The New York Times is running a piece in the Sunday magazine this week titled “The Teachers’ Unions’ Last Stand” and I think it’s a must read for anyone wanting a compelling albeit starry-eyed look at the President’s education “reform” proposals. While the long version is worth the read, here’s the short version: More money and more tests will make better teachers and smarter kids. A small bunch of “reformists” armed with a boatload of money are in the process of buying off the media, unions, and parents to move schools toward greater “accountability” and “achievement” in ways that more resemble fixing the leaks in the hull instead of building a better boat. Chew on this for a second:
“It’s all about the talent,†Secretary Duncan told me. Thus, the highest number of points — 138 of the 500-point scale that Duncan and his staff created for the Race — would be awarded based on a commitment to eliminate what teachers’ union leaders consider the most important protections enjoyed by their members: seniority-based compensation and permanent job security. To win the contest, the states had to present new laws, contracts and data systems making teachers individually responsible for what their students achieve, and demonstrating, for example, that budget-forced teacher layoffs will be based on the quality of the teacher, not simply on seniority…To enable teacher evaluations, another 47 points would be allocated based on the quality of a state’s “data systems†for tracking student performance in all grades — which is a euphemism for the kind of full-bore testing regime that makes many parents and children cringe but that the reformers argue is necessary for any serious attempt to track not only student progress but also teacher effectiveness. [Emphasis mine.]
Now, I know that in many ways my evolving picture of learning in the 21st Century keeps moving toward the edges, away from schools as we know them, far away from the rhetoric being floated in this article. I know that there are times when I see a learning future for our kids that doesn’t necessarily involve “school” or college as we think of it, one that they design and take ownership of, one that connects them to other learners and teachers and ultimately, to success on their own terms. And then there are other times I think that’s just a total fantasy, that as much as I’d like to believe, as a growing number of folks suggest, that the world has changed in ways that frees learning from the shackles of outdated systems and creates all sorts of new paths for our kids, they’d be better off just playing the game as we know it, going to the good college, getting the degree, and finding success as it’s always been defined.
And I think that’s the part that has been bothering me most about the turn in the larger education conversation, that retrenchment of the typical path to “success.” We’re not changing our definition of “the top” at all. It’s just more of the same, as if the world is the same as it was 10 or 20 or 50 years ago. Which is why, I think, Race to the Top needs another “T” word in there, as in “Race to the Traditional Top.” My problem is, I don’t think I want my kids to win that race anymore.
I think that redefinition of “the top” is what we here in the small lunatic fringe are trying to create. It’s not about knowledge as much as it is about learning, about a passion for learning, and about a self-motivation that “traditional” schooling drives out of kids. In a nutshell, it’s a pretty different picture of what schools and teachers should be doing, and a totally different view on what and how to assess it. The learning world that many of us are now living in, at least, just isn’t the same as it ever was.
Two quotes. First, the last sentence of the Times article:
“That President Obama did this is a total game changer,†says Pastorek, the Louisiana schools superintendent, who is a Republican working for a Republican governor, . “If he really sticks to this, education will never be the same.â€
And the last sentences from Diane Ravitch in her latest post, “Schools 4 $Sale: Inquire at U.S. DOE” over at Bridging Differences:
We have a public school system that needs improvement. Nothing coming from Race to the Top will help. It may even do untold harm to the system on which our nation has relied for more than 150 years.
Problem is, as directly opposite as both of these views are, neither one is talking about anything really different. That “build a new, better boat” conversation is yet to begin.
Nice post prepping us for the barrage of conversation and arm chair experts that will spin-off from this article. I shutter to think about all the bloviators who’ll instantly become pontificating experts on what will improve schools.
Marion Brady, who has been writing about education issues for decades, including in the Wa Post & TruthOut most recently, is working to get the conversation about real reform going.
Check out his latest piece: http://ecologyofeducation.net/wsite/?p=2436
Cheers.
Thanks for that link…great piece. My favorite line: “First, doing what we’ve been doing for more than a century, just doing it with greater determination, isn’t education reform.”
Amen.
It’s very frustrating as an educator to be diligently preparing students for the era of collaboration and shared knowledge we live in, all the while operating under the same old umbrella of competition that’s been around for so long.
I do feel as though the “build a new, better boat” campaign is going on already, just kind of quietly, and only among a few groups of educators here and there. Among others, I’m thinking of Dennis Littky, his Big Picture Learning organization, and The Met School he began in Providence, RI. There’s a school that, as near as I can tell, is managing to break the mold and, in many ways, put your evolving vision of the school of the future into play now. But people like him and schools like the Met School are all but invisible in the national conversation about education.
Living in Western Massachusetts, sometimes I feel like the Whos down in Whoville, facing Boston and shouting “We are here!” at the top of our lungs to no avail. Educational dialogue feels that way to me now as well. Either I’m having fun among the Whos but no one else appears to be listening, or I’m yelling at the top of my lungs with a sense of futility. Where’s that one last missing Who to give us the critical mass we need to get our voices heard?
links
http://www.bigpicture.org/
http://www.themetschool.org/Metcenter/home.html
The Big Picture Schools are also invisible to billionaire bully Bill Gates and his foundation.
This is particularly galling since the Gates Foundation once provided funding for the Big Picture Schools.
BTW: I wonder if Diane Ravitch (I’m told by the media that she is America’s preeminent education scholar) would approve of the Big Picture Schools?
