Tony Bennett: Songs in the Key of C, No Wait, A

Here's my two cents about the Tony Bennett grade changing story that Tom LoBianco broke. This was hard to write--with blogging there can be so much pressure to be timely that conflicts with my wanting to read and carefully consider everything on the subject. I'll do my best here.

My initial concern was that the liberal media would treat this merely as a "bad actor" case, you know: Look how corrupt this GOP guy is! Republicans are corrupt! I mean, look at the headline of the original story: "GOP Donor's School Grade Changed." I don't share most Republican ways of thinking, but corruption is political party-blind. In turn, I was concerned that conservatives would treat this as a "political hit job" conspiracy on the part of the liberal media or "opponents of reform." Like this.

Looking at all of the coverage--the journalistic coverage, the analyses, and the defenses (the list in the link doesn't include the Fordham Institute's Mike Petriili's defense, Rick Hess's of AEI interview with Bennett, or this article about the context of Bennett's decision)--there's a real disconnect. Many skeptics of current education reforms such as test-based accountability are saying this is corruption and by design. Many accountability hawks say there's a reasonable explanation for this and that there's little to nothing wrong with what Bennett did. If you read the defenses and the interview, they are earnest.

Now, don't get me wrong, the whole campaign donation business is shady and certainly the charter sector is ripe for crony capitalism and hucksterism--just look at what goes with the charter sector in Florida (speak of the devil) and the White Hat charter school company in Ohio. But I have no evidence that the donation influenced Bennett's thinking or that he's particularly corrupt. What he does seem to suffer from is a deep certainty that he's right about his education reform policies and that the statistics must be on his side, even if that means having them fixed. I've heard it said about Michelle Rhee when she was in DC that it was almost like she wasn't telling mis-truths when she did. She was so convinced of her own rightness that she couldn't hear herself saying one thing one day and a different thing the next. It was all the truth to her. I'm afraid that Tony Bennett seems to be suffering from this malady, as well.

How it worked in Bennett's office seems to be how it works in the work places of reformers. "Choice" and charters as a model are always better. It's okay if we lose a few neighborhood or comprehensive schools because those are probably failing or close enough to failing anyway. How many times have we heard that it's okay to sacrifice a few good teachers here and a few decent schools there in the service of "objective" evaluations system? Systems that will largely weed out the bad and identify the good. So, you lose a few good teachers. So you close some decent neighborhood schools. Oh well. No use crying over a little spilled milk. In the face of schools like this one being labeled failing, and teachers like this one getting a fire-ably low evaluation, how many times have the proponents of such systems said, Well, the evaluations are not perfect but they're better than what we had before.  (Um, who has demanded perfection?)

And so two things happened. First, a double standard: a well, it's not perfect, sorry was not issued in the case of Christel House Charter (and does anyone else find it unseemly that the school is named after it's director and maybe biggest donor? Is that what a public school should be?) Then, the formula was fixed so the appropriate grade would come through. The math was done in such a way that it didn't maintain the integrity of the formula. Sherman Dorn's analysis shows why this was unethical while Anne Hyslop explains how the math doesn't add up.

Surprisingly, most of my thoughts mirror the thoughts given at this Fordham forum published today, which is not to say I agree with all of the thoughts expressed--I especially think the word "flap" in the title is a pretty glaring understatement. But otherwise it is the most frank, humble, and thoughtful  discussion of the limits of school grading I think I've ever heard from accountability hawks. I found myself nodding in agreement. This particular process was unfair and showed favoritism. These processes need to be more science than art. We need an objective measure that everyone adheres to and this can provide that. These grading systems aren't ready for prime time. Schools shouldn't be boiled down to a single grade. Please read the whole thing.

But I was still left wanting.

1) Where in this conversation is the statistician to discuss the validity of the school grading process? First of all, I'm pretty sure these metrics--school grading metrics as well as teacher evaluation metrics--are being used in ways they were never intended to be used. I admit when I'm in huff, I refer to them as "junk science," but as Matt DiCarlo points out here, they're not junk science even if they're just being used in junky ways. If these metrics were being used as thermometers that would be one thing, but they're being used as a hammers. Second of all,  I'm not at all convinced that there is such a metric system out there somewhere waiting to be formulated that would ever work well as a school grading or teacher evaluation system. And I'm not going to take Fordham's or New America's or Tony Bennett's word for it that there is, any more than I would take my own word for it that there isn't. I want to hear from an expert. If anything, the stats people in the Bennett e-mails show that Indiana's school grading process is not valid. Having to "run different options" to arrive at a desired outcome shows that. What went on in Indiana seems to me at best an exercise in statistical gymnastics and at worst, one in statistical fraud. I have yet to be convinced by anyone with any statistics expertise that these systems are valid. In general, the people with expertise in statistics that I trust the most have been lukewarm at best on their efficacy.

2) Not ready for prime time?! Shouldn't be used for high stakes decisions?! Maybe this isn't a science yet?! There shouldn't be stakes attached to these?! I agree but isn't it a little late to be saying this? What rock have you people been under? All of these metrics ARE prime time. They've been prime time! Remember when Fordham crowned Indiana as its Education Reform Idol? Was the school grading plan not one of the criteria for judging the winner? These metrics have done been high-stakes. That ship has sailed. They've been used to evaluate teachers and schools, to fire teachers, to unfairly label schools, close down schools, to allow for burdensome federal interventions and harsh state takeovers. Lots of people have been saying these metrics are not ready for prime time, if they're appropriate at all. Why wasn't this thoughtful discussion had before spending so much money, before making high-stakes decisions, before making such a mess. Where was the humility and thoughtfulness then?

3) Where was the stakeholder from Indiana in the forum? A superintendent maybe. A parent or two. Why not ask them what they think of school grading in Indiana? There was talk of transparency. Isn't this an accountability measure that's being discussed? Isn't the premise behind these school grading systems to help parents and the public? Aren't such systems produced on the public dime? Isn't someone like Tony Bennett a public servant, accountable to the public? Okay, so no parent on the panel--maybe no one was available. Look at the public's "accountability moment" then. Didn't the public speak loud and clear when they failed to re-elect Tony Bennett? As Kombiz Lavasany tweeted: " Two Republicans lost in Indiana last year. One was Richard Mourdock for his rape comments. The other was this guy [Bennett]." The school grading plan was the center of his policy platform. And he lost. What do you think the public, who ostensibly this metric was to benefit, then thought of that policy?

This is exactly what happens when you rush into big, "disruptive" changes without thinking about them or fully understanding what you're doing. You break things that weren't already broken and you make messes. And it's what has happened over and over again with education reform in this country. It's time to call a moratorium on school grading and teacher evaluation metrics and maybe on some other stuff, too.

My Year-End Post: No Matter the Reforms, No One Likes Tyranny

Education blogger/journalist Alexander Russo asked via twitter and then via his blog with Scholastic where all the smart, interesting pro-reform teacher and principal bloggers were. For now, he said the "reform critics" seemed to be dominating the conversation on-line.

Lots of people responded to this already including Nancy Flanagan, Anthony Cody (here and here), Shaun Johnson, Katie Osgood, Mike Klonsky, Teacher Ken, and Leonie Haimson. I'm not going to get into everything they said because I think at least some of the controversy generated by his post is due to clumsiness on his part, rather than any malice or an agenda (other than to chase down a prescribed narrative) and some misunderstanding on some of their parts. I also criticized him for using the pro- versus anti-reform labels, but I can see that sometimes using such dichotomous terms is just expedient and may not reflect a belief in them--it's important to get beyond semantics even if I personally am a stickler for them.

