousness that is academic homework for kindergartners.
Will Ethical Walls Protect Education Journalism from Billionaire Influence
If you are Eli Broad and you propose to buy half of the L.A. school district for fun and profit, it makes sense to buy a big L.A. newspaper so you can get the kind of favorable coverage you need to sell your rather audacious and horrifying idea. Anthony Cody collects and sums up the best explanations of why it's a terrible idea.
ESSA Answers
Amid the many, many posts on Diane Ravitch's blog is a unrolling-in-segments series offering answers to questions about ESSA from Lamar Alexander's chief of staff. Here's what DC thinks they did.
Eva Goes To Court
John Merrow's Eva Moskowitx interview was part of the Very Bad Month that showed many cracks in the Success Academy facade, so it seems only fair that he should report on the legal trouble she now faces for her failure to properly educate students with special needs.
The Truth about Flint
This Salon piece from Paul Rosenberg isn't just about Flint-- it looks more thoroughly at the systematic process of stripping democracy from poor, black Americans. His one mistake is ascribing the process strictly to the GOP, but otherwise this is a thorough and thoughtful look at the trend threatening US democracy.
Saturday, January 23, 2016
The Non-White Teacher Problem
And here comes yet an other piece of research to add to the stack.
New research from Jason A. Grissom and Christopher Redding looked for new information to explain the underrepresentation of students of color in gifted programs. It's complicated problem, but the researchers came up with one answer-- white teachers are far less likely than teachers of color to identify students of color as gifted. (Consider this the second cousin of the finding that police view young Black men as older and less innocent than whites).
Research from last spring suggests that students do better in classes taught by same-race teachers.
Common sense that says students need to see an adult in school who is like them.
And yet, the trend in education has worked the other way since the days of Brown vs. Board of Education. At a moment when the student population in the US is less than 50% white, the teacher pool is overwhelmingly white and female.
In some cases, Black educators have been pushed out of the classroom (post Katrina New Orleans went from a 71% Black teaching pool to less than 50%). But research keeps repeating the same basic finding on a larger scale-- we are failing to hold onto men and non-white teachers.
Why? Articles keep asking the question, but nobody seems to have an answer.
There are theories. The low pay, which can have impact on men who feel the need to support a family with their job. Richard Ingersoll, a leading researcher of the teacher pool tags working conditions, specifically lack of autonomy and input in school decisions. This first-person account slams home the degree of cultural insensitivity that teachers of color can encounter. And that's before we even get into systems and communities where just-plain-racism is a huge obstacle.
It's a problem, and it's larger problem than it was decades ago precisely because the racial balance of our students is shifting, and -- as with the article that kicked this piece off -- there are real, damaging consequences to students of color.
And yet, nobody is really working on the problem. Reformsters says next to nothing about teacher retention-- they're much more interested in tracking bad teachers down and consequently have done a lot to make teaching seem less like a stable job. Teach for America has taken a stab at it, sort of, but since TFA is in the business of creating short-term teacher tourism instead of building lifetime teaching careers.
Local districts are caught up in a variety of other issues, many of them completely legit. The non-white (male) teacher gap is not sexy, it's not headline grabbing, and it isn't costing anybody a lot of money. It intersects with race, which white America isn't often good at discussing (or even willing to try), and it tweaks the egos of white teachers who, if they don't listen carefully enough, hear, "You aren't good enough to teach students of color," which is of course beside the point.
But with every additional data point, it becomes more and more clearly a problem that we can't just ignore.
New research from Jason A. Grissom and Christopher Redding looked for new information to explain the underrepresentation of students of color in gifted programs. It's complicated problem, but the researchers came up with one answer-- white teachers are far less likely than teachers of color to identify students of color as gifted. (Consider this the second cousin of the finding that police view young Black men as older and less innocent than whites).
Research from last spring suggests that students do better in classes taught by same-race teachers.
Common sense that says students need to see an adult in school who is like them.
And yet, the trend in education has worked the other way since the days of Brown vs. Board of Education. At a moment when the student population in the US is less than 50% white, the teacher pool is overwhelmingly white and female.
