This is an excellent posting by Diane Ravitch.
Community Colleges: The Neglected but Worthy Stepchildren of American Education.
Month: November 2014
Why I Wrote “The Origins of the Common Core: How the Free Market Became Public Education Policy”
My book will be released next January by Palgrave Macmillan. It represents a number years of research which began when I was an elementary public school teacher in Mississippi. What originally began as an inquiry into the voucher movement emerged throughout the implementation of No Child Left Behind and the introduction of the Common Core State Standards and Race to the Top policies.
It’s Sunday morning and my husband, Thomas Fiala, and I are listening again to an interview with David Berliner that was posted on Chalk Face radio last summer.* Berliner has been a valuable voice in education policy for quite a number of years. The book he wrote with Bruce Biddle in 1995, The Manufactured Crisis, is an essential read for anyone attempting to understand education policy history. I read The Manufactured Crisis when it was first released. It remains on my bookshelf, now highlighted, annotated, and a little worse for wear — an enduring valuable resource.
David Berliner was asked by Shaun Johnson, how do we go about having a conversation with our teacher colleagues about what’s happening in education? Berliner basically said, by somehow getting enough people to talk about it will get the conversation going. I found it interesting that the interview began with the notion that we need to get a conversation going, given that the blogosphere seems to be well populated with voices opposing Race to the Top policies and the Common Core. Grassroots movements, such as the opt-out movement, have indeed been fueled by the blogs. However, it’s hard to stop a freight train, particularly when it carries a cargo laden with millions of federal RTTT dollars and a slew of free market devotees poised to make huge profits from charter school expansion policies, creating data mining systems, publishing and administered standardized tests, and promoting Teach for America and alternate certification paths for teachers. Well funded conservative think tanks have dominated education reform discussion for many years and they continue to fuel the education reform freight train, persevering in efforts to free-marketize and privatize public education.
The grassroots movement to address failed education policies certainly lack the financial resources of those who are actually making education policy in the U.S. To the billionaires who have a seat in policy discussions, the blogosphere represents a swarm of mosquitoes biting at their heels, which they too often seem to easily swat away. Will grassroots efforts have an impact? YES!! Certainly, for example, the opt-out movement has the power to impact education policy — and it doesn’t cost a thing to simply refuse to take a standardized test.
One of my motivations in writing the Origins of the Common Core was to do my part in helping to get a meaningful conversation started. However, I wanted to not only get teachers involved in the conversation, but to get all citizens involved who support their public schools and local control over those public schools, something that Berliner indicated was important. I realized that what was needed was a coherent story that helped explain how we ended up in this place and time in education policy history. On March 2, 2014, as I was completing my book, Diane Ravitch spoke at the first Network for Education conference in Texas, echoing my thoughts. In her speech she explained, “The problem that liberals have is liberals believe that facts will persuade people. Conservatives understand that stories persuade people, so we must have our story. We already have the facts. … There is no question that the facts are on our side. But we have to shape the narrative. … So its very important that we shape our narrative to say we’re defending American democracy, we’re defending the children, we’re fighting for what’s right. We have the narrative. We’ve got to think about our rhetoric and get the story to the public …”.** In writing this book I have tried my best to accomplish this task.
Over the years, as I transitioned from elementary teacher to teacher educator, first at Arkansas State University and now at Elmira College in New York, I continued to try to make sense of what was happening in education policy. Why is America so convinced that our public schools are a failure? Why were the dominant voices in education policy coming from conservative think tanks, continuously promoting school choice, high stakes standardized testing, VAM teacher accountability models, the erosion of local public school governance, and national standards? And in spite of the voices of scholars like David Berliner, Susan Ohanian, Alfie Kohn, Patrick Shannon, Joel Spring, and Gerald Bracey, to name just a few, who for many years warned the American public that we were on the wrong track, the freight train of systemic education reform continued at break neck speed. Nevertheless, the voices of these giants should be heeded as never before! Seamlessly, however, from one presidential administration to the next, education policies were re-hashed, re-framed, re-named, and foisted on the American public. I breathed a sigh of relief when Barack Obama spoke along the campaign trail about the problems associated with high stakes testing and promised to address these issues once he became president. It soon became obvious, however, that President Obama would heed the siren song of free market ideas in the education arena. His appointment of Arne Duncan solidified his position and, once again, the U.S. would continue its quickstep march toward free market education reform. Race to the Top policies would solidify the Obama administration’s allegiance to free market reform initiatives in education.
