Category Archives: education reform

Education, education reform

Tone, pt. 2: On “Hostile Rhetoric,” Laziness, and the Education Debate

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[NOTE: The topic of the appropriate tone for making and debating points in education reform will not die; thus, I am reposting two pieces on tone, both originally posted at Daily Kos in 2012 (See pt. 1 HERE, and pt. 2 HERE); pt. 3 is original and intended as a prelude to the release of Diane Ravitch’s Reign of Error, which is drawing some criticism for her tone (see my review HERE). Let me be clear that it is absolutely true that tone matters, but I also have learned that the charge of inappropriate tone tends to come from those in power to put the powerless in their “place” and from those who have no substantive point to make. In the end, I call for addressing the credibility and validity of the claims being made first and then, if relevant, we can discuss tone.]

On “Hostile Rhetoric,” Laziness, and the Education Debate*

In the early 1980s, I was newly married, seeking my first teaching job, and necessarily living in my parents’ home, which also housed my sister, her husband, and child. We were a pretty interesting extended family nestled in the Upstate of rural South Carolina.

One night, I was suddenly startled awake by my sister ripping the screened door off its hinges as she shouted for me to wake up. After a blur of jumping out of bed and following her into my parents’ bedroom, I found my father in his bathroom.

He, the floor, and seemingly the walls around him were covered in his blood.

This is my story of coming to terms in my early 20s with the mortality and humanity of my father, who transitioned for me that day from an idealized Superman to fully (and wonderfully) human, and along with my mother, two people I love deeply and can never repay for the gifts they have given me.

My father was lying there after weeks or even months of hiding what had to be obvious signs of the bleeding ulcer that could no longer be ignored that night. My father is a hard-ass and a worker’s worker. He was captain of the first state-championship football team of his high school (which I attended and where I later taught for 18 years) and had a full set of false teeth while in high school (teeth were often knocked out in the 1950s, it appears). And my father still works part-time in a machine shop as a quality control supervisor, often having to ask his fellow workers to move heavy parts he can no longer lift because of arthritic shoulders.

And I am a teacher, a professor and scholar. I lift a grande Dos Equis (about 32 oz.) after bicycle rides, but mainly, I teach, and I write.

My father was never remotely close to being rich, but I was raised in a working-class home that put on a damned good mask of middle class. I am certainly not rich by American standards, but I am certainly living in privilege, and also certainly didn’t attain that through the physical and mental toil that my father did.

Mine is literally the result of my father’s blood, sweat, and tears.

And, thus, this is also a story of my “hostile rhetoric.”

“Hostile Rhetoric,” Laziness, and the Education Debate

Anthony Cody ventured into a dialogue with the Gates Foundation (GF) about education reform, a decision I remain conflicted about since I have more than once offered arguments about not seeking a place at the table with Corporate Reformers. My compromise has been to comment only at Cody’s blog (the dialogue is simultaneously posted at the GF blog).

Recently, after confronting a GF post, a comment after my post discounted my rebuttal for its “hostile rhetoric,” leading me to consider a couple questions: (1) Was my discourse genuinely hostile?, and (2) Was the tone of my work building walls against readers considering fairly the content of my message?

Let me examine that charge against my work (the comment thread clarifies that all of my work fails due to hostile rhetoric, by the way) through two examples.

First, note this from Gina Rinehart, the world’s richest woman:

Rinehart, whose family iron ore prospecting fortune of Aus $29.2 billion (US$30.1 billion) also makes her Australia’s wealthiest person, hit out at those who she said were envious of the rich.’There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire,’ she wrote in an industry magazine column.

‘If you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just sit there and complain. Do something to make more money yourself — spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising, and more time working.

‘Become one of those people who work hard, invest and build, and at the same time create employment and opportunities for others.’

Rinehart blamed what she described as ‘socialist’, anti-business policies for the plight of Australia’s poor, urging the government to lower the minimum wage, as well as taxes, unless it wanted to end up like Greece.

‘The terrible millionaires and billionaires can often invest in other countries… maybe their teenagers don’t get the cars they wanted, or a better beach house or or maybe the holiday to Europe is cut short, but otherwise life goes on,’ she wrote.

‘The millionaires and billionaires who choose to invest in Australia are actually those who most help the poor and our young. This secret needs to be spread widely.'”

Apparently, if my father hadn’t been so lazy, he too could have been a millionaire or billionaire. I wish Rinehart had let us in on the secret earlier.

Next, consider this paragraph from Irvin Scott of the GF:

We believe that despite a child’s circumstances, she should be given every opportunity to succeed and lead a life better than the one she was given. That is in direct contrast to the belief that because of a child’s circumstances she is destined to live a life of obstacles regardless of the opportunities she’s given. In our opinion, the purpose of K-12 education is to help provide and shape those opportunities.

Scott’s claims, unlike the bitter tone from Rinehart, can reasonably be called civil and even positive, so my two examples can also be fairly compared to examine the content, regardless of the tone.

Rinehart’s assertion that people in poverty, the working poor, the working class, and the middle class are all simply not working hard enough—that they all are in fact lazy—is not significantly different than the often less abrasive claims coming from politicians, corporate leaders, and specifically the new crop of corporate reformers in education: Bill Gates, Michelle Rhee, Arne Duncan, and all the other “no excuses” reformers expanding across the U.S.

Rinehart’s comment is a “no excuses” message that may impact readers differently than Scott’s comment, but once we peel away the tone, examine what Scott is implying against what Rinehart boldly states. Focus on this from Scott: “That is in direct contrast to the belief that because of a child’s circumstances she is destined to live a life of obstacles regardless of the opportunities she’s given.”

At the heart of the “no excuses” ideology is the suggestion and even direct statement that there exists some people who do use poverty as an excuse, some people who have thrown up their hands and somehow actively embrace “poverty is destiny.”

That implication, by the way, is being directed specifically at teachers now, and the teachers’ unions being accused of protecting these fatalistic teachers.

So now let’s come back to the intersection of me holding in my mind simultaneously the image of my father lying in his bathroom covered in his own blood and the image of Rinehart telling all of us who are not millionaires or billionaires (like Bill Gates): “If you’re jealous of those with more money, don’t just sit there and complain. Do something to make more money yourself — spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising, and more time working.”