In some cases, Black educators have been pushed out of the classroom (post Katrina New Orleans went from a 71% Black teaching pool to less than 50%). But research keeps repeating the same basic finding on a larger scale-- we are failing to hold onto men and non-white teachers.
Why? Articles keep asking the question, but nobody seems to have an answer.
There are theories. The low pay, which can have impact on men who feel the need to support a family with their job. Richard Ingersoll, a leading researcher of the teacher pool tags working conditions, specifically lack of autonomy and input in school decisions. This first-person account slams home the degree of cultural insensitivity that teachers of color can encounter. And that's before we even get into systems and communities where just-plain-racism is a huge obstacle.
It's a problem, and it's larger problem than it was decades ago precisely because the racial balance of our students is shifting, and -- as with the article that kicked this piece off -- there are real, damaging consequences to students of color.
And yet, nobody is really working on the problem. Reformsters says next to nothing about teacher retention-- they're much more interested in tracking bad teachers down and consequently have done a lot to make teaching seem less like a stable job. Teach for America has taken a stab at it, sort of, but since TFA is in the business of creating short-term teacher tourism instead of building lifetime teaching careers.
Local districts are caught up in a variety of other issues, many of them completely legit. The non-white (male) teacher gap is not sexy, it's not headline grabbing, and it isn't costing anybody a lot of money. It intersects with race, which white America isn't often good at discussing (or even willing to try), and it tweaks the egos of white teachers who, if they don't listen carefully enough, hear, "You aren't good enough to teach students of color," which is of course beside the point.
But with every additional data point, it becomes more and more clearly a problem that we can't just ignore.
Friday, January 22, 2016
The GOP, Trump and the Bear: A Parable
Once upon a time, two large hunting parties came to live in two gigantic, beautiful lodges high on a mountainside-- the red and the blue.
The red lodge was home to a wide variety of people. Upstairs in the luxury suites were the richest, most wealthy and powerful members of the party. A few floors below them were well-to-do members of the party who were only too happy to help the top floor party members out. Way down in the basement were the least well-off members, living in squallor and want.
For many years, all the red lodgers worked together to keep the giant building strong and clean and in good repair. Even the basement dwellers pitched in. "We don't want those crazy blue-lodgers to come in here and take over," they'd say.
Occasionally the basement dwellers in the red lodge would question the order of things. "Why do we live down here in the basement," they'd say. "Why can't the people on the top floor at least send down some lobster bisque and champagne?"
To help keep the peace, the penthouse dwellers would send word down, often through their assistants on the lower floor-- "We have to stay up here to keep you safe! We have a better view from these windows. We can keep an eye on the world, and we can watch out for danger-- you know there's a bear out there and we don't want him to surprise us. Trust us. We know best. Besides, if you work really hard, some day you may earn a spot up here on the top floor." And for many generations, that was good enough. Even though the penthouse dwellers chose new leaders from among their own ranks, many of those top floor dwellers were responsible and capable leaders, and those on the lower floors trusted their word.
But over the years, the top floor dwellers got sloppy and lazy. They rarely left their comfy rooms, simply luxuriating and eating all day. They and their helpers on the not-quite-floors discovered they could use the bear to get more. "What about new bedsheets for our rooms," someone on a lower floor would say, and the word would come down-- "We've seen the bear in the neighborhood; you'd better trust us so he doesn't attack." And when it came time to install new leaders, the penthouse crowd made poor choices, but kept the crowd in line by reminding them, "You don't want a bear attack, do you? You'd better support our guy because he can save you from the bear."
The more the penthouse crowd grasped for power, the more useful they found the bear. The stories grew wilder, more terrifying, more frequent. The bears are angrier and hungrier. There's a family of bears. The blue lodge has been training the bears to attack us. The bears have laser beans strapped to their heads and carry dynamite in their paws. So give us your money, your food, your furniture, your children to send out into the cold to fight the bear. A dozen bears. A thousand bears! And they're right outside our doors!!
Soon the red lodgers were in a frenzied state of panic and terror all day, every day. Occasionally a bear would actually show up at the window, angry and snarling, and that only fed the panic. At first the penthouse thought, "This is great. They will give us anything." True, the lodge was noisy and disorderly now with the constant noise of panic and despair, but it was a small price to pay.
