Issues
 
What are you thinking about the administration’s efforts to connect teacher evaluations to student test scores and the move to institute national standards? Stay informed! Here’s a couple of recent articles that didn’t appear in local papers. At the bottom of the page, you’ll find contact information for southern Arizona’s Representatives Giffords and Grijalva and Senators Kyl and McCain. Teachers Should Be Seen and Not Heard   by Anthony Mullens, who is a special education teacher in Connecticut & 2009 Teacher of the Year, as recognized by Obama   http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teacher_of_the_year/2010/01/teachers_should_be_seen_and_no.html   I am a fly on the wall sitting at a table. Seated at a round table are three state governors, one state senator, a Harvard professor and author, and a strange little man who assumes the role of group moderator. The strange little man asks the group to talk about their experiences at the education conference. The ex governor from the South begins to talk about how the traditional school model is not working and the problem of too many teachers who do not understand what they teach. Teachers, he complains, are not prepared to teach in 21st century classrooms because they possess, in his words, "only 20th century skills." He does not provide specific examples or elaborate upon his theory but the other guests at the table nod their heads in agreement.   A governor from the Midwest first pays homage to the governor from the South. He tells us that his "good friend "is "right on target" about teachers not prepared to teach in 21st century classrooms. The governor from the Midwest thanks the governor from the South for presenting "the best talk at the conference." Not to be undone, the governor from the South responds by telling the governor from the Midwest that he "presented the best talk at the conference." When both men are done patting each other's backs, the Midwest governor complains that teachers, particularly math teachers, don't know their subject materials. Again, the other guests at the table nod their heads in agreement. All is civil. The third governor hails from a cold northern state but his words have a scorching tone. "The problem with schools, "he says, "is a lack of accountability. Schools need to be guided by specific core curriculum standards and data-driven assessment." The governor continues his diatribe. "I don't understand why schools are not managed more like businesses." This time the guests nod their heads vigorously, not unlike those small bobble head dolls seen on car dashboards.   The next education expert to speak is the professor from Harvard. He gives a mini lesson about the role of chaos theory in education. His new order of thinking-or New Age way of thinking- argues that seemingly unrelated events occurring in the classroom (the boy coughing, the girl raising her hand, and the teacher writing on the board) when taken together form a pattern of continuity and purpose rather than chaotic or random events. The 21st century teacher must be able to recognize these events as purposeful moments in time and space because education is connected to the rest of the universe. Wow. I will forever wonder if I did something to upset a time and space continuum the next time I admonish a student for not covering his mouth while coughing. Teachers do recognize that order and disorder exist in classrooms and that educating children is often an uncertain endeavor, but we do not have time to reflect on such esoteric thoughts when breaking up a spit ball fight.   The strange little man tries to fuse all the promulgated ideas together and asks the group to consider the following question: "Where do we take education from here?" The state senator from the West is asked to go first. She is a diminutive lady and pauses to reflect upon the question. "I think we need to consider the role of teachers in the classroom," she replies in a soft voice. "We are headed toward a teacherless classroom and must be guided by this fact." A teacherless classroom? I look around the table and hope one of the esteemed guests will ask her to clarify or possibly expand upon her statement. Instead, the guests just nod their heads in agreement.   The strange little man interrupts. "I agree. Technology is making the traditional classroom teacher less relevant-possibly obsolete. Soon students will be learning at home from online classes on their laptops." I silently question who will be teaching the online classes. 