I must wonder how my public commentary and scholarship have come to be seen as “hostile rhetoric,” how the working poor and working class in the U.S. have come to be characterized as lazy, and how we justify telling children trapped in poverty to suck it up, work twice as hard, and above all else, do as you are told.

Nothing can be more hostile, mean-spirited, and accusatory than to create a false dichotomy between those who reject poverty as destiny and those who accept poverty as destiny.

Nothing is more hostile than to suggest that any teacher accepts and even feeds off accepting poverty should be destiny.

These civil claims and implications have nothing to do with tone.

And so let’s set tone aside and examine a couple concluding points:

• In the U.S., poverty is destiny. All the rhetoric in the world cannot mask that the U.S. has two justice systems, two health care systems, two educational systems—one for the affluent and another one for everyone else too lazy to be rich. [One reality of the U.S.A.: White males outnumber African American males about 6 to 1, but African American males outnumber white males about 5 to 1 in U.S. prisons—a disturbing set of data that parallels pre-kindergarten expulsion patterns. When will “no excuses” reformers explain that inequity, and when they do, where will they ascribe the blame?]

• Educators and scholars (often demonized as embracing “poverty is destiny”) are in fact arguing and actively working within the belief that poverty should not be destiny, which can only be addressed once we admit poverty is destiny, which cannot be realized until we overcome social and educational inequity.

I find myself, then, almost thirty years into a career as an educator recognizing that, in fact, a good bit of hostility and anger tinges my public commentaries and scholarship.

Guilty as charged.

You see, I learned an ironic lesson from my father, who was a disciplinarian when I was a child and teenager (“Do as I say, not as I do”). My father was apt to demand that I know my place, that I hold my tongue, that I do as I was told.

Increasingly as I grew up, I didn’t, of course, and it created more than one clash between my father and me. He was much stronger, but that rarely if ever paused my tongue.

As an adult—as a teacher, coach, and parent—I came against that same rising anger against my adult authority, and in it I recognized a pattern of anger: When the tone is hot and in the voices of the subordinate, you’d better consider the content. My students, my teams, and my daughter all taught me and reminded me of these angry moments between the one with power and the one without power.

Angry children as subordinates often had damned good reasons for being angry. Often, that reason was my fault.

Calling for civility and “knowing ones place” is the refuge of the privileged. It has been used against women, against people of color, against speakers of languages other than English, and always against children.

When civility is demanded by those with power from those without power, it is ultimately an act of oppression.

If the tone of my work offends, blame my lazy father who worked himself onto that bloody floor that night but not enough to be wealthy. Blame my 18 years teaching and coaching in a rural SC high school. Blame the millions of lazy teachers who have accepted the call of selflessness at the heart of teaching.

Or better yet, consider the consequences of suggesting my father is lazy, that teachers are lazy, and that children trapped in poverty are just plain lazy.

That’s the hostile rhetoric we need to address, I suspect, and thus, it seems unlikely I’ll apologize for my tone any time soon.

* Originally posted September 2, 2012.

Education, education reform

Tone, pt. 1: Does Tone Matter in the Education Reform Debate?

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[NOTE: The topic of the appropriate tone for making and debating points in education reform will not die; thus, I am reposting two pieces on tone, both originally posted at Daily Kos in 2012 (See pt. 1 HERE, and pt. 2 HERE); pt. 3 is original and intended as a prelude to the release of Diane Ravitch’s Reign of Error, which is drawing some criticism for her tone (see my review HERE). Let me be clear that it is absolutely true that tone matters, but I also have learned that the charge of inappropriate tone tends to come from those in power to put the powerless in their “place” and from those who have no substantive point to make. In the end, I call for addressing the credibility and validity of the claims being made first and then, if relevant, we can discuss tone.]

Does Tone Matter in the Education Reform Debate?*

While shoddy arguments remain the target of freshman composition professors in colleges and universities across the U.S., ad hominem attacks, cherry-picking data, straw man arguments, either/or claims, and sweeping generalizations have become the norm in the education reform debate maintaining momentum in both the mainstream and new media.

For example, Ken Libby prompted a Twitter debate concerning the tone of arguments coming from educators, scholars, and researchers, suggesting that the tone of their arguments were keeping them from being heard.

At the Shanker Blog, Matthew Di Carlo has also confronted this trend, calling for an end to “self-righteousness”:

That’s because this kind of rhetoric has to some degree become the rule, not the exception. For every allegation from “defenders of the status quo” that philanthropists are really profiteers or that market-based reforms are a form of “teacher-bashing,” there is an ad hominem accusation from the other “side” – charging that support for traditionally union-advocated policies means you’re putting compensation and job security “above the needs of children,” or that opposition to test-based accountability means you don’t care whether schools improve.

And although Diane Ravitch is increasingly the target of questionable attacks, Alexander Russo claims she is also wrong:

Let’s start with the mis-steps:  Ravitch leads off with the notion that teachers have been “demonized” (ironic given her constant demonization of reformers), describes Gates et al as privatizers (a claim that’s factually hard to support though it sounds good), and claims that the billionaires’ influence is unprecedented (which Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, Soros, and the Koch brothers might be surprised to hear).

But the most puzzling calling out for mean-spiritedness comes from Rick Hess, in the oddly titled blog posting, “Self-Pitying Tantrums Are Poor Way for Educators to Win Friends, Influence People,” in which he complains:

Self-proclaimed advocates of educators and public education have become so vitriolic, mean-spirited, arrogant, and unreasoning that it’s becoming inane to anyone who’s not a fellow true believer. This means that they’re poorly positioned to convince Americans, and painfully uninteresting to anyone who doesn’t agree with them already.

If this were satire, Hess should be commended, but his name-calling and easily labeled mean-spirited argument against mean-spiritedness suggests, at least, that a caustic tone is in the eye of the beholder.

While I remain concerned that this recurring debate about the debate is a distraction, I do believe that addressing whether or not tone matters in the education reform debate can contribute positively to what has so far been a fruitless tug-of-war.

