Arne Duncan's Two Faces

Diane Ravitch wrote about a visit to a cocktail party she attended where Arne Duncan was the guest of honor. Her description needs no further comment. This is from her Bridging Differences blog.

I accepted an invitation to a cocktail party at a private home where the guest of honor was Secretary Duncan. The setting was beyond splendid, in a gorgeous home overlooking the valley. Secretary Duncan introduced a man who had led a campaign to build playgrounds, in fact, had created some 2,000 playgrounds. When introducing his friend, Secretary Duncan said that there was nothing more important for young children than having time for unstructured play, time to tinker, time to make things with their hands. He was wonderful. Knowing how much the U.S. Department of Education has promoted high-stakes testing, I was puzzled. My puzzlement turned to bewilderment a few days later when the Department of Education announced that the next round of Race to the Top would require the testing of 4- and 5-year-old children. Wait, I wondered, what about time for unstructured play, tinkering, etc.?

A Corporate Plan or Lack of Social Responsibility?

A Letter to Arne and Bill

Dr. Jim Taylor is a member of the Department of Psychology faculty at the University of San Francisco.

He wrote Education: Arne and Bill’s Misguided Adventure: An Open Letter to Arne Duncan and Bill Gates on his blog on August 1, 2011.

I really don’t understand you two, the U.S. Secretary of Education and the world’s second richest man and noted philanthropist. How can you possibly say that public education can be reformed without eliminating poverty?

Using reason and logic, he explains why poverty is a cause of poor education. He tells Bill Gates,

You can’t get out of poverty without a good education, but you aren’t likely to get a good education without first getting out of poverty...What I also find ironic is that you have devoted billions of dollars to eliminating poverty in other parts of the world, but you aren’t applying the same logic here at home.

Then he discusses the research, which has been discussed hundreds of times before...

Let’s look at the evidence. A recent ten-year study has shown that school vouchers don’t improve academic achievement. Charter schools, over all, don’t outperform traditional public schools. And, despite the urban legend (pun intended) to the contrary, teachers are NOT the most significant influence on children’s educational outcomes. The single greatest predictor of student performance is their early family life, namely, family income, medical care, family composition, family communication, and early learning experiences (about 60% explanatory power).

Why don't the Bill Gates and the Eli Broads of the world listen to that? Why don't politicians like George Bush, Arne Duncan and Barack Obama hear and understand that they are messing with the wrong piece of the puzzle? Schools can be improved...every public school parent and teacher knows that, but the achievment gaps in our public schools won't be eliminated until we, as a nation, agree to eliminate the poverty gap.

Is it because they don't want to hear and listen?

A Superintendent Sees Conspiracy

Jim Arnold, Superintendent of Pelham City Schools in Pelham, Georgia, wrote a piece titled No Child Left Behind: A conspiracy against public education that too few called out which was featured by Maureen Downey on her Get Schooled Blog for the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

He reminds us that many of us saw the destruction built into NCLB, but didn't do enough...we didn't speak out loudly enough, didn't fight hard enough...didn't teach well enough.

All of us saw this coming, but very few took a stand and now we – and our students – are paying the price. We could have been prophets but failed the test.

He describes what happened, how we let the proponents of NCLB define the terms, how many of us rationalized the testing insanity, and how we thought we could help improve things by getting a "seat at the table" (like NEA insists on doing). We didn't realize, he says, that the proponents of NCLB didn't want to improve public education at all.

They didn’t want to change the policy, because the policy was designed in theory and in fact not to aid education but to create an image of a failed public school system in order to further the implementation of vouchers and the diversion of public education funds to private schools.

Are the politicians and corporate "reformers" who are slowly but surely dismantling America's Public Education system interested in improving education for all children?

I am not usually a conspiracy theory guy, but this was no theory. These were cold hard facts slapping me in the face. We failed in our obligations to protect our students from one of the most destructive educational policies since “separate but equal.” We did not educate the public on the myth and misdirection of Adequate Yearly Progress, and we allowed closet segregationists to direct the implementation of policies that we knew would result in our being the guys in the black hats responsible for “the failure of public education.”