The senator continues her line of reasoning, asserting how the rapid infusion of technology in classrooms is better understood by students than teachers. Teachers are best suited to facilitate the dissemination of knowledge through interactive technology rather than try to teach ideas and concepts using traditional methods. A Brave New World suddenly enters the discussion and the senator's vision of a utopian classroom is greeted with comments such as "indeed" and "without question."   The Harvard professor tugs at his chin with his right thumb and index finger and compliments the senator. "In the future," he says, "students will be learning at home using their computers. School buildings and classrooms will not be the primary learning environment." Really? Could any sane person envision millions of school children staying home and learning a full curriculum online? I foresee a stay-at-home mom or dad spending most of the day trying to keep their children away from Facebook.   The senator from the West is very pleased that her comment about technology replacing teachers is embraced by the people seated at the table. So far I have not been asked to speak or comment. I remain a fly on the wall at the table. How weird and familiar it feels to be an invisible teacher listening to politicians and academics speak about teachers and the teaching profession. I try not to move lest they notice me.   The governor from the South changes the direction of the conversation and boasts about how he personally raised test scores in his state by challenging the "status quo of education." He forgot to mention that he lowered the passing grades for state assessment tests- a status quo practiced by quite a few states.   The strange little man grabs a large strawberry from a fruit dish and gnaws at it. I have never seen a person eat a strawberry with two hands. "I think we all agree that changes are needed, "he declares to the group.  "That's why we are here," the senator replied.   The politicians and academics enjoy a dessert of pastries and fruit. I can't keep my eyes off the strange little man nibbling on the strawberry like some backyard squirrel. The group discusses the need to drastically modify classroom management and teaching practices. They talk about curricula and how children learn best when they are provided meaningful activities. We are reminded by the governor from the South that teachers must be proficient in content knowledge.

Once again the strange little man grabs the reigns of the discussion and now alerts the group of my presence. He deposits the strawberry's calyx on a plate. I am no longer a fly on the wall at a table as the others look upon me. "What do you think?" the senator asked.   Where do I begin? I spent the last thirty minutes listening to a group of arrogant and condescending non educators disrespect my colleagues and profession. I listened to a group of disingenuous people whose own self-interests guide their policies rather than the interests of children. I listened to a cabal of people who sit on national education committees that will have a profound impact on classroom teaching practices. And I heard nothing of value.

"I'm thinking about the current health care debate, "I said. "And I am wondering if I will be asked to sit on a national committee charged with the task of creating a core curriculum of medical procedures to be used in hospital emergency rooms." The strange little man cocks his head and, suddenly, the fly on the wall has everyone's attention.   "I realize that most people would think I am unqualified to sit on such a committee because I am not a doctor, I have never worked in an emergency room, and I have never treated a single patient. So what? Today I have listened to people who are not teachers, have never worked in a classroom, and have never taught a single student tell me how to teach."   An uneasy silence cloaks the table. The governor from the South looks at his watch, the   governor from the North bows his head, the governor from the Midwest stirs his coffee, the   diminutive senator stares at me, and the strange little man grabs another strawberry. One   by one the lunch guests leave the table.  I return to being a fly on a wall at a table. I wonder how many other teachers have been treated in such a manner. From Jim Crawford, at the Institute for Language and Policy What's most remarkable about Race to the Top -- especially coming from a progressive Democrat like Obama -- is that it's an end-run around the democratic process. 1. National standards and tests have long been controversial ideas. But with its new slush fund for "reform," the Obama administration can now "incentivize" states to go along, regardless of what Congress wants to do. This would be a policy change with enormous implications, and it should properly be debated as part of ESEA reauthorization, when there would be at least some chance for critical views to be heard and for citizens to contact their representatives. But the administration has set this up so states will already be on board before Congress acts and any protests may come too late to have an impact on the outcome. 