Of Tone, Argumentation, and “Knowing One’s Place”

“Minority group identification carries with it certain behavioral patterns that often impede the process of integration in the total community,” explains Jean D. Crambs, adding, “It is because minority status produces the kind of behavior that makes social adjustment so difficult that much effort in recent years has been directed toward reducing the crucial aspects of group differences.”

Further, however, Crambs makes a provocative and relevant charge:

In the same way, workers in the field of education have been seeking ways and means for making teachers more effective in the larger community, as well as assuring the teacher as an individual of a satisfying and mature personal development. Juxtaposition of the fact that teachers on the whole are not as effective persons as the profession needs, and the description given above of the effects of minority group status, produces an interesting relationship; the hypothesis may be advanced that one cause for the lack of professional achievement by teachers as a group may be due to the fact that teachers’ behavior in some respects is restricted in the same way as is that of “recognized” minority groups.

What makes this discussion of the harmful effects of teachers as a minority group even more compelling is that Crambs wrote this in 1949; yet, it speaks powerfully to the current education reform debate and the challenges about tone raised above.

The classification of teachers as a minority group is an acknowledgement about a disproportion of power. While racial minority groups satisfy both the status of being fewer in number and having less power, not all groups having minority status are the smaller group—for instance, women.

While women constitute a larger population than men, women remain a minority because minority status is primarily about the unfair imbalance of power.

And all this leads to what makes me uncomfortable about the tone arguments. They remind me of my father’s dictum: “Children are to be seen not heard.” They remind me of that same dictum being applied to women for much of U.S. history. They remind me of that same dictum being applied to African Americans for much of U.S. history.

At the risk of crossing lines established by Libby, Di Carlo, Russo, and Hess, I am deeply skeptical of the intentions of people who hold genuine power (Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and billionaire Bill Gates, for example) against the intentions of people who hold either no or substantially less power (teachers, scholars, and researchers).

And as a result, I am deeply concerned about teachers, scholars, and researchers being told to watch their tone—not that I don’t agree that tone matters, that basic logic in argumentation matters. I do believe ad hominem attacks, either/or claims, and strawman arguments are poisonous to the education reform debate.

But I also wonder how these charges have somehow become associated with the groups with the least power. I know that cautioning those with little or no power to watch their tone against those with power is disregarding the balance of power.

Tone doesn’t really matter for those with power, and anyone arguing for the dominant ideology crying “mean-spirited” is unlikely to spur any compassion from me.

As a teacher, coach, and father, I learned that when young people lost their composure and leveled hateful and even profane language at me, that was primarily a representation of their frustration about being powerless, and it was often a rightful acknowledgement by them that the imbalance of power was not fair.

Now, U.S. public discourse is dominated by several well-known and influential names: Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter, and Michelle Malkin, for example. What do these people have in common? They promote a nearly uniform right-wing narrative and primarily do so through the exact strategies being criticized as inappropriate for responses to the current reform agenda. [Note that the only comparable “mean-spirited” people endorsing a liberal agenda are all comedians: Bill Maher, most notably.]

If there is a mean-spirited nature to public discourse, the right must be acknowledged as at least a significant, if not foundational, source for that tone. The norm of American discourse is conservative, and all norms are markers of where the power lies.

Further, in the education reform debate, we must acknowledge when and why educators began to speak up. If the tone of responses from educators is mean-spirited, let’s note that most teachers did not raise their voices until they were in fact unfairly attacked and demonized, first by Waiting for “Superman” and then repeatedly by Gates, Duncan, and Michelle Rhee.

I offer this discusion not as excuses and not to condone the tone on either side, but to note that teachers’ have fought back in ways that should be expected from the powerless (minority status) backed into a corner.

Ultimately, the “watch your tone” argument leveled at teachers and advocates for public education and democracy remains too much like telling a profession overwhelmingly composed of women to know their place. And it reminds me that minorities, that the powerless have only one real weapon on their side—the moral high ground. And I mean the moral high ground of their claims.

So I ask everyone concerned about the tone coming from teachers, scholars, and researchers to listen to a couple examples of how the powerless speak moral authority to privilege.

Consider James Baldwin speaking from his minority status in an excerpt from Take this Hammer (1963), “Who is the Nigger?”: “What you say about somebody else, anybody else, reveals you.”

And consider Martin Luther King Jr. also speaking from a minority status:

I want to say to you as I move to my conclusion, as we talk about “Where do we go from here,” that we honestly face the fact that the Movement must address itself to the question of restructuring the whole of American society. There are forty million poor people here. And one day we must ask the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the capitalistic economy. And I’m simply saying that more and more, we’ve got to begin to ask questions about the whole society. We are called upon to help the discouraged beggars in life’s market place. But one day we must come to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. It means that questions must be raised. You see, my friends, when you deal with this,• You begin to ask the question, “Who owns the oil?”

• You begin to ask the question, “Who owns the iron ore?”

• You begin to ask the question, “Why is it that people have to pay water bills in a world that is two thirds water?”

I am willing to consider and address the tone of arguments coming from educators who are experiencing the corrosive effects of minority status, powerlessness, but I am withholding that concern until we address first why the powerful are rarely held accountable for their lack of experience, their lack of expertise, and the enveloping social and educational inequity that is swallowing the children of the U.S. on their watch.

And, yes, I am also willing to risk self-righteousness in the process.

* Originally posted June 9, 2012.

Education, education reform

Introducing Progressive Magazine: Public School Shakedown

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The online community now has a new member:

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I recommend that all who are interested in supporting and preserving public education against the current reform agenda bookmark this site and stay in touch with the many edubloggers whose work will be featured here.

education reform, race, Segregation

The Lingering Legacy of Segregation

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As we approach 60 years since U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and stand in the wake of a 50-year anniversary of the March on Washington, Richard Rothstein details:

Today, many black children still attend schools in racially and economically isolated neighborhoods, while their families still reside in lonely islands of poverty: 39 percent of black children are from families with incomes below the poverty line, compared with 12 percent of white children (U.S. Census Bureau(a)); 28 percent of black children live in high-poverty neighborhoods, compared with 4 percent of white children (Casey 2013).

