Education Week published an article on 25 years since the famous A Nation at Risk report by Ronald Wolk, founder and former editor of Education Week, titled Why We’re Still ‘At Risk’, The Legacy of Five Faulty Assumptions.
He starts by asserting, “After nearly 25 years of intensive [very expensive and wasteful] effort, we have failed to fix our ailing public schools and stem the “rising tide of mediocrity” chronicled in 1983 . . . This is mainly because the report misdiagnosed the problem, and because the major assumptions on which current education policy—and most reform efforts—have been based are either wrong or unrealistic.”
He goes on to join the misdiagnosis with one of his own, “Most of the people running our public education systems and leading the reform movement are knowledgeable, dedicated, and experienced. But they are so committed to a strategy of standards-based accountability that different ideas are marginalized or stifled completely.” He is definitely falling into the education insider party line trap. To call the people tasked to lead in education leadership knowledgeable or committed to anything but maintaining the status quo is ludicrous. These people have been trained to not lead, not rock the boat, and pray morning and night to the false gods of education myths that don’t stand up to scientific scrutiny. They have been tasked by the education insider power groups to maintain the status quo and prevent any real change from taking place. And in that they have been spectacularly successful. Of course, many billions of taxpayer dollars have been wasted in the process and kids are continuing to be harmed by the school system.
Wolk’s list of five “wrong assumptions” and some comments follows.
1. The best way to improve student performance and close the achievement gaps is to establish rigorous content standards and a core curriculum for all schools—preferably on a national basis. His argument on this one makes decent sense for the most part. “Standardization and uniformity may work with cars and computers, but it doesn’t work with humans. Today’s student body is the most diverse in history. An education system that treats all student alike denies that reality. . . Standards don’t prepare students for anything; they are a framework of expectations and education objectives. Without the organization and process to achieve them, they are worthless. States have devoted nearly 20 years to formulating standards to be accomplished by a conventional school model that is incapable of meeting them.
2. Standardized-test scores are an accurate measure of student learning and should be used to determine promotion and graduation. He argues, “if test scores are the accepted indicator, schools have not been meeting the needs of students for the past couple of decades. So why spend more money and time on constant testing to tell us what we already know . . . “ That is like saying if you are sick in the hospital stop taking vital signs information because it might cost too much. He also falls back on the demographic argument saying, “Standardized-test scores tend . . . to say more about a student’s socioeconomic status than about his or her abilities.” The demographic excuse leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy that has led to a “kill them with kindness” mentality. That is, the underlying assumption that educators are trained to make starting in the education schools is that “those kids can’t learn to a high standard.” This has been proven to be wrong in hundreds of research studies but it makes a convenient argument for not addressing the real problems. Mortimore and Sammons as far back as 1987 showed that the teacher effect is up to 6 times more powerful than demographics in reading and that the difference is up to 10 times for math. The mistake being made is that while the performance of “gap kids” on the standardized testing correlates well with, say, eligibility for free or reduced lunch that demographics is the cause. It is not. The way educators treat the gap kids is the cause. The problem is imbedded deeply in the educators’ attitudes. Correlation does not prove cause. It is a good predictive tool however.
3. We need to put highly qualified teachers in every classroom to assure educational excellence. He says, “A great idea! If we could do that, we’d be a long way to solving our education problem. But it won’t happen for decades, if ever.” Wow! So let’s just give up and forget the kids’ futures being limited due to poor educational performance because the adults can’t get their act together. I know the problem can be solved but it will take new and creative thinking. We will have to break away from many of the “iron-clad” norms of teacher preparation and certification and replace them with a system that truly values “educated people as teachers.” There are tons of educated people out there who would be more than willing to enter teaching if it were made less difficult. The well educated people who are underemployed in our economy would view the pay and benefits of the teachers as a huge plus compared to where they have been working. Wolk bemoans the fact that teachers aren’t treated as professionals. That is a two way street. If you act professionally you are more likely to be treated as a professional. Of course, as I have pointed out multiple times the poorly skilled leadership in education would have to be retrained to enable the massive change required in teaching effectively.
4. The United States should require all students to take algebra in the 8th grade and higher-order math in high school in order to increase the number of scientists and engineers in the country and thus make us more competitive in the global economy. Wolk states, “This assumption has become almost an obsession in policymaking arenas today. Requiring every student to study higher-order math is a waste of resources and cruel and unusual punishment for legions of students. It diverts attention away from the real problem: our failure to help kids become proficient readers and master basic arithmetic.” I need to quote some history so that you can see how attitudes haven’t changed in a century about math education. This is from David Klein’s “A Brief History of American K-12 Math Education in the 20th Century.” “The prescriptions for the future of mathematics education were articulated early in the 20th century by one of the nation's most influential education leaders, William Heard Kilpatrick. According to E. D. Hirsch, Kilpatrick was "the most influential introducer of progressive ideas into American schools of education." Kilpatrick was an education professor at Teachers College at Columbia University, and a protégé of John Dewey. Kilpatrick proposed that the study of algebra and geometry in high school be discontinued ‘except as an intellectual luxury. According to Kilpatrick, mathematics is ‘harmful rather than helpful to the kind of thinking necessary for ordinary living.’ In an address before the student body at the University of Florida, Kilpatrick lectured, ‘We have in the past taught algebra and geometry to too many, not too few.’ So you see that Wolk says the same thing in a little different way. First, algebra is not advanced mathematics. Second, mastery of arithmetic is very important but not being done at all because of the increasing application of discovery math curricula like Everyday Math which use calculators instead of providing a foundation in math facts and skills that are necessary to the study of algebra. I agree that every student will not study calculus or want to become an engineer or scientist. But even those who take vocational tracks can use algebra in their future jobs or at least the mental discipline learned in algebra. An auto mechanic, for example, needs to have good diagnostic skills to succeed with today’s ever more complex cars. Sadly, the current state of math education fails to prepare many of those who do want to a pursue those fields of study, thus reducing our total number of domestically trained engineers and scientists. Unless we discard the wrong-headed assertions of the education school training regarding what education should entail we will be saying the same thing a century from now, although we may be speaking Chinese when we do it.
5. The student-dropout rate can be reduced by ending social promotion, funding dropout-prevention programs, and raising the mandatory attendance age. Wolk does a pretty good job on this one saying the drop-out rate is the most telling evidence of public school failure. He points out that the initiatives such as legally requiring students to stay in school longer or “just stay in” programs are not addressing the problem. The problem is that kids are allowed get further and further behind grade level performance yet are expected to stay in the system which becomes more demotivating and frustrating for them as the years pass. This gets back to the “self fulfilling prophecy” and the kill them with kindness approach. Wolk points out that the NAEP tests show that only about a quarter of 4th grade kids can read proficiently. Of course the levels decline in the 8th and 12th grades. Also, we need to realize that the NAEP is not as rigorous as the requirements in our strongest global competitor countries. Studies show that in surveys of students the one word they use most to describe their schooling is “boring.” Until we can engage and motivate them with high quality experiences [not field trips and other tangential activities but real subject based rigor] the problem will not change.