However, I did agree when many of the bloggers above pointed out that one reason Russo perceives that the "traditional" (a poor choice of words, for example) teacher voice winning on-line is because social media provide virtually the only forums where independent and grassroots voices get heard and can gain prominence. The neo-liberal reformers are dominating the mainstream media and have gobs and gobs of money with which to do so. This, of course, brings up a whole 'nother fascinating topic about power and the dynamic between social media, grassroots advocacy and organizing but that's for another post for another time. . .

So, I agree with that point. But mostly I think there aren't too many teacher bloggers out there independently (and for free) plugging for Students First, for example, because there aren't too many teachers who support the group of reforms that SF is pushing, either in principle or in their execution. But while most teachers and principals are pro-reform, just as Russo doesn't want to interact with an organization (haha--that guy is comically cranky), neither do independent and smart educators want to; and neither do they want to let organizations promoting superficial and short-sighted policies that often detrimentally affect their day-to-day work speak for them.

These organizations don't really represent educators or parents or students (no matter how they're named); they represent the education reform industry. That industry has a slate of reforms that it lobbies for. This, as education journalist Joy Resmovitz so astutely put it, is part of their "branding." Of course, since these reformers sincerely believe their agenda will improve education, it's probably of no consequence to them and presents no conflict of interest that the industry they've created would have the added bonus of benefiting them in the form of financial rewards and jobs.

But if you're an educator, you have to really buy into that brand to promote it. And then you have to go around marketing it, for free, to your co-workers who don't have much time to listen to sales pitches in the teachers lounge for Mark Kay or Pampered Chef-like products (teachers, you know what I'm talking about), let alone pitches for ed reform products. And no one wants to be a salesperson if they don't have to be. Furthermore, the ed reform products, I mean, solutions being proposed are not ones that come from ideas about education or teaching and learning, but rather from ideas about business and finance. If educators wanted to play Corporation or Free Markets, that's where they'd be working.

That all being said, there is a huge diversity of ideas, opinions, and approaches among educators. As I wrote about before, framing education reform as a debate between reformers and status quo defenders is reductive and contributes to misinformation. And if you actually pay attention to and listen to all of the edu-noise out there, you figure this out pretty quickly. There are lots and lots of educators who support some of the reforms, but not all of them. Even so, these people consider themselves professionals and still don't like being told what to do in their classroom by the likes of Joel Klein, Michelle Rhee, and Bill Gates. Lots of educators are in favor of a common curriculum (though they may have reservations about the Common Core in particular). Lots of educators are in favor of community-generated and innovative charter schools. I bet some are even in favor of vouchers. Lots of educators are in favor of a more educated and better trained teaching corps and in favor of making it harder to gain entry to the profession. Lots of educators are against strict seniority-based firings. Lots of educators want better and more useful teacher evaluations. Lots of educators think that standardized testing and data-informed instruction is useful. Lots of educators embrace technology and certain forms of virtual learning.* Lots of educators think that the teacher dismissal process should be streamlined (which is not the same thing is getting rid of due process). Lots of educators are in favor of mayoral control, or at least they were. (I would say that lots of educators support Race to the Top but it's pretty clear that only the truest of believers like Race to the Top.) And there are lots of parents and other education reform advocates and scholars who are on board with a lot of this stuff.

Journalist Natalie Hopkinson, like many, many DC parents initially backed Michelle Rhee's chancellorship, until she didn't. Teacher blogger James Boutin also initially went to DC to teach because he thought Rhee had the right idea, but after working in DCPS, he changed his mind (read here, here, here, and here). This principal did the same thing, leaving Maryland to become a principal at Hearst Elementary School in DC. He became so disillusioned he decided to sell cupcakes instead. Teacher Stephanie Black subscribes to KIPP's no excuses philosophy and teaches for DCPS. She's perfect for Russo's theory. Oh, except she quit because she didn't like how she was being forced to teach badly under the reformers (see here and here). Education writer Robert Pondiscio is no longer an NYCPS teacher, but he used to be. Guess what? He's not that into the agenda of these particular reformers even though he does support accountability and choice. Dan Brown has been very critical of Rhee-Klein-Gates reform, but he teaches at a charter school in DC, so it's probably safe to say he's pro-charter to a certain extent. Chad Sansing, a teacher at a charter school in Virginia, is very much in favor of choice, just not in the non-choice between schools that meet testing benchmarks and schools that are trying to meet testing benchmarks. Mark Anderson is very supportive of a common core curriculum (full disclosure: so I am, in theory) and probably some of the other reforms, but he's an independent thinker and a thoughtful teacher. VCU assistant professor of educational leadership Jon Becker is "bullish" on on-line education and was very critical of  a recent NEPC report on K-12 on-line education, but he's skeptical of many of the current reforms.* Christina Lordeman (speaking of whom, where is Christina? I haven't seen her around lately) is often very critical of Diane Ravitch and I imagine that she supports many of the reforms in theory, but from what I can tell she is a principled and thoughtful teacher who wants to be treated like a professional and she has also expressed some real criticisms of some of the current reforms. According to her book, even Diane Ravitch was in favor of mayoral control until fairly recently. I know of other long-time education reformers who favored mayoral control, that is until they experienced it. Even those educators who are "pro-reform" (to use Russo's label) figure out they like democracy once they are denied it. And this is just a sampling of some of the people whose ideas I enjoy listening to on a regular basis--imagine how many more there are.

Finally, I'll mention my father-in-law who has guest blogged here and who was fired via IMPACT for not tailoring his lessons to please the IMPACT gods and, basically, for having principles about his craft. He has taught AP and grade-level English for over ten years in DCPS and is known for his rigorous curriculum, preparing kids for college-level English, being interesting, and providing lots of feedback on student writing (see some parent feedback here). He was teaching in DCPS when I started there and I remember saying after not getting paid on time or properly for the second or third time that I could finally understand why some of my DCPS teachers burned out and stopped doing their jobs. Look how badly they were treated, look at how poorly the system is run, I pointed out. Joe shook his head before I could finish my thought. No, he told me, sorry, but there's no excuse for that. If you burn out, it's time to go.

Yet Joe is precisely the kind of teacher--principled, intellectual, and independent-minded--who's vulnerable to getting fired from these reformy systems, for doing their jobs as their experience and knowledge dictates them to. One of the things he was fired for was for covering the clock up in his classroom. He was losing the last ten minutes of class to kids peering at the clock and its presence was rushing and stressing everyone involved. This came to mind because Russo just blogged about how he thinks there's too many clocks in classrooms and that they're stressing people out. Joe agrees and because Joe stood by his reasonable, thoughtful decision to disobey the reformy principal's clock mandate, Joe was fired.

Now, Russo, do you get why smart teachers aren't on-line proselytizing for the likes of Stand for Children, Students First, and TFA? What educator wants to advocate for an education reform organization whose ideas include distrust for educators' professional judgement? Why would educators support education reform leaders who don't respect independent, critical thinking or listen to what the communities they serve say they want for themselves? Who wants to advocate for pressing themselves into a job not of social utility and intellectual stimulation, but of busy work and obedience? The premise that there is some group of educators just waiting for the likes of Leonie, Nancy, Anthony, John, and Ken to tone it down so that they can get busy undermining their own work is a false one. Educators and education advocates, including those just listed, are of very different minds when it comes to the fine details of teaching, learning, and reforming public education. But no one likes tyranny or plutocracy, except for tyrants and plutocrats of course.

