Public Education Hijacked by Privileged Elites

In Public School Efforts, a Common Background: Private EducationBy MICHAEL WINERIP
New York Times
Published: April 17, 2011

Summary: There is one thing that characterizes a surprisingly large number of the people who are transforming public schools: they attended private schools.

Does a private school background give them a much-needed distance and fresh perspective to better critique and remake traditional public schools? Does it make them distrust public schools — or even worse — poison their perception of them? Or does it make any difference?

Presents a "Who's Who" list of education reformers and the elite private school they attended.

Audience: General public.

Key Points: When President Bush signed the No Child Left Behind legislation, he expressed his hope that it would combat the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” Indeed, the law could not have higher expectations: every child in the nation is required to be proficient in math and English by 2014. Schools that do not meet their proficiency goals, which are raised every year, are labeled as failing.

Last month, Mr. Duncan predicted that by the end of this year, 82 percent of schools will miss their goal. At this rate, it is highly likely that in a few years, every single public school in the United States will be labeled a failure.

Relevance: Interesting to see the list of people involved in education reform and their private education roots.

U.S. vs highest-achieving nations in education

Linda Darling-Hammond
"U.S. vs highest-achieving nations in education"
Washington Post
March 22, 2011

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/darling_hammond_us_vs_highest_achieving_nations_in_education/2011/03/22/ABkNeaCB_blog.html?wprss=rss_educationTopic: Ideas for improving education

I found this blog post from the Washington Post and then I saw this article, page 7 of the pdf “Less bang for the buck” which is also an interesting view point. http://www.aaeteachers.org/images/em/2011febnews.pdfThe whole pdf is interesting but the amount of money spent per student compared with other countries is fascinating. Where are the countries who are spending less putting their money and achieving better results?

Key Points: We have a debate going on about how to improve education. It is helpful to get an idea about what all the sides are saying. It’s not just Skinner vs. Gardener and I see good points being made on both sides of the debate. Unfortunately, people seem to gravitate to an all or nothing approach.

Relevance: What happens with education and where we go from here will have an effect on how, what, and why we do what we do. Understanding the differing philosophies and motivations behind those philosophies will be key to navigating this debate and eventually deciding what to support.

Fed up with the term 'status quo'

Diana Senechal
"Fed up with the term ‘status quo’"
Washington Post
March 16, 2011

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/fed_up_with_the_term_status_quo/2011/03/15/ABIaf2a_blog.html?wprss=rss_educationSummary:

Topic: An interesting discussion concerning change.

This is an interesting discussion about how one side of an argument can be marginalized through the use of one term, “status quo”. The world seems to be simplistically broken down into two groups, those who want things to remain as they are and those who want change.

Key Points: Marginalizing one side of an argument with the clever use of a term, stereotype or oversimplification is a very effective tactic politically or in a debate contest. If the point is to really improve things, then an open an honest discussion between all points of view must be made. Naïve…I know.
Sadly, the point rarely seems to be about actually improving education and instead, seems to be more about who holds the political power and controls the money. Perhaps, as Gatto seems to be saying, the answer to this cancer actually is to scrap the system and start over anew.

Relevance: The debate about the future of education, public education in this case, is raging on. Trying to understand the motives behind all the sides of the debate will be key as we move ahead.

The myth of the super teacher

Diana Senechal
"The myth of the super teacher"
Washington Post
March 15, 2011
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/the_myth_of_the_superteacher/2011/03/14/ABfRM4V_blog.html?wprss=rss_education

Topic: “Super teachers”.

This is a discussion about a program where teachers were given greater incentives to be extraordinary teachers. In this case, a salary of $125,000.

Key Points: The results reported here were somewhat negative however, I wondered why better teachers would not be attracted by better pay. If we capped baseball player salaries at some arbitrary level, say, $40K per year, would the level of competition remain the same? If you want to consistently be in the hunt for the world series, you will have to be able to pay for the New York Yankees. Why would that not be true for a school trying to put together the best team of teachers?

Relevance: Improving education and how to do that is a topic that will continue to be debated.

My Teacher is a Lesbian

“‘My Teacher is a Lesbian’ Coming Out at School” by Jody Sokolower

Rethinking Schools Volume 24, Number 2 (Winter 2010-2011) pg. 30-33.

Topic: A middle school teacher in the Bay area struggles with how/when it is appropriate to come out to her students and the politics of it all.

Summary: A lesbian teacher in the Bay area shares her story about how she has chosen to come out to her middle school students over the years of teaching. She shares stories about questions students have asked, backlash she has received from administration (and surprisingly – lack of backlash from parents), and the “unexpected benefits” of the entire process.

Intended audience: Teachers (Straight and LGBTQ), Administrators

Key Points:

• Coming out is difficult/controversial even in the Bay area.
• Being honest with your students can create a more dynamic classroom community where other issues can be discussed openly and respectfully.
• This is something that will be encountered no matter what district/school you are teaching in and it is important for schools to be a safe place for students and teachers. That being said, students and teachers should not share more than they are comfortable sharing.