The article was disheartening to say the least. It is not disheartening from a “what is required” point of view. It is disheartening because fixing it will take a much different approach to the one we have been using. And that will only happen if the electorate demands it. The quote from Kilpatrick juxtaposed with that of Wolk shows that we are mired in a rut that can’t be broken out of without the public demanding that the problem be fixed. Sadly, most of the public believe that “their schools” are doing well and only those “other schools” are doing poorly and who cares about them?
PWR
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Monday, April 13, 2009
Singapore Teachers
I just read an interesting article on teachers in Singapore in the Christian Science Monitor from the March 24, 2009 edition. The article states that when a group of education leaders visited Singapore last spring [about a year ago], one [state superintendent of W. VA schools, Steven Paine] . . . asked a Singapore official about the basis of their math curriculum, she cited a standards framework put out by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics—in the United States. W. Virginia uses the NCTM standards in their curriculum, “so the question remains, why is it that they lead the world in student achievement? I think it’s because of their teacher quality,” he says.
“Only the top third of secondary-school graduates in Singapore can apply for teacher training. The National Institute of Education winnows that field down more and pays a living stipend while they learn to teach. Each year, teachers take an additional 100 hours of paid professional development. And they spend substantial time outside the classroom to plan with colleagues. Not only is teaching an honored profession in Singapore, but it’s also paid as well as science and engineering careers.”
Now let’s compare the Singapore approach to the one in America. Arthur Levine reported in his “Educating School Teachers.” “The nation’s teacher education programs are inadequately preparing their graduates to meet the realities of today’s standards-based, accountability-driven classrooms, in which the primary measure of success is student achievement.” Levine, who recently left the presidency of Teachers College, Columbia University to become president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, “concludes that a majority of teacher education graduates are prepared in university-based programs that suffer from low admission and graduation standards. Their faculties, curriculums and research are disconnected from school practice and practitioners. There are wide variations in program quality, with the majority of teachers prepared in lower quality programs. Both state and accreditation standards for maintaining quality are ineffective. . . [and] the study found that too often teacher education programs cling to an outdated, historically flawed vision of teacher education that is at odds with a society remade by economic, demographic, technological, and global change. Equally troubling, the nation is deeply divided about how to reform teacher education to most effectively prepare teachers to meet today’s new realities.”
Levine’s statement about admission standards coupled with [programs] “cling to an outdated, historically flawed vision of teacher education that is at odds with a society remade by economic, demographic, technological, and global change” seem to be at the core of the problem. “Universities use their teacher education programs as ‘cash cows,’ requiring them to generate revenue to fund more prestigious departments. This forces them to increase their enrollments and lower their admissions standards. Schools with low admissions standards also tend to have low graduation requirements. While aspiring secondary school teachers do well compared to the national average on SAT and GRE exams, the scores of future elementary school teachers fall near the bottom of test takers. Their GRE scores are 100 points below the national average.”
Some observations based on the information in the CSM article and Levine’s report.
• Admission to the teaching profession in Singapore is tough and thus the quality of candidates is high. In contrast, the admission requirements for American teacher training is low, very low. We must remember that graduating secondary school in the top third in Singapore is much more rigorous than graduating in the top third would be in the typical American high school. As Levine points out the majority of elementary school teachers have very low SAT and GRE scores.
• If you look at state achievement test results you will see that the kids generally perform at lower levels as they move to higher grades, especially in math. It seems obvious that the weak teaching in elementary schools is not giving the kids the foundation they need to cope with the more advanced studies they are expected to complete in middle and high school. When you are several years behind when you start high school it doesn’t matter if your high school math teacher knows more about math because you are very unlikely to be able to catch up.
• Pay was mentioned as a factor in Singapore. Yet, if you look at the Wall Street Journal article of Sept. 13, 2005, Wage Winners and Losers, page B1 you will see a ranking of 22 occupations by average annual pay based on the then newly released U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report. From highest to lowest you get: Economics Teachers, Physicians, Airplane Pilots/Navigators, Lawyers/Judges, Architects, ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS, Natural Scientists, Computer Programmers, etc. You have to conclude that as in Singapore, American elementary school teachers are paid as well as natural scientists. Thus, we already are paying at high levels but we don’t have the performance to go with the pay. This does not mean all teachers are overpaid because some clearly deserve more pay. It does mean that the current “step-pay” plans where teachers are paid more each year for getting older is not giving incentives to perform better over the course of a long teaching career.
• The education schools are a foundational part of the problem. Their standards are too low, their faculty and curricula are out of touch with the current reality of real-world requirements, and the state regulatory entities continue to base their worthless certifications predominately on education school degrees and training. Yet, the education schools continue with the same outdated curricula that are rooted in the progressive movement of a hundred years ago and also don’t stand scientific scrutiny as E. D. Hirsch points out in his book, “The Knowledge Deficit.”
• The American educators who visited Singapore didn’t get the message because they viewed everything they saw through the distorted lens of American education context. They showed that they didn’t “get it” by continuing to approach problems with the same attitudes and methods that have been spectacularly unsuccessful in the past. Until they learn to face reality and break with the “conventional wisdom” of the education establishment, they will continue to serve our students poorly.
American education insiders have a remarkable ability to ignore or warp reality to their own points of view. They have an ironclad belief that they alone are the education experts and that they don’t need or want input from “outsiders.” That is perhaps the biggest difference of all between Singapore and here. Thomas Friedman in his famous book, “The World is Flat” tells of an Indian company, Heymath.com that has a contract with the Singapore education establishment. The contract is for Heymath.com to hire engineering students at their local Indian Institute of Technology [considered equivalent or better by some than MIT in the US] to work with Singapore teachers on the best ways to present the math content to their students. They also work via the web to tutor Singapore students. The quality control for their work is done by Cambridge University in Great Britain. Unlike their American counterparts the Singapore educators are willing to gain synergy by partnering with other disciplines and other countries as well if it benefits their students. That approach does not happen here because the education establishment wants to hold tightly to every education decision. There are many problems to be faced before positive change will occur. Until then Singapore and other nations’ kids will continue outstripping our kids in achievement, career opportunities, job security and all of the other things that go with being better educated.
“Only the top third of secondary-school graduates in Singapore can apply for teacher training. The National Institute of Education winnows that field down more and pays a living stipend while they learn to teach. Each year, teachers take an additional 100 hours of paid professional development. And they spend substantial time outside the classroom to plan with colleagues. Not only is teaching an honored profession in Singapore, but it’s also paid as well as science and engineering careers.”