But then the day came to install their new leader. They selected him and escorted him to the balcony where such men were traditionally introduced to the crowd, and they realized that the crowd below would not hear them, was not even paying attention. And for the first time in years, tey looked down and saw what was really going on in the red lodge.
The residents of the lodge were breaking up the furniture and setting fire to it. They were crudely nailing all the doors and windows shut. They were tearing up the floorboards and tearing down the ceilings, ripping the very cords and pipes out through huge gaping rents in the walls. Suddenly someone yelled, "He did it! He's helping the bears!!" and the crowd would suddenly turn like a roiling mob and fall upon the victim, rending him to shreds of flesh and flecks of blood.
"Good lord," said the penthouse crowd. "What in the name of God are you doing!!??"
"The bears!!" shouted the crowd. "The bears you said were coming to get us! We're just protecting ourselves from the danger you warned us about!"
"Stop!" pleaded the penthouse crowd. "Stop and listen. We have a new leader for you! He's wise and reasonable! Listen to him."
But the crowd was not listening. "No!" they roared. "We have our leader! He is strong! He is powerful! He's come down here to save us from the bear!!"
And the penthouse crowd found themselves staring down at one of their own who, when they had been busy counting money and eating caviar, had slipped downstairs amidst the havoc. "You are done," he called up to them. "You made these people so frightened and blind that they would listen to the first strong voice they heard, and you are lazy and sloppy and weak. What's more, your fear-mongering has made them unable to hear your most reasoned, intelligent arguments. But I'm strong, and I don't care what happens to the house you built. You readied them for me. When we are done, this lodge will be a pile of rubble, but I will be standing on top of it, and you will be buried beneath it. You did not understand the power of the fear and panic you stirred up, but I do, and I will reap what you have sown."
And that, boys and girls, is why an issue of National Review devoted to Anti-Trump essays will not change a damn thing, and why we're in such a mess for this election. Thanks a lot, conservatives.
The red lodge was home to a wide variety of people. Upstairs in the luxury suites were the richest, most wealthy and powerful members of the party. A few floors below them were well-to-do members of the party who were only too happy to help the top floor party members out. Way down in the basement were the least well-off members, living in squallor and want.
For many years, all the red lodgers worked together to keep the giant building strong and clean and in good repair. Even the basement dwellers pitched in. "We don't want those crazy blue-lodgers to come in here and take over," they'd say.
Occasionally the basement dwellers in the red lodge would question the order of things. "Why do we live down here in the basement," they'd say. "Why can't the people on the top floor at least send down some lobster bisque and champagne?"
To help keep the peace, the penthouse dwellers would send word down, often through their assistants on the lower floor-- "We have to stay up here to keep you safe! We have a better view from these windows. We can keep an eye on the world, and we can watch out for danger-- you know there's a bear out there and we don't want him to surprise us. Trust us. We know best. Besides, if you work really hard, some day you may earn a spot up here on the top floor." And for many generations, that was good enough. Even though the penthouse dwellers chose new leaders from among their own ranks, many of those top floor dwellers were responsible and capable leaders, and those on the lower floors trusted their word.
But over the years, the top floor dwellers got sloppy and lazy. They rarely left their comfy rooms, simply luxuriating and eating all day. They and their helpers on the not-quite-floors discovered they could use the bear to get more. "What about new bedsheets for our rooms," someone on a lower floor would say, and the word would come down-- "We've seen the bear in the neighborhood; you'd better trust us so he doesn't attack." And when it came time to install new leaders, the penthouse crowd made poor choices, but kept the crowd in line by reminding them, "You don't want a bear attack, do you? You'd better support our guy because he can save you from the bear."
The more the penthouse crowd grasped for power, the more useful they found the bear. The stories grew wilder, more terrifying, more frequent. The bears are angrier and hungrier. There's a family of bears. The blue lodge has been training the bears to attack us. The bears have laser beans strapped to their heads and carry dynamite in their paws. So give us your money, your food, your furniture, your children to send out into the cold to fight the bear. A dozen bears. A thousand bears! And they're right outside our doors!!