While much has been written about the current problems associated with the Common Core and corporate reformers, and certainly Bill Gates is being well and thoroughly blasted on the blogosphere, how is it that the Common Core so readily became the law of the land? And why are charter schools seen as the panacea for education reform? I set out in The Origins of the Common Core to lend my small voice in telling that story. It was an interesting journey, leaving me to realize that our federal education policy makers acquiesced their decision making responsibilities to corporate reformers a long time ago. Tech companies have led the way. Bill Gates is walking, albeit with much more money at his disposal, in the footsteps of other technology corporate superstars like David Kerns and Lou Gerstner, who led the charge to revolutionize education policy through systemic free market reform education policies. Other billionaires would lend their effort to these efforts. Along the way, the voices of less monied education scholars were systematically silenced. Federal policies, built on the false notion that America’s public schools were a total failure, continued to thrive in spite of documentation to the contrary.
The titles of the chapters in The Origins of the Common Core demonstrate a road map to my journey in writing the book:
- The Nation Was at Risk and the Public Schools Did It
- Public Schools: Conservative Coalescence and the Socialist Threat
- Friedmanomics, School Vouchers and Choice
- Corporate Superstars and an Inconvenient Truth
- Public Schools and a Third Way of Governing
- NCLB and the Texas Tall Tale
- Education Reform and the Deep State: An Alternate Universe
- The CCSS: Systemic Education Reform Writ Large
- CCSS: The Gorilla in the Room for Free Market Education Reform
*http://www.blogtalkradio.com/chalkface/2014/08/17/david-berliner-the-chalk-face
**http://www.publicschoolshakedown.org/diane-ravitch-speech-network-public-education-conference
http://www.amazon.com/The-Manufactured-Crisis-Americas-Schools/dp/0201441969
“That Kid”
If Valerie Strauss’ story doesn’t touch your heart, nothing will. I’m a mom to one of “those kids.” He’s 24 now. He’s brilliant. But we had some dark days and I finally home schooled him after the 8th grade. He has Asperger’s Syndrome. I love him dearly. He’s in college now and doing very well. Thank you, Valerie Strauss for sharing this. I couldn’t help but cry when I read your article.
I’ve been on both sides of the teacher desk. I’ve been a teacher to “those kids.” And I’ve been the mom of “that kid.”
Teachers are special. Whether they teach young kids or older kids, they are special. Elementary teachers care for those children who throw temper tantrums, are angry, or just can’t get along in the classroom. High school teachers care for students who are pregnant, have run-ins with the law, and/or are grappling with very grown-up issues.
And parents seek solace and understanding. Our dreams for our children are fragile at times. We seek Providence in dark days.
Thank you, Valerie Strauss. Your article means more than you’ll ever know.
Deb
Arne Duncan Kicks the Education Can Down the Road: NCLB Waivers for 3-4 Years!
Arne Duncan will allow states to apply for No Child Left Behind waivers shortly that will remain in place for three or four years. Of course, in order to receive a waiver, states are required to implement Race to the Top policies such as college and career ready standards (CCSS or a mirror image) and teacher evaluation systems largely based on student test scores.
In effect, Duncan is kicking the ESEA can down the road and solidifying Obama education policies for the next few years — beyond the next presidential election cycle. Of course, this is very good news for corporate education reformers and education entrepreneurs. The Obama administration is sending out strong signals that he and Duncan will not be tampering with policies that maintain their ability to profit from the education field. They can continue to operate in an unfettered free market and receive federal and state dollars to open charter schools, develop data systems to monitor school children, teachers, and schools, promote curricular material to support the CCSS, and create, administer, and score all those standardized tests!
It’s also good news for Republicans and Democrats on sides of the aisle. They are off the hook now. So what if they don’t get around to reauthorizing ESEA? Heck, it hasn’t been reauthorized for a dozen years now. No hurry. Arne Duncan maintains a firm grip on the the noose around the public education sector and will for the next few years. No need for messy debates in Congress about education policy. No need for presidential candidates to debate education policy. There’s absolutely no need to ruffle the feathers of those big foundations, corporations, and philanthropists who dominate education policy discussions. Any threat to their stakeholder status in education may mean a reduction in their donations to political campaigns. A grazing field of corporate profit continues to expand in America’s wild west of unproven free market education reform opportunities and initiatives.