Now let’s compare the Singapore approach to the one in America. Arthur Levine reported in his “Educating School Teachers.” “The nation’s teacher education programs are inadequately preparing their graduates to meet the realities of today’s standards-based, accountability-driven classrooms, in which the primary measure of success is student achievement.” Levine, who recently left the presidency of Teachers College, Columbia University to become president of the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, “concludes that a majority of teacher education graduates are prepared in university-based programs that suffer from low admission and graduation standards. Their faculties, curriculums and research are disconnected from school practice and practitioners. There are wide variations in program quality, with the majority of teachers prepared in lower quality programs. Both state and accreditation standards for maintaining quality are ineffective. . . [and] the study found that too often teacher education programs cling to an outdated, historically flawed vision of teacher education that is at odds with a society remade by economic, demographic, technological, and global change. Equally troubling, the nation is deeply divided about how to reform teacher education to most effectively prepare teachers to meet today’s new realities.”
Levine’s statement about admission standards coupled with [programs] “cling to an outdated, historically flawed vision of teacher education that is at odds with a society remade by economic, demographic, technological, and global change” seem to be at the core of the problem. “Universities use their teacher education programs as ‘cash cows,’ requiring them to generate revenue to fund more prestigious departments. This forces them to increase their enrollments and lower their admissions standards. Schools with low admissions standards also tend to have low graduation requirements. While aspiring secondary school teachers do well compared to the national average on SAT and GRE exams, the scores of future elementary school teachers fall near the bottom of test takers. Their GRE scores are 100 points below the national average.”
Some observations based on the information in the CSM article and Levine’s report.
• Admission to the teaching profession in Singapore is tough and thus the quality of candidates is high. In contrast, the admission requirements for American teacher training is low, very low. We must remember that graduating secondary school in the top third in Singapore is much more rigorous than graduating in the top third would be in the typical American high school. As Levine points out the majority of elementary school teachers have very low SAT and GRE scores.
• If you look at state achievement test results you will see that the kids generally perform at lower levels as they move to higher grades, especially in math. It seems obvious that the weak teaching in elementary schools is not giving the kids the foundation they need to cope with the more advanced studies they are expected to complete in middle and high school. When you are several years behind when you start high school it doesn’t matter if your high school math teacher knows more about math because you are very unlikely to be able to catch up.
• Pay was mentioned as a factor in Singapore. Yet, if you look at the Wall Street Journal article of Sept. 13, 2005, Wage Winners and Losers, page B1 you will see a ranking of 22 occupations by average annual pay based on the then newly released U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics report. From highest to lowest you get: Economics Teachers, Physicians, Airplane Pilots/Navigators, Lawyers/Judges, Architects, ELEMENTARY SCHOOL TEACHERS, Natural Scientists, Computer Programmers, etc. You have to conclude that as in Singapore, American elementary school teachers are paid as well as natural scientists. Thus, we already are paying at high levels but we don’t have the performance to go with the pay. This does not mean all teachers are overpaid because some clearly deserve more pay. It does mean that the current “step-pay” plans where teachers are paid more each year for getting older is not giving incentives to perform better over the course of a long teaching career.
• The education schools are a foundational part of the problem. Their standards are too low, their faculty and curricula are out of touch with the current reality of real-world requirements, and the state regulatory entities continue to base their worthless certifications predominately on education school degrees and training. Yet, the education schools continue with the same outdated curricula that are rooted in the progressive movement of a hundred years ago and also don’t stand scientific scrutiny as E. D. Hirsch points out in his book, “The Knowledge Deficit.”
• The American educators who visited Singapore didn’t get the message because they viewed everything they saw through the distorted lens of American education context. They showed that they didn’t “get it” by continuing to approach problems with the same attitudes and methods that have been spectacularly unsuccessful in the past. Until they learn to face reality and break with the “conventional wisdom” of the education establishment, they will continue to serve our students poorly.
American education insiders have a remarkable ability to ignore or warp reality to their own points of view. They have an ironclad belief that they alone are the education experts and that they don’t need or want input from “outsiders.” That is perhaps the biggest difference of all between Singapore and here. Thomas Friedman in his famous book, “The World is Flat” tells of an Indian company, Heymath.com that has a contract with the Singapore education establishment. The contract is for Heymath.com to hire engineering students at their local Indian Institute of Technology [considered equivalent or better by some than MIT in the US] to work with Singapore teachers on the best ways to present the math content to their students. They also work via the web to tutor Singapore students. The quality control for their work is done by Cambridge University in Great Britain. Unlike their American counterparts the Singapore educators are willing to gain synergy by partnering with other disciplines and other countries as well if it benefits their students. That approach does not happen here because the education establishment wants to hold tightly to every education decision. There are many problems to be faced before positive change will occur. Until then Singapore and other nations’ kids will continue outstripping our kids in achievement, career opportunities, job security and all of the other things that go with being better educated.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Using Technology to Teach
Lewis J. Perelman wrote a book that came out in 1992 that was ahead of its time, School’s Out: Hyperlearning, the New Technology, and the End of Education. He used the success that industry was having in training people with technology and artificial intelligence systems and said that applying it to our children’s education would be very powerful. He asserted that at that time we had the ability to teach anyone, anywhere what they needed to know at an A grade level. An excellent and thought provoking book that is well worth reading.
Education Week has just put out its latest version of Technology Counts which looks at the state of technology-based learning and the use of education technology in the states. They give grades to the states for technology use and Colorado gets a nice shiny D+. Lots of states get A’s; Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, N. Carolina, S. Carolina, S. Dakota, Utah, and W. Virginia. Another 11 get A- grades.
I have been frustrated for some time about the lack of technology “rollout” to aid teaching and to prepare students to better cope with the increasingly ubiquitous use of technology in our world. I was glad to see that some progress is being made although as always in education it is glacial at best. A quote from the Education Week article, Breaking Away From Tradition, summarizes the situation “As the world of online education continues to evolve, brick-and-mortar schools are incorporating digital curricula and virtual teachers into their classrooms in ways that have surprised even the advocates of the online education movement. Once mostly catering to advanced students who educators believed had the motivation to pursue education online, virtual courses are growing in popularity for struggling students, too. And school districts and teachers that once felt threatened by the surge of online education are embracing the technology, often in a hybrid model that blends face-to-face learning with digital teaching and curricula.”
The dinosaurs still say things like, “Poor-quality online curricula exist in the marketplace, and figuring out how to train and evaluate virtual teachers is still a work in progress.” Of course, they do not mention that poor-quality curricula and poor teachers exist in the traditional education world as well. One area worth emphasizing is that some schools are using the online courses to help both the remedial and the advanced ends of the spectrum. Thus, districts that need to address the low achievement end of their population in an aggressive way, doesn’t have to mean ignoring the advanced end of the spectrum. This is very important because the push to get everyone proficient has taken attention away from the higher achievement end of the spectrum. Oh, there are still gifted and talented programs but the money and manpower goes overwhelmingly toward getting the low achieving kids to grade level.
This problem with under serving the top students is brought home well by comparing the A Nation at Risk report of 1983 with the Tough Choices or Tough Times report of 2007. While the A Nation at Risk report bemoaned the “rising tide of mediocrity” they saw in American education, they were still able to say that America’s best and brightest scored at the top of the heap compared to their international peers. However, the 2007 report stated that in the 24 years between reports our best and brightest had gone from the top of the heap to the bottom of the heap versus their international peers.
