What's wrong with the "School Reform Manifesto?"

Here's a good review of the How to Fix our Schools Manifesto of Rhee, Klein and others. I have a few things I'd like to add, though.

1. The manifesto claims that the Race to the Top is the catalyst for more educational reforms than "we have seen in decades." Race to the top pits states against each other for the right to get funding from the United States DOE. If we truly wanted to fix ALL schools in need in the country the Race to the Top would be replaced by a program which would help ALL students...not just the "winners."

2. The manifesto claims that seniority is responsible for the loss of young teachers. The implication is that there are so many bad teachers that children are being held back. The implication is that the teachers unions are responsible for keeping bad teachers in the classroom. Why then, do states without unions...and without collective bargaining laws, have test scores that are in line with the rest of the country? Why aren't "union-free" states achieving more in their schools?

3. The manifesto claims that firing a poor teacher is a monumental task...nearly impossible. In truth, though, tenure only guarantees a teacher due process. If the administration wants to fire a teacher who has tenure, then they have to show the reason why. The administration needs to document the reasons why a teacher is worthy of being fired...just like teachers have to document the grades they give their students. A teacher who is failing in their job has the right to hear the reasons why they are being fired. It's the administrations obligation to show why the teacher is incompetent or otherwise not qualified to teach.

4. The manifesto encourages the evaluation of teachers with their students' test scores even though student achievement tests are not a valid measure of teacher quality.

5. The manifesto encourages the reliance on charter schools, even though the research has not shown that charter schools are any better than traditional public schools.

6. I'd like to reemphasize a point that Valerie Strauss (as well as the other bloggers listed below) makes in her article below. Good teachers are important, but the single most important factor in student achievement is their home life - their time outside of school.

Now...here are Valerie Strauss' comments...

(Also see comments by Anthony Cody here...and by the Education Optimists here)

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From Valerie Strauss at the Washington Post

The bankrupt 'school reform manifesto' of Rhee, Klein, etc.

There are so many things wrong with the new “school reform manifesto” signed by 16 school district chiefs -- including New York’s Joel Klein and Washington’s Michelle Rhee -- and published in The Washington Post that it is hard to know where to start.

There’s the intellectual dishonesty and scapegoating: It starts by saying that everybody is responsible for improving schools but then proceeds to bash teachers, and doesn’t say a single thing about the responsibility of superintendents.

After eight years as the czar of New York City’s public schools, Klein might want to stop blaming other people for his failures.

There's historical myopia: The document says kids are just sitting around waiting for adults to do something, without noting that adults have been pushing eight years for test-centric reform favored by many of these superintendents with disastrous results.

There’s misinformation:

As President Obama has emphasized, the single most important factor determining whether students succeed in school is not the color of their skin or their ZIP code or even their parents’ income -- it is the quality of their teacher.

Wrong. Research actually shows that the home life of students is the single biggest determinant of school achievement. School chiefs can ignore it all they want, but that doesn’t change the facts. (Of course this is no excuse for leaving lousy teachers in schools, but there is equally no excuse for ignoring outside factors and blaming good teachers for things beyond their control.) The document, published in The Post's Outlook section and available here, makes the same tired call for more charter schools, the end of teacher tenure, etc., etc. -- all change initiatives guaranteed not to work.

We’ve heard it before, but, apparently, these superintendents felt the need to repeat it now, apparently to piggyback on the publicity of the wrong-headed education film “Waiting for Superman,” and the defeat in D.C.'s primary of Rhee’s political patron, Mayor Adrian Fenty.

The manifesto was initiated by Klein and Rhee, who gave it to Michael Casserly, executive director of the nonprofit Council of the Great City Schools. He then worked to persuade other schools bosses to sign on, according to a knowledgeable source.

The Washington-based council is a coalition of 65 of the nation’s largest urban public school systems and the only national organization exclusively representing the needs of these schools. Its mission, according to the Web site, is to promote the cause of urban schools and to advocate for inner-city students through legislation, research and media relations.

The organization also provides a network for school districts sharing common problems to exchange information, and to collectively address new challenges as they emerge in order to deliver the best possible education for urban youths.

Casserly, who has led the organization since 1992, is well-known in school reform circles, if not to the general public. I asked Casserly why he helped Klein win support for the document, and he responded by e-mail: “Part of the job.”

The document uses jargon that effectively calls for linking standardized test scores to teacher evaluation, a scheme that several recent studies concluded is ineffective in improving student achievement.

That doesn’t stop today’s reformers, who are obsessed with “data” and with using business practices to run schools, which are really civic institutions that should be operated on a civic model. Says the document:

“Let’s stop ignoring basic economic principles of supply and demand and focus on how we can establish a performance-driven culture in every American school.”

Um, don’t most businesses fail?