So You Think it’s Easy to Become a Teacher?
Allie Bidwell wrote an interesting article for U.S. News & World Report the other day entitled “Teacher Prep Programs Give Easy A’s” (http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2014/11/12/report-teacher-preparation-assignments-emphasize-opinions-over-skills).
Allie Bidwell earned an undergraduate degree in sociology in 2012. Interestingly, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan also has a degree in sociology. It is seems that sociologists now feel confident in immersing themselves in education policy issues. Apparently it is no longer sufficient to simply blame teachers for the purported woes of our nation’s education system. The going thing now is to blame the teacher education programs. Those of us working as teacher educators in colleges and universities around the country must be guilty of promoting what George W. Bush called “touchy feely” education strategies that disregard the real stuff of education — test scores and data.
Bidwell had to ignore some very hard facts when she wrote her article. While many critics have complained about grade inflation in teacher education courses, not a few coming from the ranks of education professors, the A’s earned by too many teacher education majors does not reflect the entire scenario of what it takes to become a certified teacher. And, as a side note, I’ve known a few sociology majors who earned easy and underserved A’s as well! I am not, however, about to engage in an analysis that carefully scrutinizes the rigor required to earn a sociology degree. I’ll leave that up to folks like those at NCTQ discussed below who might want ot expand their field of study!
Becoming a certified teacher requires much more than good grades. I currently work for a small liberal arts college in upstate New York as a teacher educator. Unlike other students enrolled in programs like sociology, my students are required to take (and pass) several very rigorous standardized exams before they graduate and in order to be certified to teach in New York schools. They must pass the Academic Literacy Skills Test (ALST), the Educating All Students (EAS) test, a Content Speciality Test (CST) based on their certification field(s), and, last but not least, they must pass the edTPA. Of course, the NCTQ seems to think that all these tests are irrelevant. However, for a student who hopes to become a teacher, not passing any one of these standardized assessments will prevent them from being certified to teach in New York — regardless of their grades in courses. Other states also have these types of tests for teacher certification.
Bidwell seems not to know much about teacher education programs. She doesn’t know, for example, that teacher education programs, in order to remain in business, must be accredited by a national accrediting agency like the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP). Our accreditation is dependant on our students’ success on assessments like the ALST, the EAS, the CST, and EdTPA. You had better believe that we are highly motivated to provide our students with rigorous instruction in our teacher education programs and we rely on our colleagues in the English, math, science, and history departments to do the same for these future teachers.
Rather than relying on the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) as a primary source for her information regarding the quality of teacher education programs, it would behoove Allie Bidwell to actually talk to those who work within these programs and the students themselves. My students readily accept the challenges they face to become teachers. They sometimes express dismay at the extra expense associated with the standardized certification assessments they are required to take. These tests cost a lot of money. But if you want to be a teacher, you count that cost into your overall teacher education experience.
Kate Walsh of the NCTQ asserts that the inflated grades earned by students in teacher education courses “stemmed from a prevalence of assignments emphasizing student opinions over knowledge, skills and techniques.” Well, perhaps Walsh didn’t get the memo. The Common Core State Standards pretty much rules the education world right now. My job as a teacher educator is to prepare my students to teach according to the CCSS. And one of the “shifts” touted by the CCSS is a reliance on evidence to support opinions and arguments. That’s not just for K-12 students. That “shift” is modeled every day in teacher education courses. Regardless of how teacher educators may view these standards, I take that part of my job very seriously. I am invested in my students’ success in college, on the standardized tests they are required to take for certification, and most importantly, their success as teachers in the future. I, like most professors in teacher education programs, understand our role in the education system. And it is no cliche that we care about the children our students will go on to teach.
I take personal umbrage at Walsh’s assertion that, “the field is still very much of the mindset that whatever you want to teach about anything is fine, that the teacher preparation candidates will decide on their own how to teach.” That’s BALONEY!! Teacher preparation programs will lose their accreditation with that attitude. The final assessment our students are required to pass is the EdTPA. It’s rigorous to say the least. It’s field based. And it’s all about supporting teacher practice with a solid understanding of best practices, analyzing student work and data, and making sound professional decisions about instruction. Again, NCTQ thinks an assessment like this is irrelevant.