2. Experiments with "merit pay" systems for teachers are already happening as pilot projects around the country, with help from the federal Teacher Incentive Fund. Obama is pushing for that program's funding to be quintupled from $97 million to $487 billion in the appropriations bill now pending (and Congress will probably approve most of it). But the carrot is not enough for this administration; it wants the stick, too. Duncan is now telling states they'll have to "change their laws" to allow test scores to be used in calculating merit pay or miss out on funding for any kind of "school reform" project. Why? Not because we've had any full airing of the issues -- e.g., in a Congressional hearing -- or any kind of deliberative process, but merely because Barack and Arne think they know better. Congress occasionally passes laws that overrule state authority -- e.g., when it raised the national drinking age to 21 under pressure from Mothers Against Drunk Driving. In my view that was an unfortunate decision, which seemed to exacerbate the problem of binge drinking on campus, but at least it was done with some semblance of democracy. Since when does the president have power to force states to change their laws to conform to his preferred policies by threatening to withhold funding for unrelated purposes? A very bad precedent. 3. It also looks like states will now have to take draconian steps to "turn around failing schools" -- in particular, replacing all the teachers and administrators. That's one option now allowed under NCLB. Obama & Duncan are telling states to require it a lot more often if want to keep the federal money flowing. There's no evidence that reconstituting schools is effective, despite considerable research in this area. But, using the carrot of federal funding, the "reformers" have the power to impose their pet solution without democratic interference. And they obviously plan to do so. What can we do? Keep the pressure on in every way we can. (Hint: That means people like ourselves actually need to take action -- something I haven't witnessed much of in recent months.) Bombard the news media with complaints. Try to get well known "experts" off their collective asses to contradict Obama's claim that Arne has built a "consensus" behind his approach. Work with dissidents in education groups, including state and local teachers unions, to pressure their national leaders to stop rolling over and playing dead. Get parents involved. Appeal to liberals in Congress to make noise -- we only need one or two strong champions to have an impact on the debate -- e.g., senators like Russ Feingold, Bernie Sanders, Dick Durbin, or Al Franken (who was close to the late Paul Wellstone, the only major-league politician who ever seemed to fully "get it" about high stakes testing). Here are some things that we don't need: more conference presentations and journal articles. There's nothing wrong with such activities in themselves and I wouldn't discourage them. But unfortunately, these are the only things many of my academic friends seem willing to do -- i.e., projects designed to further their careers. Which is fine, but they shouldn't kid themselves that what they're doing is "advocacy." And advocacy will be the only hope of stopping this slow-motion disaster now occurring before our eyes. On July 22, a boy plugs his ears while Secretary of Education Arne Duncan makes remarks at the 'Let's Read. Let's Move' summer enrichment series at the Department of Education in Washington, D.C. FEATURES » AUGUST 23, 2010 Can Our Schools Run on Duncan? Secretary of Education Arne Duncan pushes Chicago’s ineffective reforms on America’s children. By DAVID MOBERG When President Barack Obama announced that his choice for Secretary of Education was Arne Duncan, chief executive of the Chicago Public Schools, he extolled his basketball buddy as a pragmatic, successful school reformer. “He’s not beholden to any one ideology,” Obama said, adding that Duncan would speak with authority based on “the lessons he’s learned during his years changing our schools from the bottom up.” As a critic on the campaign trail of President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act, Obama implicitly offered Duncan’s efforts in Chicago as an alternative model of how his administration would improve American schools, particularly the most troubled. But so far Duncan and Obama have only modified Bush’s education plans, retaining many problematic elements. The administration’s hallmark program, Race to the Top (RTTT), encourages states to adopt specified changes in a competition for money they desperately need. But it offers only $4.35 billion in the first two rounds for school systems that spend roughly $580 billion a year, $47 billion of which is federal aid. Yet by emphasizing this program, Duncan is pursuing dubious reforms that are not only likely to fail, but do real harm. Obama claims that Duncan’s reform agenda is based on experience, but some of its key features remain untested— and those that have been tested have not worked well, if at all. Unfortunately, Duncan’s approach is rooted in an ideology that threatens America’s system of public education. RTTT gives points to states if they meet specific requirements, doing the opposite of what Duncan says is the Obama administration’s objective—being tight