Reports from 2012 also highlighted the growing resegregation of schools in the South and across the U.S. Concurrent with the re-segregation of public schools—along with the ignored reality that children’s ZIP codes tend to determine their access to high- or low-quality schools, which reflect the affluence/poverty of the community—a growing commitment to charter schools ignores that charter schools fail to achieve academic success distinguishable from traditional public schools (both formats of schooling produce a range of outcomes) but tend to segregate children by race and class.

Rothstein recognizes a historical link between burying the Coleman report from the mid-1960s and the rise of “no excuses” reform today:

The fear of education reformers today, that discussion of social and economic impediments to learning will only lead to “making excuses” for poor teaching (Rothstein 2008), mirrors fears in 1966 that similar discussion would undermine support for federal aid to education.

A few important lessons lie beneath these historical and current patterns.

First, continuing to refuse to confront, discuss, and address directly race, class, segregation, and inequity guarantees that none of these contexts will ever be overcome.

Next, continuing to focus on bureaucratic and political answers to complex social and educational issue is the central failure we associate with “government.” When government is primarily political and bureaucratic, it is impotent or even corrosive.

For democracy and government to work, then, we must re-envision government as a mechanism for democratic goals. That will require lessening our faith in the free market and the Invisible Hand while increasing our faith in the Commons.

Segregation itself is ugly but so is its recent history in the U.S.

Since the mid-1950s, the U.S. has nearly eradicated blatant and legal segregation. But that structural shift forced segregation to go underground.

A second wave of segregation developed and has existed in public schools for decades—schools within schools. The persistent use of  tracking and the gate-keeping mechanisms that create Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate “schools” within the “other” schools where mostly black and brown children living in poverty sit in overcrowded classes with inexperienced and un-/under-certified teachers have institutionalized a masked segregation that we still mostly ignore.

Upon that second wave of insidious and tacit segregation we are now confronted with a third frontier of segregation that almost no one seems to find offensive—represented by Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools and their copy-cat “no excuses” charters (see the story of New Orleans for a vivid picture).

Public education is a mirror of U.S. society. Our schools do not change society; they mimic and perpetuate our society.

The school-choice-option of the day, charter schools, is yet more of the great bureaucratic failure of government—investing precious public funds to build a system of schools that are indistinguishable from the schools we claim are failing, replete with the worst public education has to offer.

If segregation is a scar on a free people (and it is), then segregation cannot be tolerated in any form in our public institutions.

Commitments to new standards, next-generation high-stakes tests, charter schools, and Teach for America are not only failed education reform mechanisms, but also tragic re-investments in segregation that remains separate and unequal.

The rich get richer, and fewer, while everyone else frantically competes for the little that is left over.

Rothstein ends his report by confronting public policy:

It is inconceivable to think that education as a civil rights issue can be addressed without addressing residential segregation—a housing goal of the March on Washington. Housing policy is school policy; equality of education relies upon eliminating the exclusionary zoning ordinances of white suburbs and subsidizing dispersed housing in those suburbs for low-income African Americans now trapped in central cities.

By stressing integration as the most important goal of education improvement, the March on Washington had it right. It is appropriate not only to commemorate this resolve, but to renew it.

Saying education is the civil rights issue of our time, as President Obama and Secretary Duncan do, is a hollow political act. To continue that refrain while embracing policies that increase inequity and segregation tarnishes daily the brave and bold words and actions that held such promise at mid-twentieth century.

Education, education reform, Florida Miracle, Media, reading

First, Do No Harm: That Includes the Media

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Public education in the U.S. suffers under a powerful intersection of politics, the media, and the public. As I have too often documented, misinformation tends to be reinforced among all three of these forces.

The role of media, as Alfie Kohn has examined, is central to perpetuating not only misleading beliefs about school quality and education reform but also bad policy.

For example, in South Carolina, The Greenville News has posted an editorial position on reading legislation that misreads what is the best path forward for addressing literacy in this high-poverty and deeply segregated state, notably:

The core part of the legislation makes common sense and is widely supported. It would make it mandatory to retain any third-grader who is not proficient in reading by the end of the school year. It is an idea that has been implemented in Florida to promising results, and it simply makes sense. Promoting a child to fourth-grade if he or she lacks the needed reading skills dooms that child to failure. Although holding back a student can have negative effects on him or her, that student certainly will do better if educators ensure he or she first knows how to read before advancing past third grade.

While we may need some proof that retention of third graders based on high-stakes test scores is in fact “common sense,” it seems true that retention is “widely supported.” The problem with those justifications is that four decades of research strongly rejects retention and close analysis of Florida’s Just Read, Florida, policies discredits claims of its “promising results” (see a full analysis with extensive evidence of the research base on both here).

A point of flawed logic also drives this editorial position: Retention and promotion are not the only options available, and are thus a false dichotomy that likely sits beneath the reality that retention is “widely supported” by the public and then political leaders (see how narrow choices create a false narrative that an issue is supported in the fourth paragraph from the end here).

Further, embedded in this misunderstanding of the research base on retention are careless claims about Florida’s education reform success as well as the current understanding of reading/ literacy instruction and development.

Florida, in fact, is a lesson in what not to do in terms of education policy (see HERE, HERE, and HERE).

Reading/ literacy instruction has been eroded by the accountability era based on standards and high-stakes testing. Literacy is misrepresented by multiple-choice testing, and teaching to those tests greatly warps good literacy instruction.

Test-reading is almost nothing like reading in the real world.

Instead of misguided reading policies reinforced by uninformed media endorsements, a few important and grounding commitments should be guiding reading policy:

  • First, do no harm. Allowing reading policy to be linked to harmful retention policies is inexcusable.
  • Relieve literacy policy from the accountability machine. Authentic, rich, and holistic literacy is eroded by focusing on isolated and skills-based instruction and testing.
  • Recognize that literacy is deeply linked to social class. Unless some powerful efforts are made to address poverty and inequity, students from poverty will remain mislabeled as “bad students” in school and then mis-served in those schools by being funneled into skill-and-drill classes serving the mandates to raise test scores.
  • Set aside the crisis discourse and policies related to literacy. Treating third grade like an Emergency Room ensures that students in most need of patient and rich learning environments will continue to be offered emergency care, and thus once again will be cheated.
  • Embrace low-cost and evidence-based practices that will guarantee literacy growth by increasing student access to books in their lives and their schools: “Perhaps the most serious problem with current literacy campaigns is that they ignore, and even divert attention from, the real problem: Lack of access to books for children of poverty,” explains Stephen Krashen.