I do feel as though the “build a new, better boat” campaign is going on already, just kind of quietly, and only among a few groups of educators here and there. Among others, I’m thinking of Dennis Littky, his Big Picture Learning organization, and The Met School he began in Providence, RI. There’s a school that, as near as I can tell, is managing to break the mold and, in many ways, put your evolving vision of the school of the future into play now. But people like him and schools like the Met School are all but invisible in the national conversation about education.
+1
“And then there are other times I think that’s just a total fantasy, that as much as I’d like to believe”
I am so glad to read the line above and know others feel this way. My wife and I have been in education for 24 years. We have tried hard to make substantial change but after all this time we are burning out. Realizing the no matter how much “reform” is shouted by the masses in the end after there has not been any major change in how we deliver instruction. That does not mean there is not the potential for true reform I just don’t see it happening.
I know that folks like to think that I’m controversial or negative, etc… but I have been warning educators of this threat to our democracy and their way of life for many years.
The Race-to-the-Top “reforms” are nothing but a way to bust the teacher unions, privatize public schools and reduce teacher wages and benefits. This is about the wholesale handover of public treasure to public hands and the devaluing of teaching – period!
Any car show model can “deliver” a scripted (paced) lesson and proctor an endless stream of standardized tests.
If American educators don’t stand up to this nonsense quickly, teaching will be a career choice for those who can’t be hired as a mall barista.
Would you like fries with that school reform?
Here are some articles supporting the comments made above:
School Wars
http://www.good.is/post/school-wars/
First We Kill The Teacher Unions (2008)
http://huff.to/2g6sc1
Bill Gates and Eli Broad Go Gangsta
http://stager.tv/blog/?p=40
The Surge Against First Graders
http://huff.to/arJc0E
The US Government now a Subsidiary of Eli Broad
http://stager.tv/blog/?p=664
Oh, and while you rightly bemoan the fact that we’re preserving unworthy educational traditions, it’s worth remembering tha one of our nation’s political parties is still litigating the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
Changing or reforming 19th & 20th Century schools cannot address 21st century needs nor provide the environment to create citizens who are ready and able to learn independently in an dynamic, connected world. We must design new “schools” first that are capable of individualized/differntiated instruction driven by data and simultaneously return the current teachers to the role of learner. When ready, abandon the old schools(practices and not necessarily physical spaces) start new with dedicated time for teachers to continuously learn, collaborate and adapt and “churn” through this new start up called School 2.0 and invent and refine this new model of learning.
How the heck did the federal government get so involved in local education issues. They will just through more $$ at it and make it worse.
AArggh! You are so dead on, Will, when you say this is a re-packaging of 20th century practices. What irritates/frustrates me most is that…once again…the focus is on teacher rather than student.
When Arne Duncan, who really ought to know better, says “It’s all about the talent,” he’s condemning millions of students to mediocrity. It would be wonderful if we were all Jaime Escalantes, but we’re not, and on a purely practical level, how likely is it that we’ll have however many millions of teachers our educational system employs that are “brilliant”?
What about all the thousands and millions of students who have succeeded without having brilliant teachers, but only teachers who are good at their jobs and care about their students? How does he account for that? The truth is, it’s now about brilliant teachers, but about teachers who know how to provide students with the skills and the passion to empower their own education.
Until we place the emphasis where it belongs–on students–and on teaching them to advance their own learning, on somehow giving them the desire and the initiative and the responsibility to take their education into their own hands and run with it, we will never have a truly first-rate education for ALL.
Think about the ‘why’ of this kind of reform. People in general see students of today not even knowing their times tables in high school. They perceive a deteriorating aspect of education. It’s the , “when I was a kid, I was given detention for being late and I had to memorize my times tables.” cliche. I hear this from my colleagues in my Orillia, Ontario secondary school all the time. They see a downward slide and even these teachers in education fear the future- “the world is going to hell-in-a-handbag”. And so you have these movements to quantify education- force kids to show ‘learning’ on standardized tests.And it sounds like the states are worse- but we in Canada often follow your trends. We have a grade 10 literacy test, grade 9 Math test, and grade 3 and 6 general learning test. see the practice literacy test at this site:
http://www.eqao.com/categories/home.aspx?Lang=E
Most teachers, I think, and I’ll just speak for myself here, discover that teaching and learning is not about quantity but about quality. Boards of Education can’t measure quality, but teachers know when something of quality occurs in the classroom (and when it doesn’t occur). Teachers are changing, they are finding ways of creating qualitative learning in these old classrooms (I have desks from 1961 in my room and I’m still not permanently online in my classroom).
I am very optimistic that we will find effective ways of providing public education in the 21st century that will somehow mirror the society we live- and change- in. And it will happen not because of boards and ministries but in spite of them.
Will, I cannot help but be frustrated with the lack of ingenuity and determination this administration has shown thus far. I cannot help but think this problem is a
market problem. I think the way to truly move the nation forward in terms of public education is to create an
“education experience market” that is much different than the current textbook market that drives so much of the standardized mediocre curriculum we use in classrooms today.
I cannot help but agree with the suggestions of Tamim Ansary that are described in his article by the title “A Textbook Example of What’s Wrong with Education” that appeared in an Edutopia magazine back in 2004.
http://www.edutopia.org/muddle-machine
I have seen nothing as progressive at Ansary’s ideas in my four years experience in education.