on goals, loose on implementation. The policies Duncan urges states to implement in their quest for federal dollars include: expanding charter schools; linking teacher pay to student test scores; enabling districts to dismiss entire staffs of failing schools; weakening teacher tenure; and testing and tracking student performance even more stringently, albeit more comprehensively. In late July, after a group of civil rights organizations faulted Obama for not proposing and funding an education strategy that aimed to help all students, Obama defended RTTT before the National Urban League as “the single most ambitious, meaningful education reform effort we’ve attempted in this country in generations.” A dubious record The track record of similar reform efforts in Chicago and across the nation, however, is too spotty to justify pushing them on every financially desperate school district. Under pressure from Chicago’s school reform movement, in 1988 the state legislature devolved many responsibilities of the central administration to elected local school councils (LSCs) that hired principals and exercised modest budget authority. (I served on the LSC of Kenwood High School, which my children attended, as a parent representative between 1996 and 2000.) The councils worked well in about one-third of schools, satisfactorily in a third and poorly in another third. But in 1995, when the state of Illinois made Chicago’s mayor directly responsible for the schools, Mayor Richard M. Daley shifted power back to the central administration. Generally skeptical of government and a believer in the superiority of private business, Daley appointed superintendents—called “CEOs”—who identified with business groups like the Commercial Club, an elite business group that advocated corporate-style school management and a free-market education ideology. Following a wave of magnet-school creation in the late ’90s, in 2001 Daley made Duncan CEO of Chicago schools. Duncan promoted charter schools and a controversial program known as “Renaissance 2010,” which involved shutting down poorly performing schools (mostly in black neighborhoods), dismissing all staff (including the lunch ladies), and reopening them, with or without the old student body. Many of Duncan’s initiatives, and those like them, have not succeeded: •In the most definitive national study to date, Stanford University researchers reported last year that only 17 percent of charter schools outperformed traditional public schools in math, with 37 percent faring worse than public schools and 46 percent measuring up equally. Chicago’s charters (without tenure protection for their mostly nonunion teachers) have performed better in math, but no differently in reading, than public schools. Chicago’s public magnet schools—where teachers have tenure and a union, but students compete for admission—scored much higher in both math and reading. •Duncan’s much-touted RTTT encouragement of bonus payments to “good” teachers—to spur both teacher development and higher student test scores—had “no significant impact on student achievement or teacher retention” in Chicago, according to Mathematica Policy Research, a leading firm in assessing performance of social programs. (A study of a New York City merit-pay program also showed little effect on student performance.) •RTTT priorities also reflect Duncan’s Renaissance 2010 plan—close schools, then reopen them as small schools or charters—and his “portfolio strategy,” the school plan equivalent of an investment portfolio of private and public educational “assets.” But studies by SRI International and the Chicago Consortium on School Research (affiliated with the University of Chicago) concluded that Renaissance 2010 schools only occasionally performed better than demographically similar schools and that the portfolio strategy yielded “no dramatic improvements.” •Both Duncan and the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind legislation encouraged increased reliance on standardized tests to measure student performance, thereby pressuring teachers to teach to the test so they and their students would “pass.” But strategies imposed on Chicago schools as a consequence for low scores— often against community and union protest—did not produce higher test scores, let alone better schools. Elementary school scores did rise sharply, but mostly because of a change in the test. •The number of high school students who failed to meet grade-level performance remained between 69 and 73 percent from 2001 to 2008, the year before Duncan left Chicago for Washington. In 2009, the Commercial Club concluded that despite “moderate” elementary school gains, after all of Duncan’s policy changes, the city’s high schools remained “abysmal” and students were not prepared for success in college or beyond. There were certainly individual school success stories, some of which do not manifest themselves through improved test scores. Chicago Public Radio’s Linda Lutton has reported on the night-and-day difference in atmosphere between a Renaissance 2010 school and one not similarly transformed. Yet the practical results of the policies pushed by Duncan and Bush in the last decade, now put forward in slightly different form by Duncan and