Soon the red lodgers were in a frenzied state of panic and terror all day, every day. Occasionally a bear would actually show up at the window, angry and snarling, and that only fed the panic. At first the penthouse thought, "This is great. They will give us anything." True, the lodge was noisy and disorderly now with the constant noise of panic and despair, but it was a small price to pay.
But then the day came to install their new leader. They selected him and escorted him to the balcony where such men were traditionally introduced to the crowd, and they realized that the crowd below would not hear them, was not even paying attention. And for the first time in years, tey looked down and saw what was really going on in the red lodge.
The residents of the lodge were breaking up the furniture and setting fire to it. They were crudely nailing all the doors and windows shut. They were tearing up the floorboards and tearing down the ceilings, ripping the very cords and pipes out through huge gaping rents in the walls. Suddenly someone yelled, "He did it! He's helping the bears!!" and the crowd would suddenly turn like a roiling mob and fall upon the victim, rending him to shreds of flesh and flecks of blood.
"Good lord," said the penthouse crowd. "What in the name of God are you doing!!??"
"The bears!!" shouted the crowd. "The bears you said were coming to get us! We're just protecting ourselves from the danger you warned us about!"
"Stop!" pleaded the penthouse crowd. "Stop and listen. We have a new leader for you! He's wise and reasonable! Listen to him."
But the crowd was not listening. "No!" they roared. "We have our leader! He is strong! He is powerful! He's come down here to save us from the bear!!"
And the penthouse crowd found themselves staring down at one of their own who, when they had been busy counting money and eating caviar, had slipped downstairs amidst the havoc. "You are done," he called up to them. "You made these people so frightened and blind that they would listen to the first strong voice they heard, and you are lazy and sloppy and weak. What's more, your fear-mongering has made them unable to hear your most reasoned, intelligent arguments. But I'm strong, and I don't care what happens to the house you built. You readied them for me. When we are done, this lodge will be a pile of rubble, but I will be standing on top of it, and you will be buried beneath it. You did not understand the power of the fear and panic you stirred up, but I do, and I will reap what you have sown."
And that, boys and girls, is why an issue of National Review devoted to Anti-Trump essays will not change a damn thing, and why we're in such a mess for this election. Thanks a lot, conservatives.
Thursday, January 21, 2016
More Common Core Business Panic
High Achievement New York, a group of Gates-funded Common Core pushing business types, is back in the new chicken littling the hell out of rejecting the Core.
This time they've managed to get Crain's New York business magazine to pass along their terrified concerns! "Oh nos!" they declaim. "If states try to replace the Core, there will be a big expensive debacle."
“Chaos ensued in both Indiana and Oklahoma after repealing the standards, creating a nightmarish situation for confused teachers and lowering the bar for students,” it claimed, adding that Indiana students now spend 12 hours per year taking standardized tests, up from six previously.
Human sacrifice. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria. Run away! Run away!
You can read the report here (at least for now) in its fourteen-page glory. It depends on all the same old baloney that HANY and other Core-pushers have been repeating. Heck, HANY tried this same alarm-raising back in October, 2014.
This report (Much Ado: The Cost and Chaos of Replacing Common Core) seems aimed primarily at New York State, and they claim that there are five lessons for the Empire State based on, well, something.
1. Trying to “repeal” or substantially “replace” Common Core standards would be a waste
2. New “New York” standards must be as or more rigorous than Common Core standards
3. The review process needs to be driven by the State Education Department
4. Classroom teachers must be the driving voices in any revisions; and
5. A new name matters.
Lets look at these.
1. No reason to believe that's true. It would certainly cut into a lot of folks profit margin, and with companies like Pearson laying off 4,000 workers, I'm sure that lost revenue is a concern in some board rooms. But I think I speak for many people in education when I say that I'd rather make education decisions based on educational concerns, and not corporate bottom lines.
2. That should not be hard. The Common Core standards are not all that rigorous. In fact, the newest issue of the AASA Journal includes an article showing in detail how much below the old NJ standards CCSS actually falls. Was NY that much more rigorous and complex than NJ?