PWR 2009
Education Week has just put out its latest version of Technology Counts which looks at the state of technology-based learning and the use of education technology in the states. They give grades to the states for technology use and Colorado gets a nice shiny D+. Lots of states get A’s; Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, N. Carolina, S. Carolina, S. Dakota, Utah, and W. Virginia. Another 11 get A- grades.
I have been frustrated for some time about the lack of technology “rollout” to aid teaching and to prepare students to better cope with the increasingly ubiquitous use of technology in our world. I was glad to see that some progress is being made although as always in education it is glacial at best. A quote from the Education Week article, Breaking Away From Tradition, summarizes the situation “As the world of online education continues to evolve, brick-and-mortar schools are incorporating digital curricula and virtual teachers into their classrooms in ways that have surprised even the advocates of the online education movement. Once mostly catering to advanced students who educators believed had the motivation to pursue education online, virtual courses are growing in popularity for struggling students, too. And school districts and teachers that once felt threatened by the surge of online education are embracing the technology, often in a hybrid model that blends face-to-face learning with digital teaching and curricula.”
The dinosaurs still say things like, “Poor-quality online curricula exist in the marketplace, and figuring out how to train and evaluate virtual teachers is still a work in progress.” Of course, they do not mention that poor-quality curricula and poor teachers exist in the traditional education world as well. One area worth emphasizing is that some schools are using the online courses to help both the remedial and the advanced ends of the spectrum. Thus, districts that need to address the low achievement end of their population in an aggressive way, doesn’t have to mean ignoring the advanced end of the spectrum. This is very important because the push to get everyone proficient has taken attention away from the higher achievement end of the spectrum. Oh, there are still gifted and talented programs but the money and manpower goes overwhelmingly toward getting the low achieving kids to grade level.
This problem with under serving the top students is brought home well by comparing the A Nation at Risk report of 1983 with the Tough Choices or Tough Times report of 2007. While the A Nation at Risk report bemoaned the “rising tide of mediocrity” they saw in American education, they were still able to say that America’s best and brightest scored at the top of the heap compared to their international peers. However, the 2007 report stated that in the 24 years between reports our best and brightest had gone from the top of the heap to the bottom of the heap versus their international peers.
PWR 2009
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
Pols Talking Education Change
Yesterday in the Wall Street Journal appeared an article, “In Education, a Chance for Change” by Gerald F. Seib. Mr. Seib starts by saying that the new Education Secretary, Arne Duncan has a chance to bring about real change in the way our kids are educated. “I see this as an extraordinary opportunity,” Mr. Duncan said in an interview. “We have a couple of things going in our direction that create what I call the perfect storm for reform.” Here are the elements Mr. Duncan points toward:
Consensus is building that America’s ossified education system needs a big shake-up. A bipartisan trail toward real change was blazed by the Bush administration (which gets too little credit for it).
He apparently thinks that Obama is willing to break some china to bring about education change.
Here is where it gets dubious for me. “Guess what? We have a little money to spend.” What an understatement, the $100 million in the stimulus package virtually doubles his budget. He admits it will take more than money to “coax, cajole and sometimes confront” state governments that have the lion’s share of control on education decisions.
On the plus side Obama has been calling for merit pay for teachers. While I support the concept of merit pay strongly for teachers, I also know that the current very weak leadership cadre in education can not do it well and will if given the mandate to do it create a debacle that will play into the hands of the opponents and set back real implementation of the concept for decades if not generations. Merit pay is great but only if it is done well. None of the concepts proposed for education that I have seen are worthy of being implemented.
He says that states will have to compete for the $5 billion (yes a tiny portion of the $100 million) they are allocating for change. The question then is how far will that go to bribe the states to change.
Sadly, past experience would say that we will throw money at the problems and talk up a storm but little if anything productive to benefit the kids will happen. This is where we come in. We need to have a unified voice to the state politicians and educators that we are NOT satisfied with the way things are going. They need to know that we know that the current state standards are ridiculously low, that the SAR reports are graded on the curve against those standards so that an excellent rating is worth a “best of the poor” rating nationally and especially internationally. We need to let them know we are sick of poor curricula designed to paper over the weak subject knowledge of teachers that harm our kids’ futures.
In other words it is up to us to help motivate the change here that is being talked about at the national level.
Consensus is building that America’s ossified education system needs a big shake-up. A bipartisan trail toward real change was blazed by the Bush administration (which gets too little credit for it).
He apparently thinks that Obama is willing to break some china to bring about education change.
Here is where it gets dubious for me. “Guess what? We have a little money to spend.” What an understatement, the $100 million in the stimulus package virtually doubles his budget. He admits it will take more than money to “coax, cajole and sometimes confront” state governments that have the lion’s share of control on education decisions.
On the plus side Obama has been calling for merit pay for teachers. While I support the concept of merit pay strongly for teachers, I also know that the current very weak leadership cadre in education can not do it well and will if given the mandate to do it create a debacle that will play into the hands of the opponents and set back real implementation of the concept for decades if not generations. Merit pay is great but only if it is done well. None of the concepts proposed for education that I have seen are worthy of being implemented.
He says that states will have to compete for the $5 billion (yes a tiny portion of the $100 million) they are allocating for change. The question then is how far will that go to bribe the states to change.
Sadly, past experience would say that we will throw money at the problems and talk up a storm but little if anything productive to benefit the kids will happen. This is where we come in. We need to have a unified voice to the state politicians and educators that we are NOT satisfied with the way things are going. They need to know that we know that the current state standards are ridiculously low, that the SAR reports are graded on the curve against those standards so that an excellent rating is worth a “best of the poor” rating nationally and especially internationally. We need to let them know we are sick of poor curricula designed to paper over the weak subject knowledge of teachers that harm our kids’ futures.
In other words it is up to us to help motivate the change here that is being talked about at the national level.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Spring-Loaded for Failure
Since you may not have heard the term spring-loaded I will explain. It simply means that a person or group acts as if attached physically by a spring to a belief or set of beliefs. This becomes apparent when faced with facts contrary to those beliefs they move toward the realist position. As soon as the pressure to face facts wanes, the spring acts on them to return them to the same strong allegiance to the old beliefs. One tactic that is common in these situations is that they “rename and relabel” the old beliefs as new and improved and foist them again on whoever will listen. What does this have to do with education, you may ask? A lot!
So let’s define some terms
• The old belief—that all educators need to teach students is a process for addressing any area of concern. Educators since the turn of the twentieth century have been taught that the pedagogy or process part of the equation is much more important than subject knowledge. And their actions have resulted in content starved teachers trying to teach students in a world where the process methods have no value without the knowledge context that is missing, especially for poor and minority kids who are not exposed to rich knowledge environments by their family and community lives.
• The new incarnation of the old belief, but remember it is “new and improved.” You may have heard of the latest fad in education; 21st Century Skills. The skills being pushed include critical thinking, analytical and technology skills, in addition to soft skills of creativity, collaboration and communication.