(* = Updated content)

In which I nitpick on the subject of the opportunity/ achievement gap, charters, and Rhee's legacy in DC

With the release of the NAEP TUDA stats, there's been a lot of conversation swirling around achievement gaps and the efficacy of neo-liberal education reforms in urban districts. In particular, there's been some talk about how to judge Michelle Rhee's legacy, especially in light of the fact that that DC has the largest achievement gap between black and white students and one of the highest between poor and non-poor of all the cities featured in the report. Education journalists such as Alexander Russo weighed in here and Dana Goldstein offered some mostly solid analysis here.

Some folks are saying that Rhee's policies caused the gap. I don't agree with this. While Rhee's policies are no good, let's be honest: there were large educational opportunity and achievement gaps ways before Rhee came to town. Furthermore, DC has always had relatively large income inequality (but, yes, paralleling the national trend, it's gotten worse). The main industries in DC (government, lobbying, non-profits, etc) are such that the demographics in DC are unique. While there are service industry workers there are almost no blue collar workers. The middle and upper-middle class population in DC is not typical--its members are largely much more highly educated and well-traveled. I could go on--this is a very complex topic, an entire book could be written about it. But Rhee didn't cause this. She may symbolize it (the 1% making policy for the 99%, etc), but her policies didn't cause it.

One thing, though, that's been claimed by many, and implied by both Alexander Russo and Dana Goldstein is that Rhee deserves "credit" for the fact that charter school enrollment went up in the years she was there. Giving her "credit" for this makes no sense. Charter schools in DC are run completely separately from DCPS. She talked a lot about choice and charter schools but she didn't actually do anything for the charter schools while she was there. There's a lot more to the relationship between the two or the lack thereof, especially given the complex genesis and history of charter schools in DC, than has been covered.

Furthermore, I don't see how that makes Rhee et al look good if charter school enrollment went up. Did DCPS enrollment go up? Did it go up uniformly throughout the city and not just in the neighborhoods where test scores tend to be higher, where principals are left alone, and where the schools got renovated? If yes, give her credit for that. But saying that she deserves credit for charter school enrollment going up is like saying that the CEO of Coke deserves credit for more people purchasing Pepsi (and hence drinking more cola in general) because they're dis-satisfied with Coke. If the competition model (which I don't subscribe to, by the way) is supposed to make systems and schools compete for students than how can it be said that Rhee was successful on her and her similarly-minded reformers' own terms if she drove families away from DCPS and into charters. If that's the measure, then as head of DCPS, Rhee failed. She competed for and lost students.

Some might then counter, well, who cares if DCPS lost students under Rhee as long as options or "choice" expanded? As long as public schools overall, including traditional and charters, gained students? Well, okay, but then why should someone like Rhee, who is ambivalent about the existence of public, democratic institutions such as traditional public schools, be running them? How is getting someone who doesn't care in particular about neighborhood schools to run them going to help them improve?

Also, for the record, Rhee did not "streamline" the bureaucracy as Goldstein suggests in her post. As I discussed here and here, the bureaucracy actually got bigger and costlier under Rhee and Henderson. But I guess that's part of the Common Wisdom about Very Serious People that Very Serious Education Pundits are too busy and underpaid to shake themselves of. Or perhaps it's part of some misguided attempt to "balance" coverage. If the information is not accurate, if the coverage is based on assumptions rather than on facts and evidence, however, then that's not "balance," it's misinformation.

Yes, Michelle Rhee did lots wrong and surely she did some things right. But education reform skeptics, fans, and journalists alike should find out what those things actually are first and then examine them in light of the NAEP scores and other data and outcomes. Sheesh.

The Importance of Being Honest (in ed reform conversations)

I have a few follow-ups to offer and a few loose ends to tie up. Fortunately, for the sake of coherent (well, maybe) blogging, they all tie together.

1) As a follow-up to my recent post on parent engagement, parent accountability, and charter schools, I wanted to add that I think one way to solve the problem of charter schools keeping students out because their parents won't fulfill requirements of the school would be if charter schools worked under the umbrella of the district where they were located. What if we took the concept of "competition" between schools out and replaced it with "collaboration" among schools? If the charters and the traditional schools worked together to find the place school placement for kids? Either working with families or in the case of parents-in-absentia, teachers, counselors, and principals could recommend certain students to certain charter schools or there could be "education placement" counselors assigned to students who don't have parent advocates.

Of course, this would pose a bit of a funding problem but not if there was more sharing of resources (though not co-locations--as has been demonstrated in New York City, those are a bad idea). We would also have to minimize top-down mandates and bureaucratic red tape for ALL schools. Accountability schemes that are degrading to traditional/neighborhood schools are going to be just as degrading to charter schools that are evaluated by the same standards.

Another potential problem is that (initially, at least) the very reason for charter schools in DC, for example, is that DCPS was so terribly run--educators, social service providers, and parents wanted to free themselves of the DCPS administration. I was a bit put off recently when I read one tweeter arguing to another that, "Schools and teachers don't make kids drop out." While I believe we have much more a problem of systems rather than of individuals, and it's not always the case, poor schools and teachers do in some cases drive kids and families out. Some kids do have bad experiences in some schools and with some certain teachers and in certain systems. There was a real need for change and reform in some of those systems, let's not kid ourselves. Now, DCPS continues to be terribly run (only now its employees have Ivy League degrees and wear J.Crew, so people assume otherwise) but it's also more top-down than ever and ideological, to boot. I can't see those charter school people who are dedicated to rich and appropriate education wanting anything to do with that, either.

2) Which leads me to this. The DC Public Charter School Board recently employed a new ratings system to rate their schools, the idea being that the lowest-performing schools would be closed based on those ratings. Okay, so accountability for charter schools via a sort-of jury of their peers is a good thing. The problem as I see it is what they're being rated on. From The Examiner article:

Schools are ranked based on factors such as performance on state exams, attendance, re-enrollment rates, and attention to critical grades. In the elementary and middle schools, a school's year-to-year improvement accounts for the lion's share of the rating at 40 percent.

There is no consideration of curriculum, pedagogy, or instruction, or of what is actually being taught or what is actually happening in classrooms. People tell me this rating system is better and more comprehensive than what DCPS uses, but if it doesn't evaluate schools on the quality of education being offered, I don't see how it's valuable. Our schools will be what we hold them accountable for.*

3) Which leads me to this. The city-by-city report of NAEP scores is out and guess what: DC has the largest achievement gap between black and white students than any other urban center in the report. Michael Casserly said this to explain the gap:

The District’s racial gap is really an income divide, said Michael Casserly, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, which represents the largest urban school systems.“You’ve got relatively more well-to-do whites in Upper Northwest quadrants, particularly Ward 3, which score higher than white students nationally and you’re comparing it with poor, African American students largely in Wards 7 and 8,” Casserly said. “There are extreme income disparities.”