3. Well, yes. Since that department is run by lots of corporate shills, they would be the logical choice for making sure that the process watches out for the interests of businesses.
4. Oh, me! Pick me!! Okay, I'm not technically a New York teacher, but let me pick some NY teachers that I know to be a "driving voice," whatever the hell that means.
5. Yes, let's not forget that good branding help provide protective cover for replacing the old damned stupid thing with some brand new version of the same old damned stupid thing.
Once again, the Core-sters are crying, "Think of the teachers! The poor, confused teachers!" And you know what? Having to go through one more damned stupid paperwork change is hard as hell on teachers and classrooms. Of course, we could always change to a system that valued teachers' voices and gave them the freedom to use their professional judgment, instead of trying to switch one micro-managing one-size-fits-all system for another. That transition, to a teacher directed classroom, would be much easier to navigate.
Look, these guys have a point when they say that Indiana and Oklahoma spent a lot of money and caused a lot of chaos by switching to standards that were basically the Common Core pig with lipstick and a shave. But the painted pig is not the only alternative to CCSS-- there are, in fact, alternatives to a system in which teachers are reduced to glorified clerks in a content delivery system aimed at a bad test that is loosely aligned to bad standards.
The report quotes an Oklahoma 8th grade teacher:
How are you supposed to plan and prepare when you have so much uncertainty around what you’re supposed to teach and how you’re supposed to teach and how you're supposed to teach it?
I have an answer for that-- you operate an education system in which teachers do not have to wait for some top-down manager to direct them in how they are to answer those questions. You don't make teachers wait to be told exactly what they should teach and how they should teach it (and what Big Standardized Test they should teach to). Instead, you use a system where teachers are free to use their trained, professional judgment to answer those questions themselves on the local level.
The whole thing rankles because it is such transparent non-serious bullshit. Exactly what principle is being espoused here-- it's always sound policy to throw good money after bad? when you're doing something that demonstrably doesn't work, for God's sake, don't change a thing? stay the course? when you're failing, grit your teeth and fail harder? Would they apply ANY of these principles to the businesses that they run? And where were they and their deep concern for classroom confusion and the spending of great stacks of money back when Common Core was inflicted on schools in the first place?
Why were the cost and chaos of implementing Common Core such Really Good Things, but the cost and chaos of getting rid of this unpopular failed experiment suddenly cause for a giant clutching of massive pearls?
Go back to your boardrooms, boys. Get your noses out of education, stop imagining that schools exist just to serve you, and let us do our jobs.
This time they've managed to get Crain's New York business magazine to pass along their terrified concerns! "Oh nos!" they declaim. "If states try to replace the Core, there will be a big expensive debacle."
“Chaos ensued in both Indiana and Oklahoma after repealing the standards, creating a nightmarish situation for confused teachers and lowering the bar for students,” it claimed, adding that Indiana students now spend 12 hours per year taking standardized tests, up from six previously.
Human sacrifice. Dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria. Run away! Run away!
You can read the report here (at least for now) in its fourteen-page glory. It depends on all the same old baloney that HANY and other Core-pushers have been repeating. Heck, HANY tried this same alarm-raising back in October, 2014.
This report (Much Ado: The Cost and Chaos of Replacing Common Core) seems aimed primarily at New York State, and they claim that there are five lessons for the Empire State based on, well, something.
1. Trying to “repeal” or substantially “replace” Common Core standards would be a waste
2. New “New York” standards must be as or more rigorous than Common Core standards
3. The review process needs to be driven by the State Education Department
4. Classroom teachers must be the driving voices in any revisions; and
5. A new name matters.
Lets look at these.
1. No reason to believe that's true. It would certainly cut into a lot of folks profit margin, and with companies like Pearson laying off 4,000 workers, I'm sure that lost revenue is a concern in some board rooms. But I think I speak for many people in education when I say that I'd rather make education decisions based on educational concerns, and not corporate bottom lines.
2. That should not be hard. The Common Core standards are not all that rigorous. In fact, the newest issue of the AASA Journal includes an article showing in detail how much below the old NJ standards CCSS actually falls. Was NY that much more rigorous and complex than NJ?