Now some comments from a meeting in Washington, DC last week. One article in Education Week about the meeting was titled “Backers of ‘21st Century Skills’ Take Flak.” Another article from the Core Knowledge Foundation supports the same theme. I will include some of the comments from the meeting as reported by both articles.
The underlying argument for the 21st Century Skills approach is that students need a new approach to education in the age of improved information access and global competition. For example, President Obama called for “a new vision for a 21st Century education system” in December when introducing his nominee for U.S. secretary of education, Arne Duncan. The idea is gaining traction and 10 states have already agreed to implement the strategy. In Massachusetts, loud protests greeted the unveiling of an initiative to adopt 21st Century Skills last November. The complaints include “the movement would water down the state’s standards and assessment system—widely considered to be among the best in the nation.”
Historians point out that the debate is much older and the new name “21st Century Skills” glosses over calls for skills instruction that go back more than a century. Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University said “The same ideas were iterated and reiterated by pedagogues across the 20th century.”
Daniel Willingham, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia said that cognitive science doesn’t support the notion that critical-thinking and analytical skills can be taught outside of specific content. He argued that content itself is what allows individuals to recognize problems and to determine which critical-thinking skills to apply to solve them.
E.D. Hirsch, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and founder of Core Knowledge asserted that students become proficient critical thinkers only by gleaning a broad body of knowledge in multiple content domains. Further he commented that “the P21 idea (the name used by the leading proponent of the 21st century skills movement) is that once you acquire [these skills], they are all-purpose muscles. That error is fundamental, and it is fatal.”
There were more comments but hopefully you realize that this is not something new and improved at all but the educators worshiping their process god at the exclusion of seeing the need to teach students content. Don’t for a minute assume that the educators will move willingly to a balanced approach. If they haven’t in the last century do you think it is reasonable to assume that they will change now? They have developed the ability to ignore flak and stay the course. Yet, we must expect and demand that they do change because the current attitude is harming kids especially those poor and minority (Gap) kids who don’t have the knowledge acquiring support system that the more fortunate kids do.
Please remember the quote from Robert Kennedy in an earlier blog calling the gap situation that harms poor and minority kids a “stain on our national honor.” Since he said it over a third of a century ago it appears we can’t be bothered to put in the hard work to fix the problem, especially if it involves going against the education pseudo experts. Who cares about a stain on our national honor?
So let’s define some terms
• The old belief—that all educators need to teach students is a process for addressing any area of concern. Educators since the turn of the twentieth century have been taught that the pedagogy or process part of the equation is much more important than subject knowledge. And their actions have resulted in content starved teachers trying to teach students in a world where the process methods have no value without the knowledge context that is missing, especially for poor and minority kids who are not exposed to rich knowledge environments by their family and community lives.
• The new incarnation of the old belief, but remember it is “new and improved.” You may have heard of the latest fad in education; 21st Century Skills. The skills being pushed include critical thinking, analytical and technology skills, in addition to soft skills of creativity, collaboration and communication.
Now some comments from a meeting in Washington, DC last week. One article in Education Week about the meeting was titled “Backers of ‘21st Century Skills’ Take Flak.” Another article from the Core Knowledge Foundation supports the same theme. I will include some of the comments from the meeting as reported by both articles.
The underlying argument for the 21st Century Skills approach is that students need a new approach to education in the age of improved information access and global competition. For example, President Obama called for “a new vision for a 21st Century education system” in December when introducing his nominee for U.S. secretary of education, Arne Duncan. The idea is gaining traction and 10 states have already agreed to implement the strategy. In Massachusetts, loud protests greeted the unveiling of an initiative to adopt 21st Century Skills last November. The complaints include “the movement would water down the state’s standards and assessment system—widely considered to be among the best in the nation.”
Historians point out that the debate is much older and the new name “21st Century Skills” glosses over calls for skills instruction that go back more than a century. Diane Ravitch, a research professor of education at New York University said “The same ideas were iterated and reiterated by pedagogues across the 20th century.”
Daniel Willingham, professor of psychology at the University of Virginia said that cognitive science doesn’t support the notion that critical-thinking and analytical skills can be taught outside of specific content. He argued that content itself is what allows individuals to recognize problems and to determine which critical-thinking skills to apply to solve them.
E.D. Hirsch, professor emeritus at the University of Virginia and founder of Core Knowledge asserted that students become proficient critical thinkers only by gleaning a broad body of knowledge in multiple content domains. Further he commented that “the P21 idea (the name used by the leading proponent of the 21st century skills movement) is that once you acquire [these skills], they are all-purpose muscles. That error is fundamental, and it is fatal.”
There were more comments but hopefully you realize that this is not something new and improved at all but the educators worshiping their process god at the exclusion of seeing the need to teach students content. Don’t for a minute assume that the educators will move willingly to a balanced approach. If they haven’t in the last century do you think it is reasonable to assume that they will change now? They have developed the ability to ignore flak and stay the course. Yet, we must expect and demand that they do change because the current attitude is harming kids especially those poor and minority (Gap) kids who don’t have the knowledge acquiring support system that the more fortunate kids do.
Please remember the quote from Robert Kennedy in an earlier blog calling the gap situation that harms poor and minority kids a “stain on our national honor.” Since he said it over a third of a century ago it appears we can’t be bothered to put in the hard work to fix the problem, especially if it involves going against the education pseudo experts. Who cares about a stain on our national honor?
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Soft America versus the Hard World
Recently I did an experiment. The Census Dept of the federal government was looking for people to work on the 2010 census. They encouraged people to apply and take a timed test as part of the process. I was curious about the content of the test and so I participated in the process. I was surprised and pleased to see that the test was fairly rigorous for the pay level they were offering for the jobs ($11/hour). It had sections on math (no calculators allowed), vocabulary, interpreting fairly complex coding systems, following directions, interpreting the meaning of sentences, etc. My overall impression was that the average high school graduate would have some difficulty with the test and the pass rate overall would be low. For example, multiplying three digit numbers by three digit numbers by hand (with pesky imbedded decimal points) would have been virtually impossible for kids who are introduced to calculators very early in elementary school because educators believe that teaching math mastery is a waste of time.
This experience made me wonder how other government civil service tests looked. While I didn’t go take a sample of them myself I did search on-line for the myriad prep services available. That material makes me believe that those tests are longer and more rigorous than the census test even for the lowest level jobs.
This experience reinforces the disconnect between the soft world of K-12 education and the real world of work and competition. The low expectations educators, as the self-ordained education experts, have put in place certainly make life easier during school for both students and educators. However, they set the kids up for a rude shock when they are faced with the real world. This problem is apparent from top to bottom in achievement. At the higher levels it is manifested in the approximately 30% of high school graduates who attend 2 or 4 year colleges needing remediation in at least one subject but often two or more. At the lower levels of achievement, it manifests in ‘graduates’ not being adequately prepared for even the lowest level jobs in our society. While there is some activity ‘talking’ about this problem (CDE meetings with business people around the state over the last two years) expecting truly positive change including the much higher standards required to fix the problem is a pipedream. I hope it happens but even if some tightening of standards is put in place based on past experience they will be of the too little, too late variety.