Literacy growth is a natural part of being human. Children in middle-class and affluent homes (and thus likely to be enrolled in schools and classes that reinforce rich and authentic literacy) enjoy the sort of experiences with literacy all children deserve.

Retaining third graders based on high-stakes testing will further perpetuate inequity and erode opportunities for children living in poverty to experience rich and authentic learning environments with texts that would result in the type of literacy growth associated with privileged children.

A final problem with the media’s endorsement of “common sense” and “widely supported” education policy is the recurring call for compromise (see Cindy Scoppe at The State), also expressed in The Greenville News editorial:

The important work this fall and heading into the next legislative session is for education leaders and lawmakers to get on the same page about how such an effort would be implemented. There is plenty of room for common ground on this issue….

When policy is evidence-based (as it should be), a compromise between positions that are not evidence based and positions that are evidence based results in flawed policy. In other words, compromise between wrong and right can only result in wrong.

Yes, I recognize that politics is the realm of compromise, but I also believe therein lies the great failure of politics for setting education policy.

In the end, then, much could be solved if we kept our focus on first, do no harm instead of seeking always compromise as the basis for decisions on education policy.

Disaster capitalism, Education, education reform

Obama’s Failed Hope and Change: “Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant”

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Writing in 1976 about the bicentennial, novelist John Gardner* challenges the 20th century angst “that the American Dream is dead” (p. 96):

The American Dream, it seems to me, is not even slightly ill. It’s escaped, soared away into the sky like an eagle, so not even a great puffy Bicentennial can squash it. The American Dream’s become a worldwide dream, which makes me so happy and flushed with partly chauvinistic pride (it was our idea) that I sneak down into my basement and wave my flag….

That idea—humankind’s inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—coupled with a system for protecting human rights—was and is the quintessential American Dream. The rest is greed and pompous foolishness—at worst, a cruel and sentimental myth, at best, cheap streamers in the rain. (p. 96)

Gardner continues, addressing “majority rule” as “right even when it’s wrong (as often happens),”

because it encourages free men to struggle as adversaries, using established legal means, to keep government working at the business of justice for all.

The theory was and is that is the majority causes too much pain to the minority, the minority will scream (with the help of the free press and the right of assembly) until the majority is badgered or shamed into changing its mind….

It’s true that the system pretty frequently doesn’t work. For decades, pollsters tell us, the American people favored gun control by three to one—law-enforcement officials have favored it by as much as nine to one—but powerful lobbies and cowardly politicians have easily thwarted the people’s will. (p. 97)

About three decades later, I joined the majority of voters in the U.S., electing the first bi-racial (often called simply African American) president in the country’s history. At the time, however, I voted for Barack Obama primarily because I believed his election was an important symbolic moment for the U.S.; I did not buy his message of hope and change (although I was hopeful), and I was skeptical that the Democratic establishment would allow a true champion of liberal and progressive ideas assume the mantle of U.S. President.

As public educators, academics, and scholars have discovered, Obama is no progressive—much less the socialist that libertarians and Tea Party advocates claim. In fact, Obama’s education policy is yet more doubling down on the No Child Left Behind accountability agenda begun under George W. Bush. The Obama education agenda is committed to neoliberalism, not democracy, not justice for all, not protecting human rights:

Barack Obama personifies the power of personality in politics and the value of articulating a compelling vision that resonates with many voters in the US and other global citizens. For Obama’s presidential campaign, the refrain that worked was driven by two words and concepts, “hope” and “change.” From healthcare, to war, to education reform, however, the Obama administration is proving that political discourse is more likely to mask intent—just as Orwell warned through his essays and most influential novel 1984, the source of the term “doublespeak” that characterizes well Obama’s and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s public comments on education reform. They mask the programs promoted and implemented by the Department of Education. (Thomas, 2011)

And despite Gardner’s soaring optimism, the media is culpable in this failure to commit to hope and change by Obama and his administration.

A powerful and disturbing example of how the Obama administration through the U.S. Department of Education and Secretary Arne Duncan masks a neoliberal agenda (see Hursh, 2011, and Carr & Porfilio, 2011) behind civil rights rhetoric and crisis discourse is the exchange between civil rights leaders calling for the removal of Duncan and Obama’s reply. Civil rights leaders include in their call the following:

National Journey for Justice Alliance demands include:

  • Moratorium on school closings, turnarounds, phase-outs, and charter expansions.
  • It’s proposal for sustainable school transformation to replace failed, market-driven interventions as support for struggling schools.
  • Resignation of U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

With Obama’s signature prominent at the end of his letter to Ed Johnson, the President replied, his language no longer masking his agenda. Obama is resolute in his commitment to “provid[ing] our children with the world-class education they need to succeed and our Nation needs to compete in the global economy.”

Not once in this two-page response does Obama mention democracy, or any of the ideals embraced by Gardner above. Obama, instead, offers “cheap streamers in the rain”:

Our classrooms should be places of high expectations and success, where all students receive an education that prepares them for higher learning and high-demand careers in our fast-changing economy….

In states that make it a priority to educate our youngest children, students grow up more likely to read and do math at their grade level, graduate high school, hold a job, and form stable families of their own….

The message is clear that education is a mechanism for building a competitive workforce; nothing else seems to matter. Obama’s focus on education as training for workers is disturbing, but his relentless commitment to competition and punitive accountability policies in education is inexcusable against democratic goals and the pursuit of equity.

Throughout the response, Obama mentions Race to the Top twice, invokes “competition” three times, and endorses twice “reward” structures for raising teacher and school quality. But let’s not forget the crisis: “America’s students cannot afford to wait any longer.” Even this crisis is driven by economic diction, “afford.”

More than 30 years ago, Gardner argues:

The lie on the American left is this: that the American theory promised such-and-such and has sometimes not delivered, whereas We Deliver. The truth—a metaphysical truth, in fact—is that nobody delivers. (p. 99)

With Obama’s failed education agenda before us as part of three decades of failed accountability policies, Gardner seems prophetic.