I have great sympathy for that and he's right on about the demographic differences between say Cleveland and DC. I appreciate this nuanced and informed explanation. How refreshing! But isn't this what some ed reform skeptics have been saying all along and haven't they oft been shouted down by cries of, "Poverty is not destiny!" "Poverty is not an excuse!" Casserly represents many school reformer superintendents (such as Chancellor Henderson of DCPS). Is this an admittance that income inequality and poverty can make not an insignificant impact on standardized test scores and academic achievement?

4) Which leads me to this. In response to DC parent Natalie Hopkinson's School Choice op-ed, Fordham Institute's Michael Petrilli chalks up the dearth of choice in DC to gentrification; there used to be a lot more spots for out-of-boundary students in high-performing schools west of the park but now those are being occupied by more affluent (and often white) kids who live in boundary. He is not wrong about this. But he leaves two important things out:
A) There was and is preferential treatment for Ward 3 schools. The facilities funding has been greater for Ward 3 schools as has been the responsiveness to Ward 3 communities. One of my sources tells me it's hard to get folks from DCPS central administration to even attend meetings in schools east of the Park.
B) It's very hard to replicate for all kids in DC what charter schools in DC do when: i) By law, charter schools must be city-wide and can not give preference to neighborhood kids and ii) Some charter schools don't serve kids, for example, with special needs or don't serve kids, for example, whose parents don't sign contracts or agreements of commitment. And private schools that accept vouchers can't be forced to accept (and retain) students for the same reasons. It's not reasonable to expect that expanding charters and vouchers will help neighborhood kids when those schools don't necessarily have to (or mean to) serve neighborhood kids.

Of course, many systems were in need of reform. Of course not every school can serve the needs of all kids. A conversation about the values of charter schools and choice is one worth having. What are the pros and cons of different policies? Of different systemic models? How have they worked in in the past? In other districts? In other countries? What will do the most kids the greatest good? What are the implications of such policies on our democracy?

But there can be no conversation about these things if the participants aren't being honest about all of the factors, including mistakes and shortcomings. I'm all for not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. But dishonesty, inaccuracy, and hypocrisy are the enemies of them both.


*UPDATE I: Reading tweets from @teacherken and @samchaltain of Pasi Sahlberg's talk at the Finnish Embassy in DC last night, I was reminded that "responsibility" is a much better term than "accountability" in this context as in, we should "Prioritize collective responsibility not individual accountability."

Accountability for what?

I will soon put up a guest post in response to Virginia Heffernan's recent New York Times op-ed about "archaic" learning tools and products such as research papers. Thinking about this, as well as about Robert Pondiscio and Kathleen Porter-Magee's smart responses, I woke up this morning with the question: Accountability for what? in my head.

Part of what I was trying to demonstrate in my guest post on the Core Knowledge blog, which was inspired by this post by Robert Pondiscio, is that the accountability structures (which frankly, Pondiscio says are needed--UPDATE: See Robert's clarification below--and which Porter-Magee's colleagues at Fordham advocate vigorously for) are driving what is taught and how it is taught. If accountability structures are based on high-stakes math and reading tests, then that's what's going to be taught. This is actually quite a traditional concept in education, that you look at the assessment (what you want students to know and to be able to do) and you work backwards from it. So if reading and math skills are what we want educators and schools to be accountable for on a yearly basis, that's what they're going to teach. Research papers? Not so much. Complex, whole-class novels? Not so much. Science experiments, civics debates, the arts, and foreign languages? Not so much. Supporting experienced, knowledgeable teachers (evil LIFO!) with institutional memory and knowledge of their content and content-related essential skills who are more likely to be skeptical of and to resist edu-fads such as 21st century silliness? Not. So. Much.

Some might counter: Well, that's why we need better and more tests. Okay, that's a start, in a way. That's what we have in Virginia: science and social studies standardized tests, as well as art SOLs. But let's see what the students are actually learning about science and social studies; let's see what they graduate high school with. As Chris Dovi shows us here (and as my guest blogger will show) it ain't pretty. The way to educate ourselves out of this high-stakes testing hole is not by giving more questionable high-stakes tests.

Some might counter, well, that's what the Common Core is for. Okay, that, too, is a start. But who's to say the content of the Common Core is rich and meaningful or that it makes for developmentally appropriate instruction and content? Andrew Porter disagrees on the first count and at least many elementary school teachers I've heard from disagree on the second count. (And we're not even freaking piloting the CC first!!!)

Unfortunately, the cart has been put before the horse and is getting further and further away, gaining momentum as it rolls down the hill. And guess what? It's empty. And all of those who cheered it along need to own that.

Viable ed policy? Yes. But let's design it for people, not outcomes.

During the recent SOS March & National Call to Action event in DC, Mike Klonsky presented the idea of an SOS think/do tank. This is a fantastic idea--we need to present both policy critiques and alternatives, in addition to taking political action.

This was also very timely in light of a discussion that has had the blogosphere aflutter for the past few weeks. I am not qualified to comment too extensively on it with my limited background in political theory (I could barely follow it, save Kevin Drum’s contribution and I only have but so much patience for theoretical bullshitting even if it's really smart bullshitting), but it seems that it’s essentially an argument about theory versus action, and policy versus politics. Some seem to be saying, as much as they might wish otherwise, that given our current political system, there’s no real political solution for achieving progressive goals. Others counter that this amounts to an abdication of truly progressive ideals. If you're interested in reading more about this, posts (with great links!) by Erik Kain and his thoughtful and well-read co-bloggers at The League Ordinary Gentlemen are a great place to start, in part because they're politically unaffiliated.

I had been heretofore staunchly anti-neo-liberal, as I dismissed it as conservatism in progressive packaging, but I've come to realize that: a) it's not that simple, b) their stance on education reform is ideological, not a power grab--they are true believers c) there's generally more common ground than I had realized, for example on matters such as gay rights and tax policy. That being said, I am still not in the camp of let’s do neoliberalism even though it sucks because it’s the best thing around.

In this context, wonky Education Week blogger and DFER board member Sarah Mead endorses the same technocratic, neo-liberal solution for education reform that Matt Yglesias offers those searching for the next best progressive hope, charging with a similar version of edu-nihilism that Yglesias often does anyone who might disagree with her. She says:

"This all sounds to me a lot like contemporary education policy debates: Education reformers put forward a series of-yes, let's be honest-largely technocratic and market-minded strategies to try to make our public education system work better to serve the needs of students, and to increase the supply of higher-performing schools and teachers. Critics counter that these policies can't possibly fix the problems they're purported to solve-mediocre overall performance and glaring student achievement gaps-because they don't address the underlying causes of economic inequality, poverty, inadequate health care, broken families, etc. (It's worth noting that 'neoliberal' is frequently a term of derision directed at the education reform movement by its foes.) No one, to my knowledge honestly disputes that those issues are real problems that do impact the outcomes of educational systems. The problem is that critics of education reform also don't put forward any compelling and remotely viable proposals to solve the problems they argue must be solved before we can improve school performance [even if we embarked on a massive campaign of economic redistribution--assuming that's possible and designed in a way that doesn't create other problems--does anyone think that fix mental health issues or ensure that all kids have 'good' parents?]. Nor do they offer any alternative strategy for, in the absence of such sweeping and improbable solutions, getting the best we can out of our public schools given current realities. Essentially, they're offering an argument for throwing up our hands and saying 'tough cookies, kids,' to the tens of millions of low-income American schoolchildren who have only an 8% chance of ever earning a college diploma."