3. Well, yes. Since that department is run by lots of corporate shills, they would be the logical choice for making sure that the process watches out for the interests of businesses.
4. Oh, me! Pick me!! Okay, I'm not technically a New York teacher, but let me pick some NY teachers that I know to be a "driving voice," whatever the hell that means.
5. Yes, let's not forget that good branding help provide protective cover for replacing the old damned stupid thing with some brand new version of the same old damned stupid thing.
Once again, the Core-sters are crying, "Think of the teachers! The poor, confused teachers!" And you know what? Having to go through one more damned stupid paperwork change is hard as hell on teachers and classrooms. Of course, we could always change to a system that valued teachers' voices and gave them the freedom to use their professional judgment, instead of trying to switch one micro-managing one-size-fits-all system for another. That transition, to a teacher directed classroom, would be much easier to navigate.
Look, these guys have a point when they say that Indiana and Oklahoma spent a lot of money and caused a lot of chaos by switching to standards that were basically the Common Core pig with lipstick and a shave. But the painted pig is not the only alternative to CCSS-- there are, in fact, alternatives to a system in which teachers are reduced to glorified clerks in a content delivery system aimed at a bad test that is loosely aligned to bad standards.
The report quotes an Oklahoma 8th grade teacher:
How are you supposed to plan and prepare when you have so much uncertainty around what you’re supposed to teach and how you’re supposed to teach and how you're supposed to teach it?
I have an answer for that-- you operate an education system in which teachers do not have to wait for some top-down manager to direct them in how they are to answer those questions. You don't make teachers wait to be told exactly what they should teach and how they should teach it (and what Big Standardized Test they should teach to). Instead, you use a system where teachers are free to use their trained, professional judgment to answer those questions themselves on the local level.
The whole thing rankles because it is such transparent non-serious bullshit. Exactly what principle is being espoused here-- it's always sound policy to throw good money after bad? when you're doing something that demonstrably doesn't work, for God's sake, don't change a thing? stay the course? when you're failing, grit your teeth and fail harder? Would they apply ANY of these principles to the businesses that they run? And where were they and their deep concern for classroom confusion and the spending of great stacks of money back when Common Core was inflicted on schools in the first place?
Why were the cost and chaos of implementing Common Core such Really Good Things, but the cost and chaos of getting rid of this unpopular failed experiment suddenly cause for a giant clutching of massive pearls?
Go back to your boardrooms, boys. Get your noses out of education, stop imagining that schools exist just to serve you, and let us do our jobs.
Free College, Charter Schools, and Irony
Yesterday's New York Times included a Room for Debate argument over free college, plugging into one of the few education related issues that (some) of the Presidential candidates have been (sort of) willing to (kind of) talk about. The debate unleashed a hurricane of irony from the commenters on the "anti" side.
Here's Andrew P. Kelly from the American Enterprise Institute arguing that "The Problem Is That Free College Isn't Free." Kelly argues that free college is a "flawed policy," because rather than being free "it simply shifts costs from students to taxpayers." If "public generosity" doesn't keep pace, then colleges won't be able to keep pace with the level of students, and they'll have to make cuts to meet their budgets.
Second, Kelly argues, " free college plans assume that tuition prices are the main obstacle to student success," and ignores other obstacles to student college success, like students who aren't fully prepared or who lack the personal resources to fully follow through.
Weighing in against free college is also our old buddy Mike Petrilli from the Fordham Institute, arguing that this would be "A Needless Windfall for Affluent Voters and State Institutions."
Nothing in life is truly free — but don’t tell that to dogmatic liberals and their pandering politicians, who would turn the first two years of college into a new universal entitlement.
Petrilli goes on to toss out some more of the standard old data points about college preparedness, including the NAEP claim that only 40% of 12th graders are prepared for college (a bogus piece of data that presumes that NAEP knows what "college-ready" means, even though previous research finds half the students they labeled unready going on to get college degrees). He also helpfully suggests that college not admit students "who are clearly unprepared academically and therefor have virtually no shot at leaving with a real degree or credentials."