Do they not care about public education? Do they not care about lessening the achievement gap? If they did why would they continue to ignore the evidence that what they're doing isn't working?

The Real Culprit

Are No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top just two parts of a larger conspiracy to destroy public education in America and replace it with a system of private schools and charter schools run for profit?

Diane Ravitch presents us with these facts:

The last international test results were released in December...low-poverty U.S. schools (where fewer than 10% of the students were poor) had scores that were higher than those of the top nations in the world. In schools where as many as 25% of the students were poor, the scores were equal to those of Finland, Japan and Korea. As the poverty rate of the schools rose, the schools’ performance declined.

An objective observer would conclude that the problem in this society has to do with our shamefully high rates of child poverty, the highest in the developed world. At least 20% of U.S. children live in poverty. Among black children, the poverty rate is 35%.

So, you tell me...is it the public schools, the failure of our nation to deal with the social issue of poverty, or a corporate plan to scuttle our nation's school system?

Watch The Disparity Gap from April, 2008. What's been done in the last three and a half years to improve the poverty level in the US?

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A Lifetime of Elementary Schools -- Part 4

Part 4 in a self-indulgent virtual trip reminiscing about my years of teaching elementary school...

Beginning in the fall of 1976 -- and for the next 11 years -- I taught at Monroeville Elementary School in Monroeville, Indiana. I taught third grade for 7 years, my first, full time teaching experience -- then first grade for three years -- and finally third grade for another year. The first grade that I taught was a first grade-transition. The students did not succeed in kindergarten and were going to repeat first grade. The class I taught was the first year of first grade for them.

Mr. Wil Ogle, the principal, helped me find my way my first few years. He was patient when I held my class too long and the buses left before I got the students out the door. He accompanied me to Newark to a conference on writing. He gave me evaluations with constructive criticism and good suggestions.

It was at Monroeville that I learned the basics of how to teach and developed my style of teaching which emphasized reading.

Challenging students: Students who have difficulty need to be challenged, but providing materials at too difficult a level is a waste of time. A child reading at a first grade level should not be forced to work at grade level material which is too hard. This was reinforced when I did my reading recovery training and learned about Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development. A student needs to be taught at a level that is just beyond what s/he can do alone...that's where learning occurs. One size does not fit all.

Evaluations: Different teachers have different strengths and weaknesses. It's easy to look at what's going on in a classroom and make a judgment about it. "That teacher is bad..." or "That teacher is good..." A good principal (or other evaluator) can look beyond a personality and see the entire class, identify the strengths a teacher has and help her build on those. If there are areas of weakness a teacher needs to work on them to improve, not be labeled as ineffective and derided. Not everyone teaches the same way...nor should they. Teachers need to use their own strengths. One size does not fit all -- and that goes for teachers as well as students.

During one parent/teacher conference I remember a parent began discussing another teacher in the building. He spoke about how "bad" she was as a teacher. I asked for specifics and the response was "I can just tell...she's no good."

Years later, when I was teaching at Woodburn Elementary (which will be "A Lifetime of Elementary Schools - Part 5") I began to understand what went into teacher evaluations. The principal at Woodburn made comments on my evaluation, with specific information about what I did, pro and con. He included suggestions for improvement, specific to the comments he had made. It was an evaluation done with care and attention to detail.

Evaluations don't need test scores to be valuable. An evaluator who is well trained, and gives suggestions, comments, criticism and corrections honestly will provide a good evaluation. I received almost 20 evaluations over the course of my career. The ones which were the most valuable had specific discussion of things which the principal saw in my classroom. Those were the evaluations which helped me develop into a better teacher. Those were the evaluations which encouraged me to continue to learn and grow as a teacher.

Teachers: As a beginning teacher the exposure I got to other teachers was valuable. I remember...

...the male kindergarten teacher who reinforced my belief that men need to be at all levels of elementary education.