One of the signatories, Andres Alonso, the chief executive of the Baltimore City Public Schools, just signed an important agreement with the teachers union that calls for multiple measures to evaluate teachers, though this wasn’t acknowledged in the manifesto, leaving it a mystery as to why Alonso signed on.

You can read the rest of the nonsense here and come to your own conclusion.

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Put Diane Ravitch on The Daily Show

I've been sending Jon Stewart emails about having Diane Ravitch on the show for months...no answers.

This is from Valerie Strauss at the Answer Sheet.

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Jon Stewart and Lewis Black blew it on schools

Lewis Black’s piece on “the public school crisis” that aired on Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show” the other night left me wondering why education reform hasn’t been more of a high value target for Stewart or, for that matter, Steven Colbert.

The reform world is dripping with hilarious promise.

There are characters to lampoon: School superintendents who are education’s fundamentalists, believing only they know the way to reform heaven.

There are issues to rip open: The standardized testing obsession, the charter school obsession, the insistence on first the Bush administration and now the Obama administration to turn the nation’s leading civic institution, the public school system, into a market-driven industry.

Black’s piece (not his finest work) seemed to be inspired by the new education movie “Waiting for Superman,” which paints a false picture of
the education reform scene, and by NBC's recent Education Nation summit, which, in a different way, did the same thing.

He spoke about public charter schools, and said “Charter schools are better,” and then, after showing a clip of kids, said, “But those kids are in public schools. What ideas do we have for fixing them?”

Charter schools, as Black apparently doesn’t know, ARE public schools, and, incidentally, educate less than 5 percent of the country’s kids.

As for being “better,” the biggest research study on them, conducted by Stanford University researchers, showed that only 17 percent of them produce better test scores than their local traditional public schools and the rest were either worse or the same.

Stewart and Colbert both had the perfect chance to wade into this wacky world earlier this year when Diane Ravitch’s book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System,” was published and became a bestseller on the New York Times list.

Ravitch, the country’s leading education historian, tells of how she once supported No Child Left Behind but looked at the evidence of its effects on schools and came to realize it was terrible policy. Now the Obama administration is taking some of the worst aspects of No Child Left Behind to new levels of awfulness.

I asked Comedy Central why Stewart hasn’t invited Ravitch, or, for that matter, someone else who could talk about the education reform madness, but a vice president there said they don’t talk about the guest selection process. I heard elsewhere that the show wants “edgy” guests; Ravitch is actually edgier than virtually all of the guests both men have on their shows. (I know because I watch them.)

Colbert, on his Colbert Report, invited Education Secretary Arne Duncan on for an interview last year, but, frankly Colbert let Duncan off the hook.

Stewart has become more than just a funny guy on television. He has become a cultural force who routinely attacks hypocrisy and stupidity in all kinds of arenas. Colbert is too.

If Stewart and Black and Colbert can’t find fun in the hypocrisy of public school reform, they are losing their touch.

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Anyone Can Teach...Even Old Actors

What would you say about a reality show in which an actor, who "always wanted to be a teacher" walked into a real classroom and started teaching?

Tony Danza of Taxi and Who's the Boss fame, for which he received an Emmy nomination and several Golden Globe nominations, co-taught a 10th grade English class at Northeastern High School in Philadelphia during the 2009-2010 school year.

A & E is broadcasting the series. It began on October first.

I watched the first episode via Hulu and what struck me about the show at first glance was the assumption that anyone can teach...even an old actor (Danza will turn 60 in April of 2011). I mean...if an old actor could become president, why not a teacher?

This is just what Teach for America and the Broad/Gates Reformers are saying. Our schools are full of bad teachers...so let's get some new, energetic, but unqualified people to replace them.

Jim Horn said it well at Schools Matter:

In a prime example of Orwellian logic, Arne Duncan's corporate bosses have declared that the best way to getting test results in the poor schools that need the most highly qualified teachers is to lower the standards for teacher education by offering more "alternative certification" programs.

I'm not sure what I expected when I began watching the show, Teach: Tony Danza, but I certainly didn't expect what I saw. Danza is entertaining, has a good sense of humor, accepts the comments the students throw at him and responds honestly, and generally comes across as a typical first year teacher. Part way through the episode he said what so many first year teachers tell themselves, "You know you think you know so much, and then you find out you don't know nothing!"

Like most first year teachers, he talked to much...monopolizing the classroom. One of the most difficult lessons for new teachers to learn is that learning comes from the students, not from the teacher. A teacher can present material, but it's interaction with the students that leads to learning. So...he discovered quickly that he had to talk less.

On his first day, he screwed up, got called to the office and was reprimanded by the assistant principal for not signing in (Of all the scenes in the show, this one seemed to be the most staged). He then went into the principal's office and was told that "if this doesn't work, you're outa here." To his credit (or perhaps because he knew he was being filmed) he accepted the reprimand and the warning graciously.