Below is an editorial describing the problem from the business perspective.
Jan. 29, 2009
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
EDITORIAL: Real world ramifications
Local businesses struggle with products of school district
In the third installment of a series reporting results of a poll of nearly 70 Southern Nevada business owners and managers, published in Tuesday's Review-Journal, 43 percent of respondents said local schools and colleges are "not at all effective" in preparing students for the workplace.
A startling 0 percent -- not a one -- found the schools “very effective" at that task.
The largest plurality -- 37 percent -- said the solution is stricter accountability for teachers and administrators. Seventeen percent said the answer is greater focus on teaching hard skills for basic employment. Only a slim 9 percent said the answer was throwing more money at the schools as currently organized.
Dan Connell, chief executive officer of San Jose Test Engineering in Las Vegas, reported in a follow-up interview he's especially noticed an "appalling lack of critical thinking skills among local graduates." This forces executives to recruit outside the valley for talent, running up bigger recruiting and relocation costs, he said. "Our educational system is for the birds," agreed Lincoln Spoor, chief executive officer of Westward Dough Operating Co., which runs 13 Krispy Kreme Doughnut franchises in five states. "We have spent trillions of dollars on education since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program and our schools are worse than ever. The kids graduating today have significantly fewer skills in math and English than they had in the 1960s. The federal government is primarily to blame for this. The system is corrupt and there is no accountability."
"Our public schools are shameful," wrote commercial real estate appraiser Charles Jack. "How do 90 percent of the kids in our high schools fail an algebra-competency exam? What the heck is going on?"
"Most of the resumes we get don't even get candidates to the interview point because they're loaded with typographical errors and grammatical problems," adds Brian Rouff, managing partner of Henderson-based Imagine Marketing of Nevada. "And I'll talk to some applicants on the phone, and most of them are not up to the standards we're looking for."
These comments bear out anecdotal observations of the level of literacy common among local letter-writers of high school and college age. It would be bad enough if the main problem were that these young scholars can't spell simple words, don't know when to capitalize, how to form plurals, or the importance of agreement in number and tense within a sentence -- skills once taught in the primary grades.
What's far worse is that they seem blissfully unaware of what they don't know; they make no apparent effort to proofread job application letters which could be among the most important they ever write; and when their errors are pointed out to them they grow hostile and aggressive, acting as though they're being criticized for some niggling details of no importance.
Yes, there are many district graduates who are fully prepared for college or the work force. But a significant number are obviously not, and that should raise a host of red flags.
Some poll respondents suggested grouping students by mastery level, rather than promoting based on age. Mr. Spoor and others said school choice and voucher programs that could effectively remove students and tax dollars from failing schools might add a necessary element of competition.
"Nothing makes you better than knowing someone is right up your tailpipe," Mr. Spoor observed. "It keeps you sharp, motivated and hungry. If you don't have competition, you're not going to innovate, you're not going to step up, you're not going to push. ... The school system has not really ever had any competition."
“By taking time from their busy schedules to speak frankly of the quality of local graduates they're seeing in the marketplace -- helping explain why many of these young people are not finding their locally generated high school and college degrees the "tickets to good jobs" they imagined them to be -- these business leaders help put a human face on the colorless columns of disappointing test scores to which taxpayers and parents long ago grew inured.”
It is obvious that the kids are being poorly served by our education system. I am reminded of the scene in the church from the movie The Untouchables where Kevin Costner (Ness) tells Sean Connery (Malone) that he wants to get Capone. Malone asks him, “What are you prepared to do?” That is the question isn’t it? It is easier for us to keep deluding ourselves that the schools are doing OK than to face the reality that they are not serving the kids nearly well enough in a time when the global competition is continuing to increase rapidly. We are sending most of our kids into the global competition totally unprepared. So the choice is between the easy, ‘ignore it and maybe it will go away’ current approach or an activist approach that demands better for the kids and takes more of our time. Talking without follow-up action has been tried. It doesn’t work.
This experience made me wonder how other government civil service tests looked. While I didn’t go take a sample of them myself I did search on-line for the myriad prep services available. That material makes me believe that those tests are longer and more rigorous than the census test even for the lowest level jobs.
This experience reinforces the disconnect between the soft world of K-12 education and the real world of work and competition. The low expectations educators, as the self-ordained education experts, have put in place certainly make life easier during school for both students and educators. However, they set the kids up for a rude shock when they are faced with the real world. This problem is apparent from top to bottom in achievement. At the higher levels it is manifested in the approximately 30% of high school graduates who attend 2 or 4 year colleges needing remediation in at least one subject but often two or more. At the lower levels of achievement, it manifests in ‘graduates’ not being adequately prepared for even the lowest level jobs in our society. While there is some activity ‘talking’ about this problem (CDE meetings with business people around the state over the last two years) expecting truly positive change including the much higher standards required to fix the problem is a pipedream. I hope it happens but even if some tightening of standards is put in place based on past experience they will be of the too little, too late variety.
Below is an editorial describing the problem from the business perspective.
Jan. 29, 2009
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal
EDITORIAL: Real world ramifications
Local businesses struggle with products of school district
In the third installment of a series reporting results of a poll of nearly 70 Southern Nevada business owners and managers, published in Tuesday's Review-Journal, 43 percent of respondents said local schools and colleges are "not at all effective" in preparing students for the workplace.
A startling 0 percent -- not a one -- found the schools “very effective" at that task.
The largest plurality -- 37 percent -- said the solution is stricter accountability for teachers and administrators. Seventeen percent said the answer is greater focus on teaching hard skills for basic employment. Only a slim 9 percent said the answer was throwing more money at the schools as currently organized.
Dan Connell, chief executive officer of San Jose Test Engineering in Las Vegas, reported in a follow-up interview he's especially noticed an "appalling lack of critical thinking skills among local graduates." This forces executives to recruit outside the valley for talent, running up bigger recruiting and relocation costs, he said. "Our educational system is for the birds," agreed Lincoln Spoor, chief executive officer of Westward Dough Operating Co., which runs 13 Krispy Kreme Doughnut franchises in five states. "We have spent trillions of dollars on education since Lyndon Johnson's Great Society program and our schools are worse than ever. The kids graduating today have significantly fewer skills in math and English than they had in the 1960s. The federal government is primarily to blame for this. The system is corrupt and there is no accountability."
"Our public schools are shameful," wrote commercial real estate appraiser Charles Jack. "How do 90 percent of the kids in our high schools fail an algebra-competency exam? What the heck is going on?"
"Most of the resumes we get don't even get candidates to the interview point because they're loaded with typographical errors and grammatical problems," adds Brian Rouff, managing partner of Henderson-based Imagine Marketing of Nevada. "And I'll talk to some applicants on the phone, and most of them are not up to the standards we're looking for."
These comments bear out anecdotal observations of the level of literacy common among local letter-writers of high school and college age. It would be bad enough if the main problem were that these young scholars can't spell simple words, don't know when to capitalize, how to form plurals, or the importance of agreement in number and tense within a sentence -- skills once taught in the primary grades.