On the one hand, this is a logical extension of Petrilli's thesis that some Strivers deserve an education and Those Other Students should be left behind in struggling public schools. Petrilli has long argued that education should be about separating Strivers from Those People, going so far as to defend Eva Moskowitz's push-out policies. So it makes sense that he would argue that only certain people deserve to be in college. Some day someone needs to explain exactly what society should do with all those undeserving non-strivers. But there's no irony in this part of Petrilli's argument.
On the other hand, the rest of the anti-free-college argument seems vaguely like...hmm.. the argument against charter schools.
The promise of the charter movement has been that we can open free private schools for an added cost of $0.00 over what we're currently spending. The pushback has been that no, charter schools are not free and to exist they must drain resources from other places, including the existing public school system, so that the cost of sending K-12 students to a private school is sloughed off on the taxpayers. (The addition of pricey administrative costs alone guarantees that charters add to the overall cost of K-12 education.)
Kelly's critique-- that free school assumes that getting the students into those schools is all that's needed for success-- exactly mirrors the assertion of charter fans that all we need to do is drop the barriers that keep K-12 students from entering charter schools in order for success to blossom. He says that their are other obstacles to their success that must be addressed before students can succeed; when pro-public school folks say that about charters, they are accused of making excuses and blaming poverty.
Meanwhile, as far as Petrilli's lead goes--
Nothing in life is truly free-- but don't tell that to dogmatic charter fans and their pandering politicians, who would turn twelve years of private school into a new universal entitlement.
There. I fixed that for you.
Here's Andrew P. Kelly from the American Enterprise Institute arguing that "The Problem Is That Free College Isn't Free." Kelly argues that free college is a "flawed policy," because rather than being free "it simply shifts costs from students to taxpayers." If "public generosity" doesn't keep pace, then colleges won't be able to keep pace with the level of students, and they'll have to make cuts to meet their budgets.
Second, Kelly argues, " free college plans assume that tuition prices are the main obstacle to student success," and ignores other obstacles to student college success, like students who aren't fully prepared or who lack the personal resources to fully follow through.
Weighing in against free college is also our old buddy Mike Petrilli from the Fordham Institute, arguing that this would be "A Needless Windfall for Affluent Voters and State Institutions."
Nothing in life is truly free — but don’t tell that to dogmatic liberals and their pandering politicians, who would turn the first two years of college into a new universal entitlement.
Petrilli goes on to toss out some more of the standard old data points about college preparedness, including the NAEP claim that only 40% of 12th graders are prepared for college (a bogus piece of data that presumes that NAEP knows what "college-ready" means, even though previous research finds half the students they labeled unready going on to get college degrees). He also helpfully suggests that college not admit students "who are clearly unprepared academically and therefor have virtually no shot at leaving with a real degree or credentials."
On the one hand, this is a logical extension of Petrilli's thesis that some Strivers deserve an education and Those Other Students should be left behind in struggling public schools. Petrilli has long argued that education should be about separating Strivers from Those People, going so far as to defend Eva Moskowitz's push-out policies. So it makes sense that he would argue that only certain people deserve to be in college. Some day someone needs to explain exactly what society should do with all those undeserving non-strivers. But there's no irony in this part of Petrilli's argument.
On the other hand, the rest of the anti-free-college argument seems vaguely like...hmm.. the argument against charter schools.
The promise of the charter movement has been that we can open free private schools for an added cost of $0.00 over what we're currently spending. The pushback has been that no, charter schools are not free and to exist they must drain resources from other places, including the existing public school system, so that the cost of sending K-12 students to a private school is sloughed off on the taxpayers. (The addition of pricey administrative costs alone guarantees that charters add to the overall cost of K-12 education.)
Kelly's critique-- that free school assumes that getting the students into those schools is all that's needed for success-- exactly mirrors the assertion of charter fans that all we need to do is drop the barriers that keep K-12 students from entering charter schools in order for success to blossom. He says that their are other obstacles to their success that must be addressed before students can succeed; when pro-public school folks say that about charters, they are accused of making excuses and blaming poverty.
Meanwhile, as far as Petrilli's lead goes--
Nothing in life is truly free-- but don't tell that to dogmatic charter fans and their pandering politicians, who would turn twelve years of private school into a new universal entitlement.
There. I fixed that for you.
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