Throughout the film he's mentored by an "instructional coach" who gives him tips, help and support. The coach, David Cohn, observes in the class, and is, I presume the co-teacher of the class.

The most gratifying thing about the first episode is that he has the same trouble that all first year teachers have. He is desperately trying to keep up with the students. He's nervous..."terrified" he said. He worries that he will have that "deer in the headlights" look...and his worry is justified. More than once you could see the pressure on his face...the fear, the loss of confidence, the panic when you just don't know what to do next. Teaching can be overwhelming and for beginners it often is. At one point he says what every experienced teacher knows, "This is the hardest work I've ever done." Like many first year teachers he worries, while wiping away the tears of frustration, that he may have "bitten off more than [he] could chew."

We'll see.

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Ignoring Poverty, Still...

This is why Diane Ravitch calls Valerie Strauss our nation's most indispensable education journalist.

The Elephant that Obama and Lauer Ignored: Poverty and Student Achievement

About two-thirds of the way through President Obama’s interview Monday with NBC’s Matt Lauer on school reform, I thought the two were about to really dive into the biggest issue plaguing the country’s most troubled schools.

Already discussed were the usual subjects raised by the Obama administration when it addresses school reform: charter schools, standards, how to get terrific teachers in every classroom, the length of the school year, Race to the Top and did I mention charter schools?

Then, there it was, the moment when Lauer raised the issue of poverty and the new Census Bureau figures showing that one in seven Americans live at or below the poverty line, defined as an annual income for a family of four of $22,000. That’s one in seven -- and that figure doesn’t include families of four with a $23,000 annual income.

I thought Lauer would make the obvious connection between poverty and student achievement. After all, the most consistent link in education and social science research is between family income and standardized test scores.

Today’s breed of school reformers, however, have ignored this link and adopted a “no excuses” policy, which essentially claims that good teachers can overcome anything, including medical, sociological and psychological problems that children who live in poverty bring into the classroom.

There is an oft-stated claim that three (or four, or five, depending on the source) “effective” teachers in a row can wipe out the effects of poverty. In fact, Education Secretary Arne Duncan made this claim today in an interview with Tom Brokaw as part of the network's Education Nation Summit.

There is no valid research to show this -- historian Diane Ravitch explains how this bogus notion gained credibility in Chapter 9 of her best-selling book, “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” -- but that hasn’t stopped people from wrapping policy around it.

David Berliner, regent’s professor emeritus at Arizona State University, a prominent researcher and educational psychologist, has studied how achievement is affected by poverty-induced physical, sociological and psychological problems that children bring to school.

These are six out-of-school factors Berliner has identified that are common among the poor and that affect how children learn, but that reformers effectively say can be overcome without attacking them directly: (1) low birth weight and nongenetic prenatal influences; (2) inadequate medical, dental and vision care, often a result of inadequate or no medical insurance; (3) food insecurity; (4) environmental pollutants; (5) family relations and family stress; and (6) neighborhood characteristics.

Statistics tell this tale. Here are some from “Early Warning!: Why Reading by the End of Third Grade Matters,” the latest in a series of “Kids Count” analyses by the Casey Foundation, a private charitable organization that advocates for policies to help poor children and families.

The authors take the 2009 reading test results released in March from the National Assessment of Educational Progress -- considered to be the gold standard in K-12 standardized assessment -- and break down the numbers to show how well different groups of disadvantaged students are doing:

• 90 percent of low-income black students in high-poverty schools were not reading at grade level by fourth grade.
• 83 percent of poor black students in schools with moderate to low levels of poverty did not reach the goal.
• 88 percent of Hispanic students in high-poverty schools missed the mark.
• 82 percent of Hispanic students in schools with low or moderate rates of families living in poverty did not read at grade level.

So there Lauer was, on the verge of making the most important point in any discussion about student achievement, and ... he moved on. Without making it.

Obama and Lauer started talking about the poverty statistics in regard to the economy, tax cuts and the economic recovery, and the moment was lost.

So the most important issue in school reform was ignored again.

Those who raise this issue are often attacked for resisting change and wanting to maintain the lousy status quo. It’s a silly, false argument; critics of the Obama administration’s reform agenda want to get rid of bad teachers just as much as anybody else, but they are pushing for workable, fair reforms, not turning back the clock. But the agenda has powerful backers. Obama, for example.

This is why so many people who voted for Obama hoping that he would reverse this school reform view promoted by his predecessor, George W. Bush, in his No Child Left Behind law are terribly disappointed and increasingly angry.

Obama should know better as president. Lauer should have pushed him on this as a journalist.

That their discussion ignored the elephant in the room tells you everything you need to know about what is missing from today’s school “reform” efforts and why they are doomed to fail.