And despite Gardner’s rejecting cynicism (“But the myth of the mindless patriot is not worse than the myth of the cynic who speaks of America with an automatic sneer” [p. 98]), I must side with George Carlin:

But there’s a reason. There’s a reason. There’s a reason for this, there’s a reason education sucks, and it’s the same reason it will never, ever,  ever be fixed.

It’s never going to get any better, don’t look for it, be happy with what you’ve got.

Because the owners, the owners of this country don’t want that. I’m talking about the real owners now, the big owners! The Wealthy… the real owners! The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions.

Forget the politicians. They are irrelevant. The politicians are put there to give you the idea that you have freedom of choice. You don’t. You have no choice! You have owners! They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own and control the corporations. They’ve long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear….

They want more for themselves and less for everybody else, but I’ll tell you what they don’t want:

They don’t want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.

I fear this isn’t simply biting social satire. I fear that this isn’t easily discounted as cynicism. I fear that Obama’s education policies and his neoliberal agenda are solid proof that Carlin, not Gardner, is right: “It’s called the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.”

* “Amber (Get) Waves (Your) of (Plastic) Grain (Uncle Sam)” in On Writers and Writing, John Gardner (1994)

Education, education reform, Poverty, Standards, Testing

An Alternative to Accountability-Based Education Reform

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During three decades of accountability based on standards and high-stakes testing at the state level and another decade-plus of federal oversight of that accountability, the overwhelming evidence has exposed accountability as a failed network of policies in education reform.

Education reform in the U.S. now faces a potential watershed moment in which setting aside accountability and embracing a school reform agenda that acknowledges social and educational inequity offer a promise of success that accountability, standards, and high-stakes testing have failed to achieve.

First, education does not exist in a vacuum. Teaching and learning are impacted by out-of-school factors and impact the world beyond the walls of schools; thus, the primary foundation upon which education reform must be built is acknowledging that the U.S. currently has one of the highest childhood poverty rates among nations against which U.S. schools are commonly compared:

Relative child poverty rates

Next, another powerful example of inequity in the U.S. is that upward mobility has stagnated—notably in the top and bottom fifths—and, as Matt Bruenig has explained “you are better off being born rich regardless of whether you go to college than being born poor and getting a college degree”:

The third and final context for understanding an alternative to accountability-based education reform is the rise in the working poor in the U.S. and the increase in part-time work that leaves many working-poor families with adults holding multiple jobs but not having access to health care or retirement benefits.

Education reform must be built on policies that directly address the rising social inequity in the U.S. The essential shift away from accountability, then, must begin with social reform that addresses inequity. Social reform is necessarily the responsibility of state and federal legislation; thus, some of the policy targets addressing social inequity that are likely to impact positively a new vision of school-based reform include the following:

  • Food security: Children in poverty face food insecurity, but also suffer from access to low-quality foods (for example, fast food). Nutrition during pregnancy for women in poverty, early childhood nutrition, and nutrition during school ages are all essential elements for providing children the equity of opportunities that schools could provide.
  • Health care: Children and families in poverty tend to avoid needed preventative health care, and then are forced to seek out the least economically efficient avenues for receiving basic and urgent care, emergency rooms. If public education is to transform society and the lives of children, all children must be guaranteed the health (and nutrition) that children in affluence experience.
  • Stable work with rewarding salaries: Children and families in poverty often experience instability in the work of the parents and their homes since impoverished workers are competing with each other for entry-level and transient jobs. A stable workforce and increasing full-time jobs with benefits provide the basis upon which education can succeed where it has traditionally failed.

Certainly, many other social policies need to be addressed, but the foundational point here is that social inequity currently overwhelms public education in the U.S. A first step to education reform is social reform. As well, the public in the U.S. currently supports seeking greater equity: “The Pew Research Center has found that some 90 percent of Americans believe that the government should do everything it can to ensure equality of opportunity” (NYT February 16, 2013). What is lacking is the political will to make commitments to social equity of opportunity for all in the U.S.

Within the larger commitment to social reform, a new vision of education reform must include a broad commitment to providing an equity of opportunity for all children, and some of the policy changes must include the following:

  • End accountability based on standards and high-stakes testing: A growing body of research has shown that the accountability era has failed: “the absence or presence of rigorous or national standards says nothing about equity, educational quality, or the provision of adequate educational services, there is no reason to expect CCSS or any other standards initiative to be an effective educational reform by itself” (Mathis, 2012). A first and essential step to a new vision of education reform is to end the accountability era by shifting away from focusing on outcomes and toward attending to the conditions of teaching and learning—with an emphasis on equity of opportunity.
  • Implement a small and robust measurement system: As Stephen Krashen and others have argued, the existing National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) assessment system in the U.S. provides a more than adequate foundation upon which the U.S. can develop a systematic and limited process for administering tests to random samples of students in all states and gathering descriptive data on the effectiveness of schools. This new system must be low-stakes and should dramatically reduce the funding committed to testing in the U.S.
  • Scale back and eventually end tracking: The most accurate criticism of U.S. education is that it has historically perpetuated and currently perpetuates social inequity. Tracking remains grounded in data that reflect out-of-school influences and tends to funnel impoverished students into narrow academic settings and affluent children into rich educational experiences.
  • Focus on equitable teacher assignments: The focus on teacher quality within the accountability movement has tended to mislead the public about the importance of teacher quality connected to measurable outcomes while ignoring that impoverished, minority, and special needs students along with English language learners disproportionately are assigned to inexperienced and un-/under-certified teachers. Education reform committed to equity must monitor teacher assignments so that no students experience inequitable access to high-quality, experienced teachers.
  • Decrease bureaucracy of teacher licensing and increase academic quality of education degrees: Another legitimate criticism of traditional education is that teacher licensing has many flaws built into the bureaucracy of attaining a teaching certificate. Certification and accreditation mandates and systems tend to fail educators, and thus students. However, as in other fields, the quality of education degree programs still offer a tremendous promise for preparing teachers well for the teaching profession.
  • Honor school and teacher autonomy: Individual schools and classrooms vary dramatically across the U.S. School autonomy and teacher professionalism are the greatest sources of understanding what populations of students need. The current move toward national standards and tests is inherently a flawed concept since student needs in Orangeburg, SC, are dramatically different than student needs in Seattle, WA.
  • Replace accountability with transparency: High-stakes accountability has not only failed to produce outcomes promised by its advocates, but also has created negative unintended consequences (cheating scandals, for example). A more promising approach to insuring that a public institution provides that public with needed services is to require schools to be transparent: identifying educational needs and providing evidence for practices being implemented to meet those needs.
  • Address wide range of issues impacting equity—funding, class size, technology, facilities: Moving away from accountability and toward equity is a shift in the goals and then standards against which education policy is evaluated. Issues of funding, class size, technology, and facilities must be addressed to assure all children experience an equity of opportunities in every school.
  • Abandon ranking: Education in the U.S. has suffered the negative consequences of ranking for over a century. Ranking nearly always distorts data and typically fails goals of equity. Instead of ranking, education should honor how conditions of learning match clearly identified learning goals.
  • Rethink testing and grades: Tests and grades have been the foundation upon which education in the U.S. rests, but both tend to distort education seeking equity, autonomy, and democracy. Rich feedback that challenges learners and contributes to learning, however, is the lifeblood of learning.
  • Practice patience: Crisis and urgency have characterized the accountability era, and both states have contributed to the failure of accountability. Teaching and learning are complex and unpredictable, requiring political and public patience for reaching the goals that everyone seeks.