What Allie Bidwell may not fully understand is that NCTQ is solidly wedded to the idea that K-12 student test scores should be the primary determinant in teacher accountability and success. They developed their own rating system in order to support their preconceived ideas, and their system has been scrutinized and critiqued over and over again by reputable sources as any simple internet search will make clear. Of course, this article and the criticisms of NCTQ regarding teacher preparation may be new news to Bidwell, but it’s old news to those who study education policy and history. On the other hand, trying to pin down NCTQ on exactly what is the correct empirical and unassailable way to produce a teacher who will always succeed no matter what – is like trying to hold on to a slippery pig! Certainly no other professional class is held to this type of standard. It would certainly be nice, for example, to go to a doctor and be 100% assured all will be well no matter what medical situation or condition one finds oneself. Do teacher preparation programs need to do better? Yes, and they continue to strive to improve as any serious study of this topic will demonstrate. However, relying on the NCTQ to be the sole arbiter on the subject means one is about to sink quickly into a conservative anti-public school ideological morass.
The High Cost of High Stakes Tests
“ … It is a great and more serious evil, by too frequent and too numerous examinations, so to magnify their importance that students come to regard them not as a means in education but as the final purpose, the ultimate goal. … It is a very great and more serious evil to sacrifice systematic instruction and a comprehensive view of the subject for the scrappy and unrelated knowledge gained by students who are persistently drilled in the mere answering of questions issued by the Education Department or other governing bodies” (in Nichols and Berliner, p. 1-2).
Truer words have never been written and while this could have been written today, these prophetic words were actually written in 1906 by the Department of Education in New York. Sharon Nichols and David Berliner included this quote in their 2005 paper “The Inevitable Corruption of Indicators and Educators through High-Stakes Testing” (available: http://eric.ed.gov/?q=campbell%27s+law&id=ED508483).
In this paper, Nichols and Berliner explain the phenomenon Campbell’s Law, first described in 1976 by social science researcher Donald Campbell. In short, according to Campbell’s Law, the use high-stakes tests can result in corruption and cheating as students, teachers, schools, and school districts are judged on their performance on these tests. Since NCLB, school administrators facing increased scrutiny and sanctions have resorted to scandalous practices in a fight for their schools’ survival.
Absolutely. And this is evident as the Atlanta school cheating trial began in late September this year. The trial is expected to last for three months. In 2011 a state investigation found 178 principals and teachers in Atlanta were involved in a widespread cheating scandal. Earlier this week former Governor Sonny Perdue testified, stating, “Even if a teacher were in the classroom, the amount of erasures that we saw from wrong to right could not have even been done within that testing period. … It became fairly evident to me that something had happened outside that classroom testing environment to those test documents, and that had to be conspiratorial.” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/us/sonny-perdue-atlanta-school-cheating-was-conspiratorial-ex-governor-testifies.html
As the Atlanta trial unfolds (with little if any discussion by mainstream television media), education policy makers should use this opportunity to consider the high cost of our obsession with high stakes testing. Obvious is the cost to taxpayers in Georgia for the investigations into the cheating scandal and the subsequent three month trial. However, there are other not so obvious costs as well. According to Fulton County assistant district attorney Fani Willis, “many of the victims of the cheating were struggling black students who would have been eligible to receive ‘millions’ in federal aid for tutoring, but never received the money because test scores showed they were meeting or exceeding grade-level expectations.” (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/30/us/racketeering-trial-opens-in-altanta-schools-cheating-scandal.html?action=click&contentCollection=U.S.&module=RelatedCoverage®ion=Marginalia&pgtype=article)
When administrators and teachers engage in practices such as erasing and correcting students’ incorrect responses on standardized tests, it may make the school look better, but it can be devastating to low-performing students, who are overwhelmingly poor and students of color. False victories when low-performing students appear to score proficiently on standardized tests actually rob these children of the opportunity to receive the services they are entitled to — the tutoring that could provide them the ability to become successful students. The Atlanta cheating scandal trial will shed a spotlight on the misdeeds of school employees. However, it will not provide any recourse for the nameless and faceless children who were robbed of their right to tutoring services as a result of the cheating scandal. We will never know how their lives were impacted. That cost is much greater than the millions spent on investigations and a trial.