Relevance: I thought this article was a good lead up to the conference we are going to tomorrow and it is relevant to me personally as well as to our upcoming cultural identity assignment for Learning Communities. I really liked the section about the “Identity Poster” to further explore the idea of my own cultural identity.

Hooray for Howard Zinn

"Unsung Heroes" by Howard Zinn

and

"Teaching Unsung Heroes" by Bill Bigelow

Rethinking School Reform, pg. 33-44

Note: My assigned periodical is Rethinking Schools. It happens that the book we are using for this class, Rethinking School Reform, is a compilation of articles from that magazine. Because we are only doing one of those articles for this week's facilitation, I decided to read a few others in the section that interested me-- and to use them for this blog review. Today's is a twofer.

Unsung Heroes

Summary: Howard Zinn, author of the incredible A People's History of the United States and a lifelong social activist, uses this short piece to answer a question that ties in nicely with the responses to the Helen Keller article review. Simply put, he offers up a dozen alternatives to the common canon of American heroes, each of them mapped nicely to the figure that they might replace so that those who worship him or her are not left lacking.

Audience: social studies teachers, general public

Key Points:

• many of the figures that are offered up as heroes when discussing the history of this country have pretty despicable personal traits and beliefs, revealed when the lens is pulled back from the extreme close-up required to see them as heroes
• there are plenty of figures in American history to whom we might turn for inspiration in place of them

Relevance: One of the things that came up a few times in the above-linked Helen Keller article discussion was something like "Well, what's the alternative?" I thought the same thing! Because we have all been educated in a system that tends to prefer breadth to depth, and appreciates a shallow and close-up focus on a person's life, not many of us have had the opportunity to explore alternatives. Zinn offers these alternatives, and suggests some starting points for each of the heroes in his list.

-------------------------

Teaching Unsung Heroes

Summary: Bigelow gives a step-by-step lesson plan based on two things: 1) his frustration with students' predictable, "Encyclopedia-like" presentations of famous figures in American history, and 2) his desire to integrate some of the unsung heroes of the previous article. The students react to the novel lesson positively, and he feels that it went very well.

Audience: social studies teachers, general teachers, general public interested in education

Key Points:

• a key engagement technique was bringing the figures to life; students presented from a first-person perspective
• Bigelow demonstrated expectations by using a prior example of a successful project
• this lesson allowed him to integrate social justice and expanded, constructivist thinking into the classroom without being a ranting "sage on the stage"

Relevance: Now that the question of "What's the alternative?" has been answered, we can move on to answering the question of "Okay, so how do I teach it?" Bigelow offers a detailed description and analysis of one way to craft a successful lesson to teach about unsung heroes, and does it in a way that is readable and engaging for us, his audience. Future social studies teacher Jeff, you in particular might be interested in this one if you haven't read it yet! That's why I tagged you on this post.

Seating Arrangement as Social Metaphor

"You Are Where You Sit: Uncovering the Lessons of Classroom Furniture" by Tom McKenna

Rethinking Schools, Fall 2010

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/25_01/25_01_mckenna.shtml

Summary: McKenna discusses using a unique lesson in his regular class at Portland Youth Builders, a "high school completion school" here in Portland. He uses the surprise of a novel chair setup one day to launch into an activity in which his students consider how the arrangement of furniture might contribute to how they feel about each other, and how power is spread around the classroom.

Intended Audience: educators, general public

Key Points:

• something as simple as the layout of a classroom, a thing we might take for granted, can have wide-ranging implications when one considers how it casts roles of both power and class
• opening students' eyes to these taken-for-granted paradigms can help them begin to understand the world around them, and the idea that certain arrangements in society might be so arranged for more reason than "just because"

Relevance: It is always valuable to call into question one's assumptions about how the world operates, especially with regards to things taken for granted. Just like we will be doing with the personal biases identification exercise, prompting students to consider what the arrangement of chairs in a classroom might mean for how they interact with each other and with their teacher -- with the idea that this can be extrapolated to the broader world -- can be a fun, eye-opening social awareness exercise. Teachers serve to benefit from it just as much as students.

Teaching's Revolving Door

"Teaching's Revolving Door" by Barbara Miner

Rethinking Schools, Winter 2009/2010

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/23_02/door232.shtml

Summary: Miner discusses the high turnover rate of the profession and looks at efforts being made to address it, with special focus on Urban Teacher Residency programs, an innovation that (at the time of this article) were operating with some success.