Later she offered a similar, if more jarringly catty, critique that was specifically aimed at the SOS March & National Call to Action where she accuses its participants of demanding a "pony."

Besides assuring Ms. Mead that we have no interest in taking her pony, to these sentiments, I'd say that yes, there are certainly a few lefties who say that we can’t fix education until we fix poverty. When people retort, well then go work to remedy poverty and get out of education, they have a point. Poverty exists, learning disabilities exist, English Language Learners exist, trauma exists, and aliteracy and illiteracy exists; yet, we must still work to best educate our nation's children. Once we are all honest about our exaggerations (and really, we should either abandon them or get out of the conversation), then we can sit down and talk about the in-school and systemic solutions.

At the same time, education policies and practices don't exist in a vacuum--economic, housing, and social policies all affect educational outcomes and affect how education policy works. Though many of the neo-reformers have come around to admitting that poverty affects how students do in school, some do continue, indeed, to say poverty doesn't affect student performance. Furthermore, plenty of us who are sympathetic to the SOS movement acknowledge the role education can play in alleviating poverty, but we want reformers to recognize the deep and profound effects of the income gap on the achievement gaps. Teachers and education alone can not end poverty.

There is a place for technocratic and policy-oriented actors and solutions, but just because the neo-liberal ed policies are "viable," i.e., they can be implemented, doesn't mean they work to improve the quality of education in our schools. In fact, many of those policies, including high-stakes testing, higher pay for higher test scores, and an unrelenting focus on practices of public education systems' human resources departments haven't worked. Among other flawed initiatives, the accountability structures they push undermine the basic tenets of quality education: solid pedagogy and rich and meaningful curriculum. You can't expect a three- or even two-star meal if you're using a McDonald's model.

Furthermore, no matter how nicely and wonkishly you say it, saying, there’s my solution and there’s non-viable ones is just another way of saying, my way or the highway. Just because people like Mead are convinced of the efficacy of the policies that they endorse, doesn't mean that there aren't, in fact, other "remotely viable" policy alternatives. True, most teachers want to have a conversation about best practices and pedagogy (how to teach) and about curriculum (what to teach). Beyond that, to say that people like me or like any of the Accomplished California Teachers or like Diane Ravitch or like John Thompson or like Nancy Flanagan or like Jose Vilson or like Linda Darling Hammond or like Mike Rose or like Sabrina Stevens Shupe or like any number of education experts and practitioners have proposed no viable solutions and are:

”throwing up our hands and saying 'tough cookies, kids,' to the tens of millions of low-income American schoolchildren who have only an 8% chance of ever earning a college diploma" 

is insulting and it's lazy. If you pay any attention at all, you know that most of us are asking for policy that encourages good practice or at least doesn’t harm it. And there are policy-oriented organizations out there that most of us endorse. To name a few there's the Economic Policy Institute, NEPC (National Education Policy Center), The Albert Shanker Institute, and The Century Foundation. (UPDATE: I can't believe I forgot   School Finance 101!)

But as Ta-Nehisi Coates points out in series of posts ("Our Technocratic Overlords") about gentrification in DC, there are actual human beings behind all of those charts and numbers with actual thoughts, feelings, and knowledge of their own. Coates says here, 

"The bugbear of reformers has long been an inability to see humanity in the actual humans they would have reformed." 

In the next post on the topic he reminds us that, 

"Policy without politics is an abstraction. This is a feature of democracy, not a bug." 

Finally, here he talks about how his experiences as a journalist have shaped him as a writer to consider the human beings behind the numbers:

"Looking back on this, the thing that strikes is the importance of journalism. I think it's really easy to become the sort of writer who reads reports from Brookings and analyzes charts and graphs, without ever having to talk to the people captured in the numbers. People are scary in a way that think tanks are not."

TNC put words to exactly what I find so problematic with a strictly technocratic approach: The technocrats and policy analysts such as Mead and Ygelsias refuse to consider what the policies they endorse actually do in schools and how they affect the practices of educators and the experiences of the students. The poor practices those policies cause is what motivated many of the practitioners and parents (the very people Mead denigrates and mocks) to get involved in the SOS March. The technocrats have become too hung up on being technically right, on being right according to some set of data or another; if only they were a a bit more hung up on being human.

Neo-liberals like Mead accuse their critics of "magical" thinking. So I say, agreed, we need to bring more policy critiques and alternatives to the forefront. But if they think that paying teachers extra for higher student test scores, getting rid of due process rights for teachers, flooding the system with charter schools, offering vouchers, and believing blindly in the free market is going to somehow lift "tens of millions of low-income American school children" into college and out of poverty, then I'd say they've got a magical wand problem of their own to consider. Lastly, no policy solution can work without consideration of the perspectives of those on the ground, of the very people those policies affect. Otherwise we are left with wonks insisting that their graphs and charts and clipboards represent a deeper truth than the actual experience of thousands of teachers, administrators, parents and students. 

Petrilli on Educating Poor Kids is Problematic

One of the few conservative edu-pundits I follow is Michael Petrilli. I disagree with him that high-stakes testing, rigid accountability schemes, disempowerment of teachers unions, and a focus on hiring and firing policies will lead us down the path towards better education. And he seems entirely too focused on specific outcomes, compared to improving the overall quality of teaching and learning. But he has some ideas worth considering and has great insights into the political process. Plus, he is reasonable, thoughtful, and open to respectful debate.

This recent post of his (and he wrote a similar one a while back) explored two questions:

"First, whether affluent parents should be satisfied with the public schools to which they send their own children. And second, whether those same parents can be energized to fight on behalf of school reform for the poor." 

Given the positive things I say above, I had to read the post several times before I figured out why it bothered me so much. 


First:

"The No Child Left Behind backlash in the suburbs isn’t due to concerns that the law isn’t working to fix urban education. Plenty of evidence shows that it’s helped. The anger comes from a feeling that the federal law is starting to make middle-class public schools worse–or at least worse in the eyes of their customers."

I agree that NCLB is harming the quality of education in middle-class and more affluent schools alike--I've not heard or read otherwise from those parents. But I vehemently disagree that NCLB "is working to fix urban education." Where's this "plenty of evidence"? Juked testing stats? I would argue, in fact, that the poorer the population of any school (which often means the lower the test scores), the more draconian and harmful the interference of NCLB. I am NOT saying that it's worthless to invest in quality education of poor kids until we fix poverty--far from it. I am saying that NCLB is interfering with quality pedagogy and curriculum in ALL schools, especially in poorer ones. 

Next:

"The second question, it seems to me, will soon be answered by Michelle Rhee’s new endeavor, Students First. Rhee’s potential donors and supporters surely include many well-educated, well-to-do parents; she is encouraging them to contribute money and time in order to fix the schools of other people’s children, not their own. (Teach For America alumni–sensitized to the plight of inner-city education–will play a key role, I would bet.) The gambit is whether a “social justice” pitch to fix urban education can resonate–and be sustained–with people with the resources to engage politically, but without a personal stake in the fight. Time will tell whether Rhee can pull it off."

So affluent people's dedication to improving education for poor children is measured by the amount of money they fork over to people like Michelle Rhee and organizations like Students First? Really? First of all, where's the evidence that Michelle Rhee is "fixing the schools" of anybody's children? And wasn't it the affluent DC residents who overwhelmingly supported her while the ones who didn't were the poorer people whose schools she was supposedly fixing? I have no tolerance, either, for Richard Whitmire's cringe-worthy thesis that the poorer, black people in DC were too ignorant and full of race pride to realize that Rhee-form was good for them.