Wendy Lecker further explores the high cost of high stakes testing in her article “Lecker: A generation jeopardized by obsession with testing” (http://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Lecker-A-generation-jeopardized-by-obsession-5894103.php?cmpid=twitter). Since NCLB the curriculum has been severely narrowed, squeezing out the arts, music, science, physical education, and other subjects in favor of direct instruction and test prep in language arts and math, subjects that are tested. And Lecker points out that there has been a sharp rise since 2005 in ADHD diagnoses among children who are required to sit for hours in school without physical activity. Anxiety among students is on the rise as well. High stakes testing is taking a toll on our nation’s children. It is no wonder that the opt-out movement is growing as parents question the right of a state and federal government to force children to participate in day after day of strenuous high stakes tests. It doesn’t make much sense that schools cannot force students to stand for the pledge of allegiance, but can force students to sit for hours taking tests in silent classrooms under lock down mode.
Ruby Bridges: Grit, A Dream Deferred, and the Destruction of New Orleans Public Schools
On the 54th anniversary of Ruby Bridge’s courageous and lonely walk that led the charge in desegregating New Orleans’ public schools, I want to pause and say a heartfelt thank you to one of America’s heros. In 1960, little Ruby’s parents heeded the call of the NAACP for families who wished to exercise their right to send their children to the school of their choice and break the color barrier in New Orleans’ public schools. Day after day, Ruby walked the gauntlet to William Franz Elementary School amidst white racist protesters shouting racial epithets at her, one woman even placing a black doll in a miniature coffin for the brave little girl to see. As a result, President Eisenhower sent U.S. Marshals to accompany Ruby to school and keep her safe. This action helped Ruby to persevere. She never gave up and today speaks of the success of her efforts.
Cain Burdeau spoke with Ruby Bridges and provides an excellent commentary (http://www.berkshireeagle.com/news/ci_26936821/ruby-bridges-us-divided-by-race-again?source=rss). According to Bridges, “… white students returned to William Frantz and the school became integrated … she went to integrated middle and high schools in New Orleans. Fast forward to today: The school now occupying the William Frantz building is 97 percent black, according to school data.”
Education policy makers are enamored with the idea of “grit” as the factor that will help low income and/or low achieving students to overcome the structural factors that inhibit academic achievement. They laud perseverance, self-control, and the ability to embrace challenges. Grit has become a research agenda in education and scales have been developed to measure “grittiness.” I suggest that if you want a model of grittiness in a young child, look to Ruby Bridges. Of course, the power of her grit was not used to document a standardized test score. Rather, her grit sparked a social movement and resulted in the fruition of a dream that Dr. Martin Luther King would eloquently speak about almost three years later in August, 1963, when he said “I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.” For a short period of time and in some schools, and although not seamlessly, that dream was realized in New Orleans.
The dream did not last very long in New Orleans, however. In the decades following Ruby Bridges’ lonely walk, the dream was sadly deferred. Education policy discussions no longer focused on the impact of poverty, racism, and equity. We will never know what the educational achievement of our public schools would have been if we’d kept the dream of integrated schools alive in the U.S. Efforts to ameliorate the impact of poverty on educational attainment begun during the Johnson administration were never fully realized. I am reminded of the Langston Hughes’ poem “A Dream Deferred.”
A Dream Deferred
by Langston Hughes
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore–
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
As the War on Poverty initiatives were steadily defunded, the dream dried up in cities like New Orleans. Segregated schools slowly but surely once more became the norm. And the problems festered. Poverty’s grip on the city placed a stranglehold on its schools and, not surprisingly, students’ educational achievement suffered. It’s a story that repeated itself across the country in large urban areas. Jonathan Kozol wrote extensively about the problems of schools like those in New Orleans and urged America to right the wrongs associated with schools trying to survive in desolate, crime ridden neighborhoods with shrinking tax bases and funds in which students, predominantly of color, were increasingly isolated.