What's far worse is that they seem blissfully unaware of what they don't know; they make no apparent effort to proofread job application letters which could be among the most important they ever write; and when their errors are pointed out to them they grow hostile and aggressive, acting as though they're being criticized for some niggling details of no importance.
Yes, there are many district graduates who are fully prepared for college or the work force. But a significant number are obviously not, and that should raise a host of red flags.
Some poll respondents suggested grouping students by mastery level, rather than promoting based on age. Mr. Spoor and others said school choice and voucher programs that could effectively remove students and tax dollars from failing schools might add a necessary element of competition.
"Nothing makes you better than knowing someone is right up your tailpipe," Mr. Spoor observed. "It keeps you sharp, motivated and hungry. If you don't have competition, you're not going to innovate, you're not going to step up, you're not going to push. ... The school system has not really ever had any competition."
“By taking time from their busy schedules to speak frankly of the quality of local graduates they're seeing in the marketplace -- helping explain why many of these young people are not finding their locally generated high school and college degrees the "tickets to good jobs" they imagined them to be -- these business leaders help put a human face on the colorless columns of disappointing test scores to which taxpayers and parents long ago grew inured.”
It is obvious that the kids are being poorly served by our education system. I am reminded of the scene in the church from the movie The Untouchables where Kevin Costner (Ness) tells Sean Connery (Malone) that he wants to get Capone. Malone asks him, “What are you prepared to do?” That is the question isn’t it? It is easier for us to keep deluding ourselves that the schools are doing OK than to face the reality that they are not serving the kids nearly well enough in a time when the global competition is continuing to increase rapidly. We are sending most of our kids into the global competition totally unprepared. So the choice is between the easy, ‘ignore it and maybe it will go away’ current approach or an activist approach that demands better for the kids and takes more of our time. Talking without follow-up action has been tried. It doesn’t work.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Lei yiu mut yeh low see
I will tell you later what the title means. I want to talk about the power groups in education today.
• Education Schools—These schools wield enormous power in shaping attitudes of their students in all categories; teachers, leaders/administrators, researchers. Yet as discussed in the 01/29/09 post the history of the education schools has been an unbending adherence to the progressive principles laid down by Dewey and his colleagues. Socializing students as early as possible before they are impacted negatively by their parents is the priority, not teaching content. Every time in the intervening century public pressure has caused any move away from those founding principles, as soon as public attention fades they rename the old stuff, new and improved, and foist it again on the education system. That is, the ed schools have shown themselves to be totally unwilling and unable to change even if for better service to the kids.
• Teachers Unions—The unions as much as they claim otherwise, do not advocate for the kids, they advocate for their members. No surprise there. You only need to look at the lengths they go to protect poor teachers who are harming kids to understand the truth. They will argue that they only want to ensure due process. The fact that the leadership competence in education is so poor allows them to use that to increase their power. The argument is, “do you want that idiot judging whether you are doing a good job?”
• Administration Groups—these groups at national and state level advocate for paying administrators more especially based on ed school “advanced degrees.” They hope the public never realizes that Arthur Levine in 2005 after looking at all ed school leadership programs in the country, said they confer masters on those who display anything but mastery and doctorates in name only. Yet, because the admin groups have been so effective, the key to getting a fat pay raise is to pay for some seat time in one of the ed school programs getting one of those “of no value” degrees that Levine criticizes. While you may say this can’t be true, you only have to look at the results turned in by the graduates to realize they don’t have a clue on how to lead the massive changes required if our kids are finally to be served well by the education system.
• School Board Associations—they train their members to be compliant with the administrators who are the “experts.” Don’t ask hard questions about curricula that are obviously not working. Don’t rock the boat. Be far more interested in re-election than in advocating for the kids. Always be civil. That translates to never show passion for fixing problems. Don’t dig for the truth. Let sleeping dogs lie. Be a cheerleader for the district ignoring problems you know are there. These conclusions are based on attending many, many school board meetings.
• Politicians—Of course, these people have the ultimate control. They use education as an issue for political advantage and the majority party at any point in time basically calls the shots. Because education is a complex mess to say the least, they call for expert input from, you guessed it, the education insider power groups. Is it any wonder that nothing ever changes even though the situation is steadily getting worse? When you ask people with a vested interest in protecting their place at the public trough what changes should be made to address a problem, you get answers that eliminate any changes that might threaten the current status of the power groups. Of course, the power groups are a huge source of campaign finance funds for getting compliant politicians elected. The second huge problem of the politicians is that they enact legislation that is very directive and narrowly defined. This approach has more in common with Soviet-style central planning than it does with a process that would allow creativity and efficiency in solving problems.
This all has worked together to prevent problems like the achievement gap being solved. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the Colorado Closing the Achievement Gap Commission Final Report lamented that while we have been “working” (flailing, not working seriously) on the gap for decades the situation is demonstrably worse than it was when Robert Kennedy, over a third of a century ago, called it a stain on our nation’s honor. This, in spite of spending billions on the problem only enriching the power groups.
That is the price we pay to preserve the power group supremacy and financial rewards. Our society and especially the gap kids pay a very high price for us listening to education experts who are expert at preserving their pay and benefits but not at providing the education that our poor and minority kids desperately need. And in reality we need to do far better for all of the kids not just the minority and the poor ones.
That brings me to the title of this blog, Lei yiu mut yeh low see. I read this in an article a few years ago. It is a phonetic phrase in Chinese. It means, “How may I serve you master?” The writer was asserting that since we couldn’t bear to force the changes needed to educate our children to compete we at least should prepare them for their fate because the adults have been unable/unwilling to change for the benefit of the kids. You may think that is ridiculous because America is the super power in the world. Yes, but we have been very busy digging ourselves into a mountain of debt which will increasingly give the debt holders increasing leverage over us. Who holds a lot of that debt? Asians. Who is teaching their kids to a much higher level than we are? Asians. Who is telling their kids they must work hard to compete? Asians
The current worldwide economic problems have caused a pause in the fast growth of the Asian economies but they are still growing at a much higher rate than ours. And our response to the crisis is to throw money at it indiscriminately. Money that will have to be borrowed from the Asians predominately. They have already indicated that they are less interested in buying our government bonds (loaning us the money) than they were in the past.
Now, the real point, everyone in the education system has a power group to protect their interests but the KIDS. The electorate should have a majority who aren’t part of the power groups who can see clearly that the kids are our future and deserve to have this abysmal situation finally dealt with positively. If we fail to meet this challenge we need to prepare for steadily declining standards of living as Tom Friedman predicts in his “The World is Flat.” Following are some quotes from his book.
We don’t have any time to waste in addressing the “dirty little secrets” of our education system.
The sense of entitlement, the sense that because we once dominated global commerce and geopolitics—and Olympic basketball—we always will, the sense that delayed gratification is a punishment worse than a spanking, the sense that our kids have to be swaddled in cotton wool so that nothing bad or disappointing or stressful ever happens to them at school is quite simply, a growing cancer on American society. And if we don’t start to reverse it, our kids are going to be in for a huge and socially disruptive shock from the flat world.