Lobbying groups like Stand For Children and Students First give money to politicians, many of whom these days advocate for policies that are harmful to the poorer people they profess to want to help, not to schools or to classrooms. Does Petrilli actually believe the only way to help poor children is via expanding our dysfunctional, lobbyist-run political system and buying politicians? How does that help improve the quality of education for poor kids? "Fixing the schools" is actually long-term and painstakingly difficult work that requires collaboration with educators and local communities. Rhee turned her back on many of the community-based groups working for school reform in DC and many lost funding as affluent and influential citizens decided, as Petrilli seems to, that all would be will since Michelle Rhee was there to "fix the schools." A more proper measure of their dedication would be the extent to which more affluent people a) support SES-integrated schools, b) support the poorer populations and schools in their own district, and c) support grassroots and community groups that work directly with poorer families. See here, for example.

Finally,

"The best schools for children of poverty focus on all aspects of their students’ development. At the same time, they look a lot different than the schools affluent families send their kids to. They are more focused on making sure their charges have mastered the basics; they spend a lot of effort inculturating their kids in middle-class mores; they give regular assessments to diagnose progress." (Emphasis mine.)

Neo-liberals like Mike Petrilli, Matt Yglesias, and David Brooks can cite research showing that some schools (translation: KIPP) are very good at boosting some poor kids' performance. But these schools differ from traditional public schools on several dimensions: massive resources, often high attrition, longer school days, more books, longer school years, a richer and more varied curriculum, and sometimes yes, "a different school culture." I have no problem with more emphasis on basics for those who need more basics (as long as that doesn't mean reading strategies or test prep), but I have a huge problem with the idea that "inculturating their kids in middle-class mores" helps kids to succeed academically. The assumption there is that the reason these kids are poor students is due to their parents' values or morals rather than due to the lack of privilege they were born into. (And please don't tell me that when Petrilli, Yglesias, Brooks, and their conservative brethren say "mores," "moral culture," or "bourgeois norms" in this context that they mean good study habits. These men are educated and write for a living. If they meant "habits of a good student," then that's precisely what they would say.)


Petrilli's desire to help poor children and to improve the quality of our education system is genuine. Since I find it valuable to hear the ideas of those with different views, I will continue to listen to what he has to say. Unfortunately, this and other posts show that many of his solutions to the achievement gap are superficial and ideological, failing to address the roots of the opportunity gap: gross societal inequities. Furthermore, like Brooks and Yglesias, his assumptions about human behavior and the causes of poverty are based on assumptions and a philosophy which is, thus far, irreconcilable with my own.

Matt Yglesias Thinks Struggling Readers Shouldn't Learn Content

Matt Yglesias is wrong, again. And what he's wrong about is too concerning to ignore. In light of recently (slightly) higher NAEP history scores he says:

"As it happens, I agree with history advocates that we’re seeing the impact of the accountability law. What we’re seeing, in particular, is that trying to teach history to kids who can’t read is a fool’s errand. Focusing more clearly on making sure that kids aren’t falling behind in their core skills is helping the worst-off kids do better across the board even at history."

This is ridiculous. Yes, it helps kids to do better on a test if they can read it, but it doesn't actually help them learn the content on the test if they aren't being taught the content. The NAEP scores are nothing to celebrate--they're pretty bad actually. The goal should be not better test scores but more educated kids. Beyond some limited explicit instruction in reading skills, what struggling readers (and all readers) need is content, like social studies, like science. Core skills are mostly built on core knowledge, not the other way around


My own twin boys had different experiences learning to read. One son was reading by the time he turned five, learning to decode (or translate letters into sounds) easily. The other was nearly six and a half before he was reading at all fluently. That son had some intensive instruction from a reading specialist at his school which undeniably helped him get over the obstacle that decoding presented him. But the hard work that he was willing to put in was powered by being interested in the knowledge that he could find in books. He couldn’t read the words, but he learned the difference between a pterodactyl and a stegosaurus from books we read to him, from television programs, and from visits to museums. In his case, basic reading skills were as much a consequence of content knowledge, as they were a prerequisite.

Is Matt Ygelsias proposing that one of my sons should have missed out on science and social studies instruction (his favorite subjects--both of my sons hate learning about reading, but love reading) until he could decode properly? Sorry, son, you learn about dinosaurs because you can't decode. You can't learn about the Revolutionary War because you can't decode. That's absurd and it's educational malpractice. Teaching content is teaching reading.

When schools spend too much time on basic skills, to the point where they’re neglecting to teach high-interest content, they are wasting kids’ time and contributing to the achievement gap in cultural capital. The road to stronger skills and a college culture is paved with rich and meaningful content. When we let skills usurp content then we’re telling kids: Not only are you bad at reading, but you’re bad at everything else; because you’re not ready to read on grade level, you’re not ready to learn on grade level. When we make interesting content contingent on basic math and reading skills proficiency, we are dangling a carrot and watching as students’ appetites languish. If they’re not getting the content, the skills will never catch up. A student will never be successful at reading if they aren’t learning about what it is they’re reading about. 

Ygelsias writes intelligently on many topics; education is not one of them. For a much more thoughtful post that raises valid questions about teaching history and the recent NAEP scores, read what Michael Lopez has to say.

UPDATE: Lest someone come along and say I don't think kids need to learn to read or that they don't learn or build knowledge through reading books (or other texts such as periodicals), that is not at all what I am saying. I don't think that at all. Reading is vital.

Kids need to learn to decode and they should read as many books as possible. We can learn so much from reading books. The more we read, the more we know, the better readers we become.

What I'm saying is that learning to read is not an isolated process--learning to decode can be, but beyond that, there's no such thing as learning to comprehend or learning reading comprehension. Comprehension is built on knowledge. Knowledge is built through learning. Knowledge can be delivered via many different forms and it can especially be delivered via books. But we can not discount the significance of the background knowledge and the content knowledge that aids us in the process of reading and comprehending those books.

If I can quote Cedar from the comments below:


". . .  it is exhausting to read something where you don't know what the words mean. Yes, it is possible to sit there with a dictionary and look up one or two words per sentence, but for most of us, it is taxing and unpleasant. If kids have to keep reading and re-reading, they find reading unpleasant. As you pointed out, you got your knowledge from books. Part of the reason that you got that knowledge from books is because you didn't find books exhausting."


Without background and content knowledge, reading books is exhausting for kids, and they won't do it or get better at it or learn as much as they would. But with enough background and content knowledge, reading becomes pleasurable and interesting and the more they'll do it.

Bourgeois, Smourgeois

Matt Ygelsias responded to my post critiquing this post. ED Kain also posted a very thoughtful response to my post.

First, I think that my and Yglesias's disagreement may be based at least in part on language, that is, lack of a shared interpretation of the terms we're using. He said "modes of behavior" and "conduct." I said "values." Then he said "norms." I see modes of behavior and conduct as growing from the values one holds as well as occurring in response to conditions. I see a norm as a standard of behavior. I acknowledge that Yglesias and others may have a different understanding of these terms and that it would be helpful if we arrived at a uniform understanding of them.