...the first grade teacher who was "old school." I was watching my students "bounce" down the hall on their way to the gym. They weren't noisy, just bouncy, like 8 and 9 year old are supposed to be. She told me that they weren't walking in a "line." I said that when I couldn't "enjoy watching my students being children I was going to retire." I think that was the first time I realized that I didn't want to teach longer than my effectiveness lasted. Once I lost the spark I was going to be finished.

Students: I also learned about differences in students...

...S, a student in my first third-grade class, was responsible for getting himself and his first grade brother off to school every day. His parents worked at a factory and worked the third shift. They were asleep when the boys woke up every day. Two years later I had J, his brother.

...One of my third grade students, L, was the last of 12 children in her family and the only girl.

...Another third grader, after I caught her cheating on a spelling test, told me that she didn't have time to study. "You just don't understand how busy I am!" she said.

Advocacy: I think my proudest moment at Monroeville came during a case conference for a special education student. He was placed in my class (first grade-transition) because at that time there were no special education classes in the district which would have been appropriate for him. During the case conference, the director of special education indicated to the parents that my class was the best place for her child. I interrupted and said that it was "the best place we have available" for him.

After the meeting, the director of special education scolded me and told me that what I said "could get us sued" and that I needed to be an advocate for our school system. I responded that perhaps, if we didn't have an appropriate placement for the child, we deserve to be sued and that I was an advocate, not for the school system, but for my students.

That was the first significant conflict which I had with an administrator...and not the last.

Lasting Contributions: I'm also proud of the experiences I provided for my students. Often, years after I had them, when former students would meet me, or write to me, they let me know that I had influenced them in some way or another. Most of them wrote about my obsession with Reading Aloud. But one was different.

I got a letter from, R, a former third grader 20 years after I had left Monroeville. He wrote to me to thank me for the time we had made Father's Day cards. He told me that his father had recently died and the Father's Day card I helped him make and send as a 9 year old, was the last communication he ever had with his father. At the time he sent the letter he was in inmate at Indiana's maximum security prison serving a life sentence for murder.

Not everything that counts can be tested by filling in a bubble on a standardized test.

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Monroeville Elementary School closed after the 2010-2011 school year in a cost cutting, building closing plan which the school board implemented. See...Closing Schools.

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Quote for the day: Children Are Not Shoes

"[The Chamber of Commerce] says the public school system, the country’s most important civic institution, should be run like a business, a philosophy championed by some of the most high-profile school reformers today.

"The effort to do so -- now being supported by the Chamber of Commerce, some of the country’s biggest philanthropists, and the Obama administration -- is weakening the public schools and, ultimately, will make it harder to build a dedicated cadre of effective teachers and improve the achievement rates of minorities." -- Valerie Strauss in The Chamber of Commerce's flawed 'Superman' school reform guide.

Follow the Money: Indiana's Tony Bennett

Indiana's superintendent of public instruction, Tony Bennett, and his boss, governor Mitch Daniels, have received campaign money from corporate school reform businesses, including those who are set to take over the "so called failing schools" in Indianapolis and Gary.

Doug Martin, in Murdoch’s Wireless Gen. and Edison Learning Donated Money to Tony Bennett, lists the contributors to Bennett's (and Daniel's) campaign funds.

As the Indiana State Board of Education decides to hand over Indiana’s so-called “failing” schools to EdisonLearning, Charter Schools USA, and Rupert Murdoch’s Wireless Generation today, it is important to note that both Edison and Wireless Generation have donated to Education Reform Idol Indiana supt. of public instruction Tony Bennett’s campaign chest. In fact, Wireless Gen. even lavished money on Mitch Daniels and Indiana Republicans, the month before Murdoch acquired the company.

The list of donors includes corporate reform companies like Edison and Charter Schools USA, as well as standardized test giant, McGraw-Hill, Education Services of America (who has a contract with my former employer, East Allen County Schools), and various charter and school choice advocates.

Simply following the money will help to explain why Bennett and Daniels are so eager to give away Indiana's Public Schools.

See also, Follow the Money--Bennett and Campaign Money at the Indiana Citizens for Public Education blog.