Should SC Ditch Common Core?
Reporting at Education Week, Andrew Ujifusa notes:
In a clear signal that the Common Core State Standards are in hot water in South Carolina, Gov. Nikki Haley told a meeting of a local Republican Party women’s club that she was determined to ditch the standards this year because, she said, “We don’t ever want to educate South Carolina children like they educate California children.”
In response to the article and one comment, I posted (with edits and additions):
SC is a high-poverty state (bottom quarter, around 10th most impoverished), and thus, historically and currently, people incorrectly use metrics that reflect that poverty to bash the state as having “bad” education. [SC has a poverty problem, reflected in our schools.]
Should SC dump CC? Of course, as all states should.
But as is typical, political leaders have all the wrong reasons (Haley playing to her rightwing, Tea Party base in the state).
In a high-poverty state such as SC—that will now be on our 4th iteration of standards and testing (none of which have “worked” apparently)—the incredible COST of implementing CC and the new tests is unpardonable.
Dump CC, SC, but do so as a commitment to being better stewards of public funds and as a shift to addressing the poverty scar that plagues the state, the children, and the schools.
Haley is in candidate mode, and she has chosen education as a key focus of her reelection campaign, possibly as a pre-emptive strike against her democratic opponent. This stand against CC is mis-guided in the reasons, but remains the right action in SC.
The irony of Haley’s comments lies in her swipe at California: “‘We don’t ever want to educate South Carolina children like they educate California children.'” While Haley is triggering the conservative caricature of the “left coast,” within her populist bating is a kernel of truth.
California has dedicated at least 1.2 billion dollars of public funds to implementing CC (more funding will be required). This pattern of millions and billions of tax payers’ dollars dedicated to new standards and new tests is being replicated, almost silently, across the U.S.
Thus, SC does not, in fact, want to educate our children as California does—spending millions on an accountability system that has already failed the state for thirty years.
Valerie Strauss reports, for example, that Maryland needs $100 million in funding for online testing related to CC.
Education reform built on an accountability system driven by (perpetually new) standards and (perpetually new) tests has never worked; it is the wrong approach to reform.
SC should drop CC and the new tests; SC should end similar investments in charter schools, teacher evaluation and merit pay, and a wide array of policies already tried time and again without success.
Haley’s motivation (reelection) and her reasons (Tea Party misinformation about CC) are both deeply misguided, but the best first step SC could make for a new era of genuine school reform is ditch CC.
And then, start anew by admitting SC has a poverty problem, and having the political will to design social and educational policy that addresses directly that real problem.
Teacher Effect v. Measurable Teacher “Value”: Some Clarifications
Teacher Effect v. Measurable Teacher “Value”: Some Clarifications
via Teacher Effect v. Measurable Teacher “Value”: Some Clarifications.
We Teach English (1951)
On Leaders and Teacher Responsibility
Political leaders and candidates are rightfully concerned about asserting their credibility as leaders; however, when political leaders and candidates emphasize their leadership skills in the education reform debate, the implication appears to be that leadership replaces the value of expertise and experience in education. Let me offer two examples.
Rep. Andy Patrick, R-Hilton Head Island, SC, addressed the upcoming race for state superintendent as that intersects with plans to change teacher evaluation in SC:
“You don’t hire a surgeon to run a hospital,” he said. “What I believe we need are leaders in education not beholden to a system that’s not shown the results we need to see.”
Sen. Vincent Sheheen, D-Kershaw, SC, candidate for governor, responded to concerns about his focus on raising teacher pay as central to his education platform:
Informed of this criticism, Sheheen countered: “I think teaching environment is critical, but the biggest message we need to send for our support of public education is that we value our teachers. Sometimes academics and researchers omit the important emotional content that goes into a successful system. That’s what leaders are for.”
A key aspect of Sheheen’s response is that the criticism came from me (cited in the article)—and by taking this swipe at me, and apparently the lack of credibility found among academics and researchers, Sheheen belittles the importance of my 18 years in the public school classroom.
While I concede that leadership is important and that we can identify and foster leadership skills, I reject the implication of these comments because they suggest that leadership skills replace the need for expertise and experience. I contend that leadership grows from expertise and experience (Patrick’s background includes the military and politics; Sheheen’s background includes law and politics as well as his parents working in education).
Political leadership, historically and currently, then, has contributed directly to the marginalization of teacher professionalism, voice, and autonomy.
In fact, the conditions surrounding becoming and being a teacher in 2014 are reflected in Lou LaBrant’s “The Rights and Responsibilities of the Teacher of English” from 1961*.
LaBrant begins by identifying the conditions of teaching then that are replicated today in attacks on teachers unions and the increased accountability measures such as Common Core, new high-stakes testing, value-added methods of teacher evaluation, and merit pay:
Every teacher of English exercises some rights, no matter how dictatorial the system under which he works; and every teacher carries out some responsibilities. But today we have a considerable movement in this country to curtail certain freedom—rights—of the classroom teacher, and those rights are the matter of this discussion. (p. 379)
Reducing teaching to its mechanical parts, according to LaBrant, strips teachers of their professional “freedom,” autonomy:
Teaching, unlike the making of a car, is primarily a thought process. A man may work on an assembly line, turning a special kind of bolt day after day, and succeed as a bolt-turner. (For the moment we will forget the man and what happens to his personal life.) Having the bolts tightly turned may be all the car-in-the-making needs. But the teacher is something quite different from the man who turns a bolt, because the student is not like a car. Teaching is a matter of changing the mind of the student, of using that magic by which the thinking of one so bears on the thinking of another that new understanding and new mental activity begin. Obviously, the degree to which this is reduced to a mechanical procedure affects the results….