Key Points:

• half of new teachers leave within five years in "regular districts," within three years in urban districts
• two main points to address: recruiting the best teachers possible, and then retaining those teachers
• "more teachers are expected to retire between 2010 to 2020 since any decade since World War II"
• "Urban Teacher Residencies" is one technique combining recruitment and retention, so far with some success

Intended Audience: general public, new and future teachers, those interested in issues of teacher retention and training

Relevance: As either new or future teachers, this article is immediately relevant to us! The prediction of so many teachers retiring in the next few years is heartening in a depressed jobs market, but tempered by the fact that many of those teachers are leaving because they couldn't hack it in underfunded, uncaring, hard schools. It will also be interesting to keep an eye or the UTR programs; they sound like a very valuable idea that will hopefully pan out. Sort of a combination of TFA and an MAT program.

Value Added Measurement: Talking Points article

"Neither Fair Nor Accurate" by Wayne Au

Rethinking Schools, Winter 2010 pp. 34-38 http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/25_02/25_02_au.shtml

Au introduces the recent history of basing teacher performance evaluation on test scores, or "Value Added Measurement," and introduces six "critical issues" from the research that demonstrate problems with VAM.

Intended Audience: anyone interested in discussing this recent emotionally charged education issue with other people; Au intends the article as a starter and a list of "talking points"

Key Points:

• a statistical study from the USDE finds the error rate when using VAM to assess teachers in the 25-35% range, meaning that a given teacher has a 1/4 or better chance of being mistakenly rated as "below average"
• a second study finds that test scores vary so broadly that a teacher ranked highly by VAM one year may be on the bottom of the heap the following year, and vice versa
• a third study, or "research report," finds that an enormous percentage of variability in students' test scores (improvement or decline) can be attributed to factors entirely outside of teachers' control, including things as simple as whether or not the student had breakfast that morning
• the fourth cited report finds that nonrandom student assignments (grouping students into race, socioeconomic class, etc.) when assessing using VAM, while it may seem like a traditional statistical control method, greatly skews results by ignoring the most salient factors of those groupings
• student performance may not reflect the abilities of the teacher in the subject she scored highly (or lowly) on: her history teacher may have taught her the writing skills that her English teacher gets credit for
• "The social safety net is the responsibility of a much broader socioeconomic network-- not the sole responsibility of the teacher." To think that teachers can overcome whatever obstacles students' face is an unrealistic expectation when assessing them with VAM.

Relevance: This is another interesting article in our continuing consideration of Value-Added Measurement. Au succinctly introduces several valuable studies to use as jumping-off points for further discussion, and laments the fact that neither the Bush nor the Obama administration seem interested in taking any research into consideration when forming education policy. As educators entering the field in the midst of the possible rise or fall of widespread VAM -- which is of course tied closely to budget and salary reform -- it will be interesting and valuable to keep tabs on it.

"'Greco-Roman Knowledge Only'" (B. Brown, Article 1)

Roberto Cintli Rogriguez

"'Greco Roman Knowledge Only in Arizona Schools, Indigenous Wisdom Outlawed Once Again"

Rethinking Schools

Summer, 2010

http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/24_04/24_04_greco.shtml

Summary:

Rogriguez provides an overview of the current situation in Arizona regarding the passage and signing into law of HB-2281. This bill outlaws the teaching of ethnic studies by removing funding from classes that fall under a specific category; Rogriguez insists that the Arizona State Superintendent of Schools Tom Horne has specifically targeted Tucson HS's Mexican American Studies program. It is interesting to note the close parallels this bill has with Arpaio's SB-1070, giving police officers more or less free reign to infringe on rights based on skin color.

Intended Audience: general public, and of specific interest to anyone outraged by the continuing history of minority oppression in America

Key Points:

• similar bill introduced last year, defeated after much protest
• students in the Mexican American Studies program tend to perform better than those not in the program, and they claim a higher rate of college-bound seniors
• Arizona has a recent history of increased operations against immigrants under the purview of Joe Arpaio, including the above-mentioned bill
• as a border state, Arizona may have to deal with these issues more immediately and intimately than many other states

Relevance: This is where it gets fun! Because of the nature of the issue, there is a knee-jerk reaction to think of it in terms of black-and-white. "Clearly," our moral minds assert, "this is a crime of segregation perpetrated by a racist school superintendent who must be failing his students and his district!" The article itself, written by a teacher or participant in the Mexican American Studies program, is clearly pitched in that direction-- but, Deconstructionism reminds us, what is the danger in immediately coming to that conclusion? Thinking of it from only his perspective is a useful tool to sympathize, become similarly outraged, and take action; but what of the perspective of the superintendent? For that matter, there isn't a word said about students' reactions to the MAS program... does anyone feel discriminated against simply because of the presence of such a program? Would a European American Studies program receive similar backing, or would it be shot down as well?

Although this is an issue that, in all likelihood, is another extremely conservative Arizona public servant operating in an unbelievable manner, it is valuable to keep in mind the tendency of Rethinking Schools to be outraged, and to outrage in turn. I will try to find a more "balanced" article next time, to see if more than the perspective of the oppressed is represented in the article. Bottom line: fascinating (and outrageous!) development in a state that is increasingly unbelievable. It will be interesting to follow these laws and see if they can possibly remain upheld.