The points identified above are not intended to be exhaustive, but the evidence is clear that education reform has been on the wrong path for three decades. Accountability has failed, but that experiment has exposed a wealth of data that should inform a new vision of the need to address social and educational inequity through policies that fulfill the promises driving our democracy and our commitment to universal public education.

For Further Reading

Closing the Opportunity Gap: What America Must Do to Give Every Child an Even Chance, Carter and Welner, eds.

Reign of Error: The Hoax of the Privatization Movement and the Danger to America’s Public Schools, Ravitch (September 17, 2013)

Social Context Reform: A Pedagogy of Equity and Opportunity, Thomas, Porfilio, Gorlewski, and Carr, eds. (under contract, Routledge)

CCSS, Charter schools, Education, education reform, Educational Research, Incentives, KIPP, Media, Merit Pay, miracle schools, NCTQ, Poverty, SAT, School choice, Segregation, Standards, Statistics, Teach for America, Teacher Evaluation, Testing, VAM

What We Know Now (and How It Doesn’t Matter)

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Randy Olson’s Flock of Dodos (2006) explores the evolution and Intelligent Design (ID) debate that represents the newest attack on teaching evolution in U.S. public schools. The documentary is engaging, enlightening, and nearly too fair considering Olson admits upfront that he stands with scientists who support evolution as credible science and reject ID as something outside the realm of science.

Olson’s film, however, offers a powerful message that rises above the evolution debate. Particularly in the scenes depicting scientists discussing (during a poker game) why evolution remains a target of political and public interests, the documentary shows that evidence-based expertise often fails against clear and compelling messages (such as “teach the controversy”)—even when those clear and compelling messages are inaccurate.

In other words, ID advocacy has often won in the courts of political and public opinion despite having no credibility within the discipline it claims to inform—evolutionary biology.

With that sobering reality in mind, please identify what XYZ represents in the following statement about “What We Know Now”:

Is there a bottom line to all of this? If there is one, it would appear to be this: Despite media coverage, which has been exceedingly selective and misrepresentative, and despite the anecdotal meanderings of politicians, community members, educators, board members, parents, and students, XYZ have not been effective in achieving the outcomes they were assumed to aid….

This analysis is addressing school uniform policies, conducted by sociologist David L. Brunsma who examined evidence on school uniform effectiveness (did school uniform policies achieve stated goals of those policies) “from a variety of data gathered during eight years of rigorous research into this issue.”

This comprehensive analysis of research from Brunsma replicates the message in Flock of Dodos—political, public, and media messaging continues to trump evidence in the education reform debate. Making that reality more troubling is that a central element of No Child Left Behind was a call to usher in an era of scientifically based education research. As Sasha Zucker notes in a 2004 policy report for Pearson, “A significant aspect of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) is the use of the phrase ‘scientifically based research’ well over 100 times throughout the text of the law.”

Brunsma’s conclusion about school uniform policies, I regret to note, is not an outlier in education reform but a typical representation of education reform policy. Let’s consider what we know now about the major education reform agendas currently impacting out schools:

Well into the second decade of the twenty-first century, then, education reform continues a failed tradition of honoring messaging over evidence. Neither the claims made about educational failures, nor the solutions for education reform policy today are supported by large bodies of compelling research.

As the fate of NCLB continues to be debated, the evidence shows not only that NCLB has failed its stated goals, but also that politicians, the media, and the public have failed to embrace the one element of the legislation that held the most promise—scientifically based research—suggesting that dodos may in fact not be extinct.

* Santelices, M. V., & Wilson, M. (2010, Spring). Unfair treatment? The case of Freedle, the SAT, and the standardization approach to differential item functioning. Harvard Educational Review, 80(1), 106-133.; Spelke, E. S. (2005, December). Sex differences in intrinsic aptitude for mathematics and science? American Psychologist, 60(9), 950-958; See page 4 for 2012 SAT data: http://media.collegeboard.com/digitalServices/pdf/research/TotalGroup-2012.pdf

Education, education reform, Florida Miracle, Testing

The Unintended Lessons from Florida: Class Grades, pt. 2

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After recognizing the excellent analysis by Michael Vasquez and David Smiley of Florida’s school grades being strongly correlated with out-of-school factors associated with the students*, I have received several important related points from Vasquez about the unintended lessons coming from one of the most often cited reform states in the U.S.

First, Vasquez pointed me to Matthew DiCarlo’s What Florida’s School Grades Measure, And What They Don’t, in which DiCarlo explains:

A while back, I argued that Florida’s school grading system, due mostly to its choice of measures, does a poor job of gauging school performance per se. The short version is that the ratings are, to a degree unsurpassed by most other states’ systems, driven by absolute performance measures (how highly students score), rather than growth (whether students make progress). Since more advantaged students tend to score more highly on tests when they enter the school system, schools are largely being judged not on the quality of instruction they provide, but rather on the characteristics of the students they serve.