What I am trying to say here is that the teacher who is not thinking, testing, experimenting, and exploring the world of thought with which he deals and the very materials with which he works, that teacher is a robot himself. But we cannot expect a teacher to continue the attempt to find better means or to invent new approaches unless he knows he will have freedom to use his results. Without this freedom we must expect either a static teacher or a frustrated one. I have seen both: the dull, hopeless, discouraged teacher, and the angry, blocked, unhappy individual. (p. 380)
Predating Adam Bessie’s refuting the “bad teacher” myth, LaBrant connects the “dictatorial” educational system with the implication that since some teachers are often “bad,” all teachers need control:
Repeatedly when capable teachers ask for freedom, someone points out that we have many lazy teachers, stupid teachers unable to think and choose, ignorant teachers; in short, bad teachers who need control. We do have some, but we encourage others to be bad. Even the weak teacher does better when he has to face his own decisions, and when he supports that decision. The best way to induce teachers to think and act is to put them into situations where some thinking is essential. This less competent teacher will put more effort into the work he has himself undertaken than he will into something handed out to him. Moreover, he can, if he proves helpless, be given direction. The right to select does not force everyone to use all of his freedom, but it encourages him to use his mind. The nature of human beings precludes for either teacher or class a totally static course. The exercise of freedom is itself one means by which we become good teachers. (p. 383)
A powerful point presented by LaBrant, one too often unspoken today by teacher advocates, is the need for teachers to “earn” that freedom as they also call for their autonomy; it is in effect an argument for teacher professionalism grounded in the evidence of the field:
One reason so many of us do not have our rights is that we have not earned them. The teacher who is free to decide when and how to teach language structure has an obligation to master his grammar, to analyze the problems of writing, and to study their relations to structure….But his right to choose comes only when he has read and considered methods other than his own. He has no right to choose methods or materials which research has proved ineffective….There is little point in asking for a right without preparation for its use. (p. 390)
Finally, LaBrant challenges the pursuit of “uniformity,” today’s standardization, and ends with her strong support for teacher autonomy:
Throughout our country today we have great pressure to improve our schools. By far too much of that pressure tends toward a uniformity, a conformity, a lock-step which precludes the very excellence we claim to desire. Many are talking as though teachers with sufficient training would become good teachers. There is little consideration of the teacher as a catalyst, a changing, growing personality. Only a teacher who thinks about his work can think in class; only a thinking teacher can stimulate as they should be stimulated the minds with which he works. Freedom of any sort is a precious thing; but freedom to be our best, in the sense of our highest, is not only our right but our moral responsibility. “They”—the public, the administrators, the critics—have no right to take freedom from us, the teachers; but freedom is not some-thing one wins and then possesses; freedom is something we rewin every day, as much a quality of ourselves as it is a concession from others. Speaking and writing and exploring the books of the world are prime fields for freedom. (pp. 390-391)
In the five-plus decades since LaBrant wrote this piece, little has changed, including the lack of expertise and experience in education among political leaders.
To continue championing leadership that replaces that expertise and experience is to continue to strip teachers of the very professionalism that those leaders often give lip service to with token calls for higher pay and misleading claims that teachers are the most important element in the education of students.
Leadership grows from expertise and experience; our true leaders in education walk the halls of our schools, teach every day, and yet, remain essentially ignored by those who wish to prove that their leadership skills trump all.
* For more work by LaBrant see Lou LaBrant: An Annotated Bibliography.
Social Context Reform: Publication 15 May 2014 Routledge
The edited volume Social Context Reform has an anticipated publication date from Routledge of 15 May 2014. I hope you’ll keep this work on your radar as an alternative to the current “No Excuses” Reform agenda.
Writing Is More than Structure (1957)
Walking and Talking with Secretary Duncan
Walking and Talking with Secretary Duncan
While too little focus is aimed at the substance of education reform claims and the criticisms of the reform movement, critics of misguided education reform are often discredited for their tone.
Beneath the political civility of political appointees, such as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, however, are equally offensive implications, which compound the lack of evidence for their claims.
On one level, Duncan seems content to speak in empty slogans instead of facing the hard problems facing U.S. children and our public schools. He has worn out, it appears, “game changer” so now he has moved on to a new catch phrase (fresh on the heels of his “white suburban moms” fiasco):
“Both South Korean and U.S. citizens believe that the caliber of teacher matters tremendously, and the great teachers make a huge difference in children’s lives,” Duncan said. “The difference is: they act on their belief. We don’t. We talk the talk, and they walk the walk.” (Arne Duncan: School Expectations Are Too Low in the United States)
Now, Duncan argues, not only are white suburban moms delusional about the achievement of their children, but also all parents in the U.S. simply don’t measure up: “Parents in the United States do not demand the same kind of educational excellence as those in other countries, he said.”
Duncan’s claim is based on raw rankings of international test scores; thus, if we apply Duncan’s logic, I wonder if he is willing to walk the walk with that talk?
If U.S. parents and students aren’t demanding as much as parents and students in other countries, then does that mean that African American, impoverished, and Latino/a students score lower on standardized tests due to their even greater failure to demand excellence? Is it really true that the achievement gaps related to race, socioeconomic status, and native language are exclusively or primarily linked to desire and effort?
That’s the logic Duncan is employing.
To me, both Duncan’s direct accusation and the implication above are offensive—regardless of his language, tone, or smirk.
Neither are true, of course, as Stephen Krashen has exposed about the entire talk.
If we remain fixated on tone over substance, Duncan still fails the test because behind his sloganism lies patently offensive implications that serve only to distract us from the real issues related to equity and poverty.