In the headlong rush to demonstrate that America’s public schools were a failure and to systemically reform our public school system through free market principles and efforts to privatize education, New Orleans and other urban areas in the U.S. would become ensnared in the corporatization of public schools. The syrupy sweet public relations campaign surrounding the charter school movement would provide the propaganda needed to further efforts to dismantle the public schools in these cities and divert efforts to reform the schools by addressing poverty, racism, and other structural factors at the heart of educational disparities.
And then the dream exploded in Ruby Bridges’ own home town, New Orleans. Hurricane Katrina hit the city square on, bringing death and destruction and leaving families displaced. Friedmanomic free market coporate reformers grasped at the opportunity to totally remake New Orleans’ public school system and privatize education. Teachers were fired en masse and public schools were closed and re-opened as charter schools. As Kristen Buras explains in Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space: Where the Market Meets Grassroots Resistance, “Time and again in New Orleans, charters would be given funding and facilities in what amounts to an educational land grab premised on historical erasure and the racial-spatial redistribution of resources.”
There are no traditional public schools in New Orleans any more. They are all gone. The school Ruby Bridges’ attended, William Franz Elementary — a historical landmark — does not even bear its own name. It was taken over by the charter school management group Crescent City Schools and renamed Aliki Academy. I am left to wonder why the legacy of Ruby Bridges’ efforts was not important enough to preserve the name of the school that has such an important part in history? It seems that the name of Ruby Bridges’ school is being erased from history in New Orleans. Is this part of the erasure that Buras talks about?
Greta Callahan: Walk in My Shoes Before You Criticize
Systemic education reform misses the point. To reform the entire system demands a reframing of the “system” itself. The “system” is the community in which schools are located. Reform the community first. Bring jobs that pay a living wage to the community. Address the needs of families who are often headed by very young, ill-prepared parents who are caught in the cycle of poverty. Renew the spirit of President Johnson’s War on Poverty initiatives. Instead of merely touting Finland’s education system as an exemplar, examine their efforts in eliminating childhood poverty as the precursor to educational achievement. Schools and teachers alone cannot solve these problems.
Greta Callahan’s article about teaching kindergarten in Minneapolis went viral. She wrote her article in response to one that appeared in the same paper asserting the “worst teachers are in the poorest schools.” She teaches in one of the poorest schools, and she tells her story.
To those who parrot the false claim that low test scores are caused by “bad teachers,” she offers a counter-narrative. She explains the burdens suffered by her students and the stress of being evaluated by a rubric that makes no sense.
Let’s start with what it means to be a “good teacher.” As the article says: “The district uses three different tools to evaluate teachers: classroom observations, a student survey and student achievement data.” Let’s put that into the perspective of a Bethune kindergarten teacher.
• Classroom observations: We have four per year. The teacher receives points based on standardized criteria; the feedback is…
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Data is Not Destiny! Confessions of a Totally “Purplicious” Former Kindergartner and Why Our Obsession with Data is Dangerous
Way back when — when kindergarten was not considered part of the K-12 curriculum — I attended the Sunshine Kindergarten in St. Petersburg, Florida. It was a happy time for me. I was able to paint, color, play, and sing five days a week with my new friends under the leadership of a kind soul, Mrs. Hardin. I was a little younger than my kindergarten classmates. My December birth date meant that I was four years old for half the year while others were starting to lose their first teeth and turning six (I was so envious). My favorite time of the day was when we all lined up in a row and sang the ABC song. As a beginning student of the letters, I claimed my favorite letter and song out loud and true when we finally arrived at that beautifully lyrical letter — elemenopy! What a lovely sounding letter. Never mind that I didn’t yet know how to write the letters or sound out words yet. I was a star when I sang the ABC song. I was totally “purplicious” (thank you to Victoria and Elizabeth Kann for the delightful book), full of imagination and promise. (http://www.amazon.com/Purplicious-Pinkalicious-Victoria-Kann/dp/0061244058)
My reminiscing about my kindergarten days got me to wondering. How would I have fared in the kindergarten classroom of today? Probably not so well. As an NBPTS certified early childhood educator, former elementary school teacher, and current professor of literacy education, I have administered literally thousands of reading assessments to young children. I know the importance of assessing literacy development, progress monitoring, and using data to differentiate instruction. I’ve used DIBELS assessments to determine which students are considered “at risk” for reading failure according to national norms. A couple of weeks ago I had a sobering moment when I realized that I would have been one of those children considered at risk for reading failure. Holy Cow!