Otherwise, I don't see these lines as being subject to to much interpretation:

"Look. Children are children. They’re kids. They don’t know what they’re doing. They’re irresponsible, they’re impulsive. They need to be taught. They learn from their parents and their peers and their peers’ parents. And if they’re parents have low levels of education and labor force success and so do all their friends’ parents and all their parents’ friends well then of course they’ll benefit from certain kinds of explicit instruction that middle class children don’t need."

No one is here is saying that kids don't need to be taught; rather, we are disagreeing about what they need to be taught. He is advocating for "bourgeois modes of behavior" (or conduct or norms), and I think we should focus on content and curriculum.

Furthermore, his chain of logic seems to be: Kids in general are irresponsible and impulsive. Middle class people are responsible and patient and teach their kids how to be the same. Poor people are not responsible and patient and that's why they have low levels of education and lack of "labor force success." Since poor parents don't teach their kids such norms or patterns of behavior, non-poor kids can teach poor kids this instead and in their absence, schools such as KIPP or others that adopt the No Excuses model can teach them this.

When he says "certain kinds of explicit instruction" I hear "work ethic" and "valuing education." His implication is that certain kinds of "explicit instruction" help make up for this lack of values. Certainly, at least some poor kids have parents who aren't educated, don't have steady jobs, lack a work ethic, and don't value education. However at least some middle class and rich people with children also aren't particularly educated, don't have steady jobs, lack a work ethic, and don't value education.

I am middle class. Yes, I was born into a family with bourgeois modes of behavior, but  mostly I was born into the conditions of privilege that allowed me the luxury of becoming educated. I am white, I lived in a safe neighborhood, had great healthcare, ate nutritious meals regularly, experienced no childhood traumas, had two professionally employed parents with advanced degrees whose jobs enabled them to be involved in my education and to impart their cultural capital to me.

(At this point, we also need to stop for a minute and clarify what we mean by "value education." Education for education's sake? Education to be a well-rounded person? An informed citizen? Education towards getting a job? Furthermore, what does it mean to be an educated American? Being educated enough to get a job? Being educated enough to have an intellectual life? A little of both?  I believe there is some core knowledge and basic skills that we as Americans should all have. Beyond that, being "educated" can take many different forms.)

Undoubtedly, kids learn norms and behaviors in school from one another--that's part of going to school. The value attached to these norms and behaviors all depends on, well, what each individual values. That being acknowledged, it's not my job as a public school teacher to teach social values beyond, say, teaching students how to get along, and how to peacefully resolve disputes that might arise in my classroom. Rather, it's my job to provide an education. Now, I do need to teach the values or habits of a good student, for example, completing assignments in a timely and comprehensive manner, reading as much and as often as possible, participating respectfully in class discussions, listening to teachers and classmates, coming to class on time, not plagiarizing or cheating, and I have no doubt that KIPP teaches their kids to have the habits of good students. But ultimately, to get students to practice these habits, I need to show them the value of what I'm teaching and that I value their time and effort.

I am not going to tell my teenage students that it would be wrong for them to have a baby at the age of sixteen; that's none of my business. Again, it's my job to educate my teenage students and not to express judgement of their values or culture. I did have some colleagues who made it a point not to acknowledge their students' babies or to fawn over them at all, but I always made sure to congratulate them and support them once the decision was made. Okay, you're a mother now and yes, being a mother is special. Now, how can I help you succeed academically while you're a parent? Likewise, as a civics teacher, it's not my job to teach which political party to join. Rather, it's my job to teach my students about how our political system works and about the duties of citizens in a democratic society.

Ultimately, "explicit instruction" in values or norms doesn't get you very far (ask people who teach ethics classes to MBA's). Just like you can't really teach kids to be good readers by teaching reading strategies, you can't teach kids to value education by telling them to value education. In order to get kids to to be stronger readers, you have to teach them about the content they're going to read about and then have them read developmentally appropriate texts about the content. Similarly, in order to get kids to value education, you have to show them how much you love knowledge, that it's interesting and that it's essential, and then you have to educate them. This should be true no matter who is being taught.

If rich content and practical skills are being taught while students are wearing uniforms or while students are instructed to walk silently in the halls, as long as such an environment isn't excessively rigid, what do I care? Structure is necessary to get kids ready to listen, support in the form of wrap-around services and some intensive academic instruction in deficient areas will help ensure they stay in a place to listen, but if you want them to really engage, you have teach them interesting and vital content. With a narrower, test-based curriculum and excessive teaching of skills such as reading strategies in charter and traditional, poor and middle class schools alike (though granted the lower the test scores, generally the more draconian and narrow the approach), no one is getting the content knowledge they like or the practical skills they need.

Today's commentators on everything are invariably experts on nothing. Yglesisas' writing on education  (I can't speak to his expertise on other matters) show he's is no different. He may be smart but he has a very superficial knowledge of how education works. When Yglesias, or anyone else like him, gestures vaguely at ideas about education reform, I'd probably do better to ignore them and respect that they're only doing their job. But I can't agree that this is how to have a serious conversation about education, nor can I pretend that it's a way to accurately inform the public of the issues in education and of their complexity. Seriously.

No Excuses for Matt Yglesias

I am at work on a longer piece about poverty, pedagogy and curriculum. In the meantime, I came across this relevant tutorial from Matt Ygelsias (via an approving E.D. Kain) on how schools help poor kids overcome poverty:

". . . It all goes back to the basic issue of why poor kids do better in less segregated schools in the first place. Basically, kids seem to benefit from picking up certain bourgeois modes of behavior. Bourgeois kids generally pick them up from their parents. Poor kids can pick them up from their peers, but only if they go to a school with a relatively low concentration of poverty. Poor kids in a high-poverty school can also receive explicit instruction in bourgeois conduct. That’s the essence of the 'No Excuses' model, but it doesn’t make sense in a bourgeois context. We should think of these kind of schools as stopgaps, workable solutions to the difficult problem of running a school in an environment of concentrated poverty. For a whole variety of reasons we should be trying to break those concentrations up and reduce the overall level of poverty. But given that concentrated poverty isn’t going to vanish next week, we should also be applauding people who are finding ways to make it work."

Yikes. Is anyone else troubled by this? Does anyone else think this sounds an awful lot like David Brooks at his worst? I read the above as: All these poor kids have to do is "pick up" "bourgeois modes of behavior" by attending school with middle to upper class kids, you know, since poor kids don't pick up acceptable modes of behavior from their parents. Oh, but that's not really possible right now, so we'll just have to "make it work" by putting poor kids in "No Excuses" schools where they will "receive explicit instruction in bourgeois conduct" until we can break up poverty. Then these kids with their newly acquired "bourgeois modes of behavior" can move on to bourgeois adulthood and work at think tanks and write uninformed nonsense.


I advise Yglesias to read this incredible piece by an actual teacher (and likely a bourgeois one, at that) who taught in a 'No Excuses' charter school. The test scores may have been higher there, but the kids weren't enjoying school and their teacher knew she wasn't offering them a quality or appropriate education. 


Poor kids and their parents don't need to be schooled in the way of bourgeois values; they need jobs, healthcare, housing, and, yes, a rich and meaningful education. If KIPP offers that kind of education, then uniforms or not, kudos to them, but if KIPP doesn't offer this, then they need to re-think their approach. All kids, even poor kids, should learn in an orderly but not rigid, developmentally appropriate, content-rich environment that fosters exploration, critical thinking, and creativity. All kids are worthy of the best practices and great curricula--that's not bourgeois, that's good education.