But what can happen is a decline in our standard of living, if more Americans are not empowered and educated to participate in a world where all the knowledge centers are being connected. “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”
. . . no country today can afford to be anything less than brutally honest with itself.
China does not want to get rich. It wants to get powerful.
So, do we continue to delude ourselves that the education power groups will do the right thing for the kids against their self interest or do we (the adult electorate) get up off our posteriors and demand that the kids get first priority. This is the only way we can drive the positive changes so badly needed for the benefit of the kids. We do not have time to waste. Any time to waste has already passed over the last several decades. We may already be too late but we must try. By the way, don’t fall for the assertion that more money must be spent to fix the education problems. The waste in education already is enormous. Less money will do the job very well if it is spent on productive things. Remember the gap commission’s admission that billions had been spent on “fixing” the gap problem but the performance had only gotten worse. More money to waste is not the answer.
• Education Schools—These schools wield enormous power in shaping attitudes of their students in all categories; teachers, leaders/administrators, researchers. Yet as discussed in the 01/29/09 post the history of the education schools has been an unbending adherence to the progressive principles laid down by Dewey and his colleagues. Socializing students as early as possible before they are impacted negatively by their parents is the priority, not teaching content. Every time in the intervening century public pressure has caused any move away from those founding principles, as soon as public attention fades they rename the old stuff, new and improved, and foist it again on the education system. That is, the ed schools have shown themselves to be totally unwilling and unable to change even if for better service to the kids.
• Teachers Unions—The unions as much as they claim otherwise, do not advocate for the kids, they advocate for their members. No surprise there. You only need to look at the lengths they go to protect poor teachers who are harming kids to understand the truth. They will argue that they only want to ensure due process. The fact that the leadership competence in education is so poor allows them to use that to increase their power. The argument is, “do you want that idiot judging whether you are doing a good job?”
• Administration Groups—these groups at national and state level advocate for paying administrators more especially based on ed school “advanced degrees.” They hope the public never realizes that Arthur Levine in 2005 after looking at all ed school leadership programs in the country, said they confer masters on those who display anything but mastery and doctorates in name only. Yet, because the admin groups have been so effective, the key to getting a fat pay raise is to pay for some seat time in one of the ed school programs getting one of those “of no value” degrees that Levine criticizes. While you may say this can’t be true, you only have to look at the results turned in by the graduates to realize they don’t have a clue on how to lead the massive changes required if our kids are finally to be served well by the education system.
• School Board Associations—they train their members to be compliant with the administrators who are the “experts.” Don’t ask hard questions about curricula that are obviously not working. Don’t rock the boat. Be far more interested in re-election than in advocating for the kids. Always be civil. That translates to never show passion for fixing problems. Don’t dig for the truth. Let sleeping dogs lie. Be a cheerleader for the district ignoring problems you know are there. These conclusions are based on attending many, many school board meetings.
• Politicians—Of course, these people have the ultimate control. They use education as an issue for political advantage and the majority party at any point in time basically calls the shots. Because education is a complex mess to say the least, they call for expert input from, you guessed it, the education insider power groups. Is it any wonder that nothing ever changes even though the situation is steadily getting worse? When you ask people with a vested interest in protecting their place at the public trough what changes should be made to address a problem, you get answers that eliminate any changes that might threaten the current status of the power groups. Of course, the power groups are a huge source of campaign finance funds for getting compliant politicians elected. The second huge problem of the politicians is that they enact legislation that is very directive and narrowly defined. This approach has more in common with Soviet-style central planning than it does with a process that would allow creativity and efficiency in solving problems.
This all has worked together to prevent problems like the achievement gap being solved. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, the Colorado Closing the Achievement Gap Commission Final Report lamented that while we have been “working” (flailing, not working seriously) on the gap for decades the situation is demonstrably worse than it was when Robert Kennedy, over a third of a century ago, called it a stain on our nation’s honor. This, in spite of spending billions on the problem only enriching the power groups.
That is the price we pay to preserve the power group supremacy and financial rewards. Our society and especially the gap kids pay a very high price for us listening to education experts who are expert at preserving their pay and benefits but not at providing the education that our poor and minority kids desperately need. And in reality we need to do far better for all of the kids not just the minority and the poor ones.
That brings me to the title of this blog, Lei yiu mut yeh low see. I read this in an article a few years ago. It is a phonetic phrase in Chinese. It means, “How may I serve you master?” The writer was asserting that since we couldn’t bear to force the changes needed to educate our children to compete we at least should prepare them for their fate because the adults have been unable/unwilling to change for the benefit of the kids. You may think that is ridiculous because America is the super power in the world. Yes, but we have been very busy digging ourselves into a mountain of debt which will increasingly give the debt holders increasing leverage over us. Who holds a lot of that debt? Asians. Who is teaching their kids to a much higher level than we are? Asians. Who is telling their kids they must work hard to compete? Asians
The current worldwide economic problems have caused a pause in the fast growth of the Asian economies but they are still growing at a much higher rate than ours. And our response to the crisis is to throw money at it indiscriminately. Money that will have to be borrowed from the Asians predominately. They have already indicated that they are less interested in buying our government bonds (loaning us the money) than they were in the past.
Now, the real point, everyone in the education system has a power group to protect their interests but the KIDS. The electorate should have a majority who aren’t part of the power groups who can see clearly that the kids are our future and deserve to have this abysmal situation finally dealt with positively. If we fail to meet this challenge we need to prepare for steadily declining standards of living as Tom Friedman predicts in his “The World is Flat.” Following are some quotes from his book.
We don’t have any time to waste in addressing the “dirty little secrets” of our education system.
The sense of entitlement, the sense that because we once dominated global commerce and geopolitics—and Olympic basketball—we always will, the sense that delayed gratification is a punishment worse than a spanking, the sense that our kids have to be swaddled in cotton wool so that nothing bad or disappointing or stressful ever happens to them at school is quite simply, a growing cancer on American society. And if we don’t start to reverse it, our kids are going to be in for a huge and socially disruptive shock from the flat world.
But what can happen is a decline in our standard of living, if more Americans are not empowered and educated to participate in a world where all the knowledge centers are being connected. “A crisis is a terrible thing to waste.”
. . . no country today can afford to be anything less than brutally honest with itself.
China does not want to get rich. It wants to get powerful.
So, do we continue to delude ourselves that the education power groups will do the right thing for the kids against their self interest or do we (the adult electorate) get up off our posteriors and demand that the kids get first priority. This is the only way we can drive the positive changes so badly needed for the benefit of the kids. We do not have time to waste. Any time to waste has already passed over the last several decades. We may already be too late but we must try. By the way, don’t fall for the assertion that more money must be spent to fix the education problems. The waste in education already is enormous. Less money will do the job very well if it is spent on productive things. Remember the gap commission’s admission that billions had been spent on “fixing” the gap problem but the performance had only gotten worse. More money to waste is not the answer.
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