Let me be clear. My mom read to me and my brother almost every single day. I could retell almost every story with complete accuracy and even do a dramatic performance based on my favorite characters. I was content to be both the audience to read alouds and the performer of the stories. I just was a little slow in the alphabetic principle department. Nonetheless, I did just fine when I went to first grade and learned the importance of reading the words in my “Dick and Jane” books.
I am so very glad that I went to school in the era prior to the data craze we now have. I dread to think that a longitudinal data bank would include any assessment results from my kindergarten days. With all our talk of teaching grittiness to young children, I doubt if there will ever be an assessment of purpliciousness.
You see, data is not destiny. Once you label a young child as “at risk” you run the risk of killing purpliciousness.
The United States is not Alone in Fighting Misguided Free Market Education Policies: Great Britain’s Struggle to Maintain Local Authority Over Their Schools
Unfortunately, Great Britain seems to be following the Friedmanomic playbook when it comes to education policy in spite of mounting evidence that these policies inevitably lead to an erosion in local control over schools, a devaluing of the teaching profession, and corruption by those who see education as a steady stream of profit for business entrepreneurs. And, according to the The Guardian, this is in spite of the fact that British citizens do not overwhelmingly support free market education policies. In an article entitled “Poll shows opposition to education reforms” (http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/apr/14/poll-opposition-education-reforms), Tom Clark and Rebecca Ratcliffe explain that “The biggest single structural change to English education … has been the rapid conversion of secondary schools into semi-independent academies.” British academies are the U.S. equivalent to charter schools. As in the United States, the invention of these schools was engineered by the liberal party, New Labour (Bill Clinton brought us federal government endorsement and funding for charter schools). As Clark and Ratcliffe explain, the British brand of charter schools are “autonomous from local authorities while being funded through private contracts.” Only 32% of the British citizens polled prefer the conversion of schools to academies. According to the article’s authors, the “stampede to academy conversion” is being led by Conservative voters.
An attack on the teaching profession in Britain also seems to mirror the teacher hate that has become the norm in the U.S. In 2012 academies were given the right to hire teachers who had not received formal training as professional educators. This policy is aligned with Obama and Secretary of Education Duncan’s Race to the Top policies that favor Teach for America and other alternatively certified teachers. According to article authors, 63% of those polled felt that “teaching is a profession the requires dedicated training.” Only 33% felt that “people with different career backgrounds should be welcomed into the classroom, to expand the teaching talent pool.”
As in the United States, corruption revolving around free market contracted schools is on the rise. Guardian reporters Warwick Mansell and Daniel Boffey (http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/aug/17/academies-run-superhead-advance-notice-ofsted-checks) revealed that academy schools run by Rachel de Souza received advanced notice before her schools were inspected by the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills. Of course, this is highly possible since de Souza had previously been appointed as an inspector for this office. And she used the advanced notice to warn students to watch their behavior over the coming week, get all the paperwork in order, and plant teachers who had never taught in one school before to teach model lessons. These efforts earned de Souza’s academies the highest ratings by inspectors.
I urge British citizens to heed education policy in the U.S. Micah Uetricht was absolutely correct when he wrote for The Guardian in 2013 an article entitled “Chicago is ground zero for disastrous ‘free market’ reforms of education” (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/27/chicago-teacher-strike-against-school-closures-and-privatization). It will be a very long time before the U.S. is able to disentangle itself from the Friedmanomic education policies that are leaving our country’s federal education system in shambles. The process of systemically reforming the U.S. education system to reflect the free market economics of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher began in the 1980s. Since then, every presidential administration in the U.S. continued with the same failed notion that free market ideologues are the best authorities to decide education policy. In the U.S. we like to identify who are the good guys and who are the bad guys and treat them accordingly. Sadly, what we’ve ended up with is the wild west of education policies and education reformers who envision education as a gold rush through privatization. My book The Origins of the Common Core: How the Free Market Became Public Education Policy details the decades long campaign to privatize public schools in the U.S. http://www.palgrave.com/page/detail/the-origins-of-the-common-core-deborah-duncan-owens/?isb=9781137482679
Public Schools Central 