UPDATE I: As this post gets a bit more traffic, I want to make sure I'm crystal clear on a  few things:
1) I think structure, stability, routines, and fair rules are good for all kids. It's rigidity, a narrow curriculum, and high-stakes standardized testing I'm opposed to.
2) I support my kids being taught to walk quietly in the halls, to be polite and respectful, and to be quiet and listen when their teacher or a classmate is talking. As long as my kids are relatively happy and enjoying learning, I accept and support that some teachers will be more strict than others.
3) I am not a constructivist.


UPDATE II: ICYMI, I have posted a new post on this topic. By all means, head over and take issue with what I've said there.

Richard Whitmire Can't Dodge His Own Racism

When I first heard that someone named Richard Whitmire had published a hagiography of Michelle Rhee, that was funded by the same disaster capitalists who had purchased her disastrous education reform policies, I shrugged. There's already so much propaganda on this out there already, what's a little more?  It's probably nothing different from what members of Washington Post editorial staff had already written. What's another journalist taken in by Michelle Rhee? 

Then, I read that he had given a talk about The Bee Eater at the DC bookstore Politics & Prose where he insulted the attendees and refused to answer their questions. So tacky, I thought. That guy's got no class. 

Next, I read Richard Kahlenberg's sharp critique of the book in Slate. Whitmire responded rather huffily and defensively, regurgitating his questionable research. Kahlenberg responded to his response, and Whitmire again to Kahlenberg. What a Brainy Smurf this Whitmire is, I thought. Isn't this what happens when you get a book published--people read it and then write reviews? Why not just ignore them, as most other authors do? Whitmire must really be a true believer or too proud to admit to any mistakes in his work, I thought. When will Hefty come by and chuck him over towards the bushes?

Then, there was this whine-fest in Education Week where he trivialized Ms. Rhee's mistakes and called her critics "birthers." Birthers? I thought. Hahaha! This guy is getting desperate. What a dumb analogy!

Finally (or perhaps not, knowing Brainy), I came across this brazen (and I mean, b-ray-zen) piece on the Huffington Post. I stopped cringing and started seething. It is truly one of the most despicable things I've ever read about race and DC politics and DCPS. It's so awful, I could cry.

Whitmire wags his finger at education reformers, admonishing them not to "duck race issues." African American Washingtonians' "fears of experimentation" were justified. What's wrong with saying that? Well, it's not nearly the beginning or end of what he says. According to Whitmire, Rhee and Fenty should have paid heed to the "fears" of African Americans, but not because there were any actual race issues during Rhee's tenure. Racism in DC is all done now--all that racism and "experimentation" is history and happened 1960s and 1970s. According to Whitmire, black people in DC perceived racism under Rhee, but it was all in their over-sensitive, incompetent little heads.

According to Whitmire, Rhee inherited a "bloated and poorly run" central office filled with "people who had little guidance as to do their jobs." Michelle Rhee inherited all of  these "incompetent" African American "Barry appointees." Never mind that several mayors served between Barry and Fenty. Never mind that the numerous superintendents serving under those mayors also came in and went on similar firing sprees. Never mind that under Rhee, the number of central office employees rose by 20% (and they claim to be understaffed!) as direct services to students and overall enrollment fell . Never mind that at least 100 central office employees now make more than $100,000 a year. Never mind that most of the people Rhee hired to replace the vastly "incompetent" black employees were white and under the age of forty with little to no experience in education.


See, when Fenty spent vastly more money on facilities and playgrounds in the whiter and more affluent Ward 3 and when Michelle Rhee crowded central offices with underqualified and overpaid employees, it's "progress" and "courage", but under previous (black) mayors and superintendents, it's "incompetence," "a jobs program," and a way of "hiring people and securing votes." (And perhaps an understandable response to all of that nasty, isolated racism of the 1970s.)

Yes, according to Whitmire, white people saw Michelle Rhee's firings "based on principal recommendation" as, well, "logical," while misinformed black people saw them as "random." Furthermore, black Washingtonians couldn't handle that testing gains happened under Michelle Rhee, who is Korean-American, and not under her predecessor Clifford Janey, who is African American. Apparently, black residents in Washington, D.C., can't handle success happening to non-blacks. Whitmire is a hair away from crying "reverse racism!" here:

"The fact that Rhee was Korean American, and not African American as her predecessors had been, also proved to be racially troublesome, especially when the district began to show testing improvements. Rationalizing that awkward situation gave birth to a widespread belief among many black Washingtonians that the gains Rhee achieved were the fruits of the black schools chief, Clifford Janey, who preceded her"

Finally, the elections came and Fenty lost because, "the favoring-whites belief proved to be a significant wedge issue in the voting." Those silly black people with their "favoring whites beliefs" and Janey test gain "theories." 


There's so much more I could say about this vile piece. There's so much left that offends. (Please, read it for yourselves.) But mostly, it epitomizes what's wrong with the so-called education reformers' approach: that the problem in public education is not systemic or societal (or even more than one problem), but one of low quality people, in DC's case, mostly black people, who fail to teach poor children how to read. The parents of these kids are also too simple minded, too bound up in perverse race pride to recognize their saviors when they ride in on their broomsticks. When will they realize, as Michelle does, what's actually good for their own children, that what they really need is to bring in high-achieving Ivy Leaguers, so that they, too, don't become low quality people? Who cares if they don't know anything about education or teaching?

In the meantime, DC Mayor Vincent Gray has betrayed so many who worked so hard for him and appointed Interim DCPS Chancellor Kaya Henderson as permanent chancellor. A chancellor selection advisory panel was appointed, as mandated by a 2007 DC law, but apparently Gray and the panel members decided that democratic processes are one of those "sacred cows" that need to be slaughtered: the only candidate they ever considered was Ms. Henderson. Henderson certainly seems to be more conciliatory and thoughtful than Ms. Rhee was, which is a start, but I'm hearing that so far, that's mostly talk. The community and other stakeholders aren't being involved in decisions and there is still little to no transparency. Furthermore, Ms. Henderson continues to embrace the same wrong-headed policies that Ms. Rhee did.

Not to worry. I'm certain Richard Whitmire will soon write a piece assuring all that now that African-American Kaya Henderson is in charge, that over-sensitive and incompetent African American residents of DC will have no further complaints. According to Whitmire's logic, black folks in DC don't care about the quality of education their children receive, nor do they care about competence; they only care about blackness.

If Richard Whitmire is trying to deflect the negativity people feel from Michelle Rhee on to him (especially now that she and Fenty have stated their support for Scott Walker), he's doing a great job. If anything validates Courtland Milloy's post-election screed, this does.

As Tim Wise says,

"there are two types of racists, the overt racists, such as white supremacists, and the passive racists, who are the vast majority of us who silently collaborate with systemic racism. We don't consciously believe in racial superiority or inferiority, but we've become so used to the existing policies, practices, and procedures that we don't question them. To the extent we don't challenge this system of racism, we are collaborating with it. The second type of racist is actually more dangerous. The first type we can easily recognize, and it doesn't take much courage to condemn them. the second type is like an invisible gas: you don't know it's there until you've been lulled unconscious by it."

Which kind of racist would you say Mr. Whitmire is? I'd say he falls somewhere just between the two.