New results were released a couple of weeks ago. This was highly anticipated, as the state had made controversial changes to the system, most notably the inclusion of non-native English speakers and special education students, which officials claimed they did to increase standards and expectations. In a limited sense, that’s true – grades were, on average, lower this year. The problem is that the system uses the same measures as before (including a growth component that is largely redundant with proficiency). All that has changed is the students that are included in them. Thus, to whatever degree the system now reflects higher expectations, it is still for outcomes that schools mostly cannot control.

The really important aspect of DiCarlo’s analysis is that Florida’s accountability system has likely caused harmed instead of attaining the lofty goals often associated with accountability policies, as DiCarlo concludes:

In other words, there are many Florida schools with lower-performing students that are actually very effective in accelerating student performance (at least insofar as tests can measure it). This particular ratings system, however, is so heavily driven by absolute performance – how highly students score, rather than how much progress they have made – that it really cannot detect much of this variation.

Closing or reconstituting these schools is misguided policy; their replacements are unlikely to do better and are very likely to do worse. Yet this is what will happen if such decisions are made based on the state’s ratings.

Florida will have to do a lot more than make tweaks to truly improve the high-stakes utility of this system. In the meantime, one can only hope that state and district officials exercise discretion in how it is applied.

Both Vasquez and Smiley’s 2013 analysis and DiCarlo’s 2012 analysis, however, are even more troubling in light of a St. Petersburg Times (Florida) March 21, 1999, article, “A lesson in grading schools,” by Kent Fischer and Geoff Dougherty:

Bush believes the grades, A through F, will make it easier for parents to compare schools and assess how they are doing. A noble goal.

But a St. Petersburg Times analysis indicates his school-grading system may be fundamentally flawed.

It takes no account of the impact poverty has on student achievement, though many studies have proven that children from wealthy families generally outscore children whose parents are poor. So Bush’s grades are more apt to reflect the relative wealth of a school’s student body rather than the competency of its teachers, the newspaper’s analysis shows.

Fourteen years ago, then, Fischer and Dougherty accurately identified the flawed Florida school grading plan, but also acknowledged the key ignored hurdle facing education, poverty:

If there’s one thing that has been firmly established by research, it is the impact social factors have on student achievement. This does not mean poor kids can’t achieve. Many do. But poor children often lead transient lives, may suffer from malnutrition and endure higher rates of abuse and neglect than other children. They also tend not to be exposed to books, music and other cultural influences that help ready young minds for school.

Research – and the Times’ analysis – shows that when large numbers of students are considered, poverty reliably predicts test scores. The Times’ analysis found that depending on which test is given, from 69 to 79 percent of the difference in test scores among schools is explained by poverty.

That seems to ignore several significant demographic factors, like single-parent homes and student mobility. But many of those factors have an extremely high correlation to poverty and thus are effectively included in the analysis.

The bottom line, according to many experts: Any grading system that fails to take poverty into account is flawed.

Ultimately, Fischer and Dougherty offered Florida parents a message still relevant today: “There’s more to a school than good test scores. When trying to gauge school quality, educators suggest parents do some investigating.”

* See below a graphic (click to open and then click again to enlarge) related to Vasquez and Smiley’s article they were unable to include in the online article:

gradeschart copy

Education, education reform, Florida Miracle, Media, Poverty, race, Standards, Testing

Class Grades

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Since I am quick to criticize the media for its role in the failures of the current education reform movement—such as PBS, The Charleston Post and Courier, and Education Week—I must also recognize when a media outlet provides much needed insight into education policy that has clearly run off the tracks, such as the so-called Florida miracle and the enduring practice of assigning letter grades to schools.

In “Low-income schools struggle under state’s grading system” (Miami Herald, August 10, 2013), Michael Vasquez and David Smiley offer a clear but disturbing picture of accountability in Florida:

With dozens of changes in just the past three years, the formula behind Florida’s A-to-F school grading system has been criticized as a confusing mess. But there’s been at least one constant in Miami-Dade and Broward results: The wealthiest schools never get Fs, and schools with high populations of poor students face an uphill battle to even get a C.

The trend is visible through a decade-plus of school grade results, dating back to the first grades issued in 1999.

Vasquez and Smiley, along with the Miami Herald, represent a needed aspect of journalism addressing education reform: Recognizing large and compelling patterns, and thus the consequences of education policy.

The analysis of assigning letter grades to schools in Florida exposes some important conclusions:

•  Although high poverty rates don’t necessarily doom a school to a subpar grade, D and F schools are overwhelmingly serving students from poor neighborhoods, and the few schools that do overcome poverty to achieve an A are outliers. (There were nine such schools this year, all in Miami-Dade).

•  Of the 209 schools in Miami-Dade and Broward with at least 90 percent of students receiving free or reduced lunch, 78 percent received a grade of C or worse. Roughly 39 percent of these high-poverty schools received a D or F.

•  Of the 43 local schools with much lower poverty rates (30 percent or fewer students receiving free or reduced lunch), 86 percent received an A, and none received a D or F.

Despite efforts to identify educational quality among schools by focusing on growth models, data used in accountability policies remain primarily a reflection of out-of-school factors. Further, the schools that sit outside the typical patterns are rightfully identified by Vasquez and Smiley as “outliers.”

This analytical report on letter grades for schools in Florida is a strong example of quality journalism that seeks out and presents complex and detailed evidence, placing that data in the broader context of the many factors that impact not only the evidence we gather on our schools but also what conclusions we draw as well as how we draw those conclusions.

In the article, Miami-Dade Superintendent Alberto Carvalho explains, “‘Just as much as poverty can’t be an excuse, the exclusion of poverty as a factor is immoral.'”

Rare is the news article that allows a perspective this complex.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) ushered in several grand promises in 2001, such as closing the achievement gap, but one of the central requirements of the legislation—the use of scientifically based research—is now poised to dismantle the entire accountability movement, including policies such as labeling schools with letter grades based primarily on test scores.

The evidence is clear that thirty years of accountability built on standards and high-stakes testing has failed. The next step is composing and sharing a unified message of that fact, while also building a coalition to reset the reform agenda so that we address poverty, equity, and opportunity in the lives of children and their families as well as in the schools those children attend.