Obama, do not merit repetition. Market-style myopia Ultimately, the issue is: How well do the students learn. But important ideological issues are at stake as well, such as, what should education achieve? This question is at the heart of a longstanding battle between business-oriented educators, who want to churn out a ready workforce, and progressive educators, acting in the tradition of John Dewey, who believe schools should nurture well-rounded, independent-minded citizens. Unfortunately, most Republicans and many Democrats, including some progressives, believe that the problems with American schools can be solved with more market-style policies, competition, financial incentives, charter schools, privatization, standardized testing and weakened teachers’ unions. But the theory that supports treating education as a marketplace is flawed, as is the practice. Richard Rothstein of the Economic Policy Institute and others point out that few professionals in the private sector are paid for performance (except in finance, and that should be a cautionary example). And when faced with performance incentives, people typically end up gaming the system. In a 2003 study, economists Steven Levitt of the University of Chicago and Brian Jacob of Harvard found that as high-stakes testing increased, teachers were more likely to cheat, for example, changing student answers, giving students correct answers and teaching from illicitly obtained advance test copies. The educational systems in the rest of the developed world, which famously outperform U.S. schools, are overwhelmingly public, highly unionized and protected from market-style funding. Even though American suburban schools vary dramatically, many of these schools—with unions and teacher tenure—perform so well that affluent families pick their homes partly on the basis of school quality. A Chicago Consortium on Schools Research team led by Anthony S. Bryk recently published Organizing Schools for Improvement: Lessons From Chicago, the result of two decades of study. They found that successful schools had five essential pillars of support: educational leadership, parent-community ties, professional capacity, a student-centered learning climate and instructional guidance. The stronger these pillars, the more the schools thrived and test results improved. Rather than focus on building complex systems that extend beyond the school, market-oriented reformers tend to focus on one factor—teachers. (See Richard Greenwald’s “A Modest Proposal for Teacher Tenure Reform,” in ITT’s September 2010 issue.) Like most American managers, they see teachers, along with their unions, as a factor of production to be controlled, not as allies and resources for cooperation. Americans across the political spectrum see education as a major solution to crime, inequality, unemployment and so on. But for decades, researchers have shown that the single most significant determining factor in students’ success in school is the socioeconomic status of their parents. (See Roger Bybee’s “It’s the Poverty, Stupid,” also in ITT’s September 2010 issue.) That doesn’t mean poor students can’t learn. But their disadvantages—from untreated toothaches to constant transience of residence and school—can overwhelm even the best school. What the children in America’s failing schools need is direct policy intervention to reduce inequality, to provide broader public services and to connect residents of very poor neighborhoods to jobs that pay a living wage. What they are getting are Duncan’s questionable market-oriented reforms—reforms that often involve assaults on the public sector and organized labor. It’s a predictable shame when such nostrums are peddled by Republicans, a tragedy when embraced by Democrats. David Moberg, a senior editor of In These Times, has been on the staff of the magazine since it began publishing. Before joining In These Times, he completed his work for a Ph.D. in anthropology at the University of Chicago and worked for Newsweek. He has received fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the Nation Institute for research on the new global economy. He can be reached at davidmoberg@inthesetimes.com. For the original article and In these Times, follow this link: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/6324/can_our_schools_run_on_duncan   Rep. Raul Grijalva http://www.house.gov/writerep/ 810 E. 22nd St. Suite 102 Tucson, AZ 85713 ph (520)622-6788 Rep. Gabrielle Giffords http://www.house.gov/writerep/ 1661 N. Swan, Suite 112 Tucson, AZ 85712 Phone: (520) 881-3588 Sen. John Kyle http://kyle.senate.gov 6840 North Oracle Road, Suite 150 Tucson, AZ 85704 Voice: 520-575-8633 Sen. John McCain http://mccain.senate.gov 407 West Congress Street, Suite 103 Tucson, AZ 85701 Voice: 520-670-6334 http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/teacher_of_the_year/2010/01/teachers_should_be_seen_and_no.htmlmailto:davidmoberg@inthesetimes.comhttp://www.inthesetimes.com/article/6324/can_our_schools_run_on_duncanhttp://www.house.gov/writerep/http://www.house.gov/writerep/http://kyle.senate.govhttp://mccain.senate.govshapeimage_1_link_0shapeimage_1_link_1shapeimage_1_link_2shapeimage_1_link_3shapeimage_1_link_4shapeimage_1_link_5